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Family Shows and Familial Relationships
Different family television shows base their content in ways that portray familial relationships differently. This discussion will explore the “Family Game Night” and the Secrets and Wives Television shows aired in the United States, in addition to the Modern Family show. At the same time, the TV show has diverse family structures with some relationships close, while others have distanced and influenced by divorce.
This is different from the television series “Family Game Night” which portrays the closeness of nuclear families compared to the extended type of families. On the other hand, the Secrets and Wives TV series portrays dysfunctional families as it presents how family relationships are interfered with by marriage conflicts and divorce. The TV show also portrays diversity in family relationships by showing different types that do not follow any certain structure.
Despite these differences familial relationships in the three television shows portray one main similarity; the problem of divorce that has hit the modern families. This is because the effect of divorce appears in all the three shows. It portrays as a threat to family unit as discussed by Stephanie Coontz as a problem in modern American families (Henslin, 431). Moreover, the three television shows portray family size as a significant factor in the effectiveness of the familial relationships. In all the three shows, the lesser the number of family members, the more the family is closely knit. Another similarity is that the man maintains the traditional sense of being the head of the family. However, the television show “Secrets and Wives” portrays women to be more assertive than in the other two shows.
Structure factor of the target audience contributes to the differences in the way the three television shows portray familial relationships. While the Modern Families focus the general audience of all ages, the “Secrets and Wives” target the middle aged women audience. On the other hand, the “Family Game Night” targets a much older audience compared to the other two. The differences in the three shows portray the significance of the target audience to the focus of the TV series.
Work Cited
Henslin, James. Down to Earth Sociology: 14th Edition: Introductory Readings, Fourteenth Edition. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007, Print