My sister and I are currently on our third re-watch of the American sitcom ‘Modern Family’. It’s been a comfort watch ever since we did our first complete run-through during the early days of the pandemic. Even Mum enjoys Modern Family, especially Sophia Vergara’s accent and hilarious stories from Colombia.
I like Modern Family because it’s funny, feel-good, and does not demand too much brain power. But for the longest time, I didn’t really think about the concept that the show is based on, which is: the idea of “family” has changed in recent years. In America, yes, but also all around the world.
It follows that the show portrays some of these new ideas of family: a divorced man re-married to a younger, immigrant woman; a same-sex couple and their adopted child; and the traditional family whose three children embark on their own “modern” adventures in sex, dating, and relationships.
Consequently, the show also portrays some of the struggles of these modern families. For example, in the season of the show that aired after the Obergefell v. Hodges case that ruled in favour of same-sex marriages in America, a prominent storyline featured Jay Pritchett, the family’s patriarch, struggling to come to terms with his son marrying another man. He even goes as far as to decline his son’s invitation to be present at his wedding, in the least feel-good scene of the show.
Another struggle of this unconventional family is the recurring appearance of Dede Pritchett, divorced wife of Jay, and estranged mother of Mitch and Claire. In the Dede episodes (which, admittedly, are my least favourite episodes of the show), we see how the divorce affected Mitch and Claire’s relationship with their mother, causing them to feel unloved and abandoned by the woman who was supposed to love and be there for them all their lives.
Now all these episodes do eventually have a happy ending. Jay has a change of heart and goes to Mitch and Cam’s wedding, and even walks Mitch down the aisle; Claire and Mitch are able to forgive their mother, and even have a somewhat functional relationship with her. In fact, every minor struggle faced by these modern families are eventually resolved — if not by the end of the episode or season, then by the end of the series. Which is not so unbelievable given that this is, in fact, a sitcom whose primary goal is to show that even modern families can be happy families.
But is that really the case?
A situational comedy aired on ABC is not the best place to evaluate the truth, so let’s look at some numbers instead.
The truth about Divorce
Allow me to quote directly from Trent Horn and Leila Miller’s book, ‘Made This Way’:
Children of divorce are more likely to develop asthma, cancer, have problems with substance abuse and be physically or sexually abused.1
Parental divorce during childhood was the single strongest social predictor of early death many years into the future, concluded a study that began in 1921.2
Children of divorce are more likely to receive diagnoses of depression, aggressiveness, and bipolar disorder.3
Children of divorce are 40% more likely to have their own marriages end in divorce.4 Children whose parents remarry are 91% percent more likely (!!!) to get divorced, thus perpetuating this devastating cycle of trauma.5
Looking at these statistics, we can pretty safely arrive at the conclusion that the Modern Family kids of divorce, Claire and Mitch, represent a tiny minority of children who escape relatively unscathed from their parents’ divorce. For a vast majority of people across America and the world, divorce can be a significant and debilitating turning point in their lives.
The truth about Same-Sex Marriage
The most significant truth about same-sex marriage is that it does not exist. It is a non-thing. The term ‘marriage’ refers to the coming together of a man and woman, and the children that may result from that union.
If marriage wasn’t that, if marriage was just something that celebrates love between adults, then ask yourself: why don’t we, as a society, condone siblings marrying each other? Why wouldn’t we allow a father to marry his adult daughter? It’s because deep down, we all know that marriage is about sexual union, and the children that may result from it.
I could go on, but let’s also look at some numbers.
Children of gay and lesbian couples are only 65% as likely to have graduated from high school as are the children of married, opposite-sex couples.6
A 1996 study in Australia found that married opposite-sex couples offer the best environment for a child’s social and educational development, followed by cohabiting heterosexual couples and lastly be homosexual couples.7
Children being raised by same-sex couples are 35% less likely to make normal progress through school.8
Children of same-sex couples conceived through IVF feel more isolated from their families, experience more psychic pain, and fare worse in areas such as depression, delinquency and substance abuse than children who were conceived naturally.9
Children of same-sex couples conceived via surrogacy have higher adjustment difficulties than other children.10
And so we can conclude that the supposedly happy so-called same-sex marriage portrayed in Modern Family is, once again, not representative of what most of these “marriages” and families look like.
I have much more to say on how marriage is portrayed in Modern Family, especially on Phil and Claire’s laissez-faire approach to their teenage daughters’ sex lives, but let’s table that for another time.
My problem with shows like Modern Family isn’t just that they depict these false reinterpretations of universal truths about sex, marriage and families; what I really dislike about these shows is that they establish these new, false ideas as the norm. Anyone who disagrees or resists this new norm is belittled and bullied into submission (see Jay Pritchett’s eventual acceptance of his son’s so-called same-sex marriage).
This is representative of where we’re at in society at large. A general rise in intolerance means that anyone who expresses even the slightest resistance to these false new claims is “cancelled”, de-platformed, and made to apologise. What’s worse is that many who initially resist these ideas eventually, like Jay Pritchett, “change their minds” and bow their heads in acceptance.
Meanwhile, there’s a truly oppressed group among us who are genuinely struggling at the hands of these modern families: children whose parents make the decision to separate for no recognisable reason; children who are unfairly deprived of a mother’s touch or a father’s love because they’re being raised by two “parents” of the same sex. In a society that is apparently preoccupied by the fight for social justice, the plights of these children go relatively ignored.
I do want to clarify that I still watch Modern Family, although not as much as I used to. These days I find myself moving away from shows and films that spread these insidious lies. There is a temptation in today’s world to passively consume content without deliberately thinking about its message. I’m trying to break out of that; to be more wary and more critical of what I watch, of what’s going into my head.
And I think you should be, too.
Hey guys, I hope you all have been doing well! This one has been lying in my drafts for a long time. As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts, so feel free to drop a comment or reply to this email to keep the conversation going.
If you liked this post, please consider sharing it!
Until next time,
Your friend
Krys
Kristen Harknett, “Why are Children with Married Parents Healthier? The Case of Pediatric Asthma,” Population Research and Policy Review, Vol. 28, No. 3 (June 2009), 347–365. Kari Hemminki, et al., “Lifestyle and cancer: effect of parental divorce,” European Journal of Cancer Prevention, Vol. 15, No. 6 (December 2006), 524–530. Vanessa Hemovich and William D. Crano, “Family Structure and Adolescent Drug Use: An Exploration of Single-Parent Families,” Families, Substance Use & Misuse, Vol. 44, No. 14 (2009), 2099–2113. Robin Fretwell Wilson, “Children at Risk: The Sexual Exploitation of Female Children after Divorce,” Cornell Law Review, Vol. 86, No. 2, 2000.
Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin, The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study (New York: Hudson Street Press, 2011).
Lisa Strohschein, “Parental Divorce and Child Mental Health Trajectories,” Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 67 (2005), 1286–1292. See also Hannes Bohman, et al. “Parental separation in childhood as a risk factor for depression in adulthood: a community-based study of adolescents screened for depression and followed up after 15 years,” BMC Psychiatry, Vol. 17, No. 117 (2017).
Nicholas Wolfinger, Understanding the Divorce Cycle: The Children of Divorce in their Own Marriages (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 74.
Ibid., 113.
Allen D.W. 2013. High school graduation rates among children of same sex-households. Review of Economics of the Household 11: 635–58.
Sarantakos S. 1996. Children in three contexts. Children Australia 21: 23–31.
Allen D.W., Pakaluk C., Price J.. 2012. Nontraditional families and childhood progress through school: A comment on Rosenfeld. Demography 47: 755–75.
Marquardt T., Glenn N., Clark K. 2010 My daddy's name is ‘donor’: A new study of young adults conceived through sperm donation. Institute for American Values. http://americanvalues.org/catalog/pdfs/Donor_FINAL.pdf .
Golombok S., Blake L., Casey P., Roman G., Jadva V.. 2013. Children born through reproductive donation: A longitudinal study of psychological adjustment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 54: 653–60. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
Hey Krys,
Thanks for sharing this :)
I've never had any real life encounters with same-sex couples (tho I have friends who are experiencing SSA).
But one thing that's been on my mind for years is reg the childhood of the kids they'd be having.
•What about their emotional health?
•Do they not deserve the love of the mother and the father?
•Who are these individuals to snatch their right to a healthy childhood away?
The parents (if we may call them that) 'chose' to live the life they wanted to, but c'mon why on earth should they deprive these kids the best time of their lives.
And I actually am so glad to read that very thought here.
Sadly, the advocates of s.s.marriages overlook this issue.
If only people could bracket off their preferences and biases and take a look at the reality objectively, how nice the world would have been. Maybe that's going to be a utopia forever?! SMH.