Modern Family? Not so much!!!

          I have a new obsession. Always a major television watcher, I am obsessed with the show Modern Family. I love it so much. I love how it has embraced a gay family and the constant foibles of the multi-generations. It has a great cast of character actors who I have loved on other shows and my friends and I are constantly quoting the show. Everyone on my facebook quotes it every Wednesday night in their statuses. And I swear to God that one of the gay men is my mother. I almost think they are watching her. I am constantly re-enacting scenes. Like I said, obsessed.

            I have just one problem with it. While I find it realistic in its content and the set up, I couldn’t help but notice that all three families are single income households. None of the women work and the more effeminate gay man in unemployed. How realistic or modern is that? According to the US Census, out of the 63 million women married right now, on 5.6 are stay at home mothers. We live in a society that since the 1950’s the American housewife has become a rarity. It’s come to a point that when the other day I heard an acquaintance said she aspired to be a housewife, I almost fell out of my chair.  I know there are women to want to be housewives and be with their children every minute of their childhoods but there seems to be a hell of a lot more women who want to have/need a profession and raise their children at the same time. Plus, even before the economy crashed and burned, most household depended on a double income. Now granted, in the show the men are very successful. Which in itself is very unrealistic since one of the guys is a real estate salesman and seems to be doing just fine. I suppose the argument is that if the men make enough money the women don’t need to work but are these writers incapable of realizing most women want to work?

            I realize its just a tv show, but I think it’s interesting that they so pointedly made the women/feminine gay man housewives. I mean they make a point of emphasizing that this is a modern family yet they have traditional male/female roles and single income households. Can anyone say Leave It To Beaver? I think it’s a real shame because they miss a great opportunity to show real women and the lives of the majority of mothers out there.