In today’s world traditional families is not what you usually see anymore. You usually see a single mother or fathers taking care of their kids or you see biracial couples together. Sometimes you see a grandmother/grandfather or aunt/uncle raising the children because their parents simply cannot do so. Or occasionally you will see a lesbian/gay couples raise their family as while. 21st century compared to the 20th century is different now. The 20th century is more traditional type families where the mother stayed home did motherly duties while the father was out working to provide for his family.
Whereas the 21st century is more nontraditional type families because now and in days both parents work and the kids are usually in school or a babysitter watches them till the parents come home. So for this assignment I picked two popular traditional and two popular nontraditional family television shows. For my two traditional family television shows my best choice was Good Times and Home Improvement. And for my two nontraditional family television shows I picked The Fosters and Empire. Question A I’m going to start with the television show Good Times on the traditional side first.
Good Times is a show based in Chicago, Illinois where a poor African American family make the best of things living in the project apartments. The father (James Even) would go out and work to provide for the family while the mother (Florida Evens) takes care of the house and their three kids. The next traditional show is Home Improvement, where Tim Taylor a television show host and the wife helps co-host and they take care of their three mischievous boys. For nontraditional family show the first one is The Fosters. The Fosters is about a lesbian couple who took in five foster kids as their own.
Stef Foster is a cop and Lena Fosters is a principle at a prep school. The last nontraditional family is Empire. Empire has to deal with a hip-hop mogul named Luscious Lyon (the father) who has his own record company and his three kids who fight to be the next in charge. While Cookie Lyon (the mother) tries everything to get what’s hers. So I guess you can say the parents are separate but still at times get together. But at the end of the day they stick together. Question B I believe that all the families have a couple similarities in there shows. Through everything that going on they always come together.
They all have their problems no family is perfect. You usually have those nosey family member who get into everything. Each family has a black sheep or troublemaker and it’s usually a kid that the parents has to worry about. The parents always have some type of problem with each other that they don’t solve till the end of the show. For example they may disagree with one of the kids doing going out, but at the end of the show they come to some type of agreement. Question C Good Times aired back in 1974 through 1979 on CBS and the main audience would be African American that are usually poor themselves and struggling as while.
The next show is Home Improvement that aired back in 1991 through 1999 on ABC and the main audience are usually white mid class wealthy people. The third show is The Fosters that started in 2013 and still comes on today. The network that it comes on is ABCFamily and their audience is a various families because in today’s world it’s more nontraditional than traditional. The last show is Empire that just started early 2015 and still goes on. The network it comes on is Fox and the audience that mainly watch it is anybody that follows hip-hop cultural.
Question D I believe it’s because throughout time more people become acceptable of different types of family not just the normal mother, father and children type families. I so because families that we watch on television is not always how it is in real life. Some family don’t fight one day and get along the next day. Some families don’t believe in marriage making them a family. For example Lesbian and gay couple were not able to get married for a long time but that did not stop them from becoming a family. In most people’s eyes marriage is just a piece of paper that doesn’t mean anything. It the love you have for one another.
