The Importance of Family

If you were to turn on the TV and watch a popular program, there is a good chance that you would come across a show with the family at the center. Take ABC for example. They air Modern Family, Blackish, and Fresh of the Boat.  Each of the shows, and many other extremely popular programs feature a family or a collection of friends who have bonded and created an quasi family.  So what does this mean? Why does family seem to play a pivotal role in television programming? At the core we are born into a family, and as humans we strive to find love and acceptance, and a strong family provides for our human needs for companionship and belonging.

Think of the typical and beloved TV family. Take the Cunninghams on Happy Days, or my favorite, the Dunpheys on Modern Family. Both programs focus on a certain character, their experiences, and problems.  We feel for them, sympathize for them, experience their pain, and share their joy.  A typical program generally follows the individual through daily events and occurrences that may be a bit more fictional than our daily lives.  However, when trouble hits, or strife arises in their life, they have their family to fall back on.  In Happy Days, Richie, a main character often finds himself in a good deal of trouble, only to be assisted by his loving family.  In Modern Family, each of the members seems to have a deficiency that makes them reliant on each other.  Phil, the father, is a softie on his children, whereas his wife, Claire takes the dominant role as the disciplinarian.  In this example, they can really on each other as family to make up for each others short comings.

Even when our TV icons and favorites fall short and fail, despite any misgivings or conflicts between themselves and their family, there seems to be a general pattern.  When difficulties arise, they need their families.  It makes sense right? Daily life is a tough regime that can be punishing.  Pulling of life without family to support you would be difficult indeed.  So why then do we have a large presence of family in our media lives, but often times not in our own? It is so easy to become enveloped in our personal lives and forget that we have a support system at our backs.  If we simply make an effort to realize this, life might just be a little bit brighter.

Television families are quite entertaining with their humor, and at the same time they are touching as they heroically band together as a family and persevere through hardships.  It is so easy to forget what we have.  We might not even notice the support our families can provide as a result of our own ignorance.  Nevertheless, our families are our support systems.  We may not choose them, and we may not even like them all the time, but at the end of they day, just like TV, they are family, and we need only realize their importance to help put the focus back on family life.