Abc's Modern Family

A Modern Family

The situation comedy on television that I choose to study, which I believe highlights family values and functions, is ABC’s “Modern Family”. As the title suggests this is based on what we might perceive as the current, everyday family. I have watched this show with mixed emotions since its inception but these are only my observations about the show, no one can know what the writer’s background is and from what mindset they are coming from. The show is about the “New” version of your basic family tree, but being a modern version there are several differences from an “Ossie & Harriett” family show. They give us as many of the different types of family dynamics as possible in a thirty minute program. We have the patriarch of the family as a divorced older man with a second marriage to a younger woman. It doesn’t hurt that the younger women is a Latin bombshell with a young son. This shows to me the almost typical family with divorce being common place in our society. Then you have the patriarch’s married daughter with an adolescent acting husband and several children living at home. Last but not least, we have the patriarch’s gay son and life partner with their adopted Asian daughter. Sadly this just shows to me that society accepts
Of course the kids freak out and claim they are scared for life and the parents freak out because they remember being scared by seeing the same thing with their own parents but the kids come to the realization that at least their parents are together and still “doing it”, unlike many of their friends whose parents are no longer together. The married daughter talks with her father about the reasons why he never spoke with her about the same situation when she was young. He admits that they just didn’t communicate with their kids like parents do