From June Cleaver to Murphy Browne

As part of the huge mass of humanity known as the baby boomers, I have had a front-row seat in viewing the enormous societal changes in the American landscape.  I was born in 1954, a time when gender roles in the U.S. were pretty much firm and fixed.  Women were homemakers and mothers, and men went out to work to support the family.  The television shows of the time - "Leave it to Beaver", "Father Knows Best", and even "Lassie" perpetuated the myth of the "ideal" family of that era.  The women who had found fulfillment and excitement working outside of the home during World War II were quickly sent back to domesticity -- usually inside a Playtex girdle.  Even among college-educated women, the choices were few.

Some of my peers look back with longing to that seemingly simpler time.  I am not one of them.  Rigid conformity was the order of the day, and to deviate from that conformity was to face certain social rejection.  Families depicted in the television shows of the era are white, heterosexual, and the shows themselves show a sanitized America that in reality did not exist.  The reasons behind the perpetuation of this myth are too complex to be addressed in a blog post.

Anger erupted in the sixties, and women and African Americans began to protest their enforced roles.  Television did begin to show women in roles other than that of domestic goddess, but generally the entertainment industry was slow to embrace societal change.  When the movie "An Unmarried Woman", starring Jill Clayburgh and Michael Murphy, came out in the 1970's, people were shocked to see a divorced woman actually find happiness and fulfillment after her philandering husband left her.  That was one of the first movies I can remember showing a woman actually owning her life, not depending on a man for her complete happiness.

Television lagged far behind.  Women were seen in roles as spy and cop - "Mod Squad", "Honey West", -  but the domestic goddess was an archetype television was reluctant to give up.   Even "The Mary Tyler Moore Show",  a seventies comedy about a single female journalist, portrayed Mary as ultimately marriage-seeking.   "Murphy Browne" was the pioneering woman of T.V. land.  Determinedly single, undomesticated, and an unwed mother, she defied all cultural stereotypes.  But she wasn't allowed to exist until the 1990's.

I like these times better.  "Modern Family" is an intelligent comedy showing the new face of the American family, and no one really thinks twice anymore about the concept of a working mother or a gay couple raising a family.  History will keep evolving, and hopefully  television will reflect the changes more quickly than in the past.