Television writers batter marriage
Do television writers have an anti-marriage bias?
It sure seems that way. Turn on the TV any night and you'll see a glut of shows centered on attractive swinging singles with active, exciting sex lives.
Programs centered on a family unit - once a TV staple - are almost nonexistent, and if you do come across a show that features a married couple, chances are they are shown as mismatched, unsatisfied in their sex lives and emotionally unfulfilled.
Today's TV landscape is littered with desperate housewives and philandering husbands.
As proof, one need look no further than CBS's summer bomb, Swingtown. Set in the Chicago suburbs circa 1976, Swingtown follows Bruce and Susan Miller who have just moved into an upscale new neighborhood.
The Millers are soon welcomed by Tom and Trina Decker, a childless, cosmopolitan couple who set out to seduce them and introduce them to their partner-swapping/open-marriage lifestyle.
According to Carol Barbee, one of the series' executive producers, Swingtown is "about sexual freedom, but because it's set in the '70s, it's not about sexual responsibility."
Swingtown is not alone in its campaign to undermine marriage. A recent study by the Parents Television Council found prime-time broadcast TV overwhelmingly favors nonmarital sex to marital sex.
On TV, sex in the context of marriage is either nonexistent or is depicted as burdensome, rather than as an expression of love and commitment.
By contrast, extramarital or adulterous sexual relationships are depicted with greater frequency, and overwhelmingly, as a positive experience.
With graphic sexual content, gruesome violence and explicit language filing up the airwaves, TV's negative treatment of marriage may seem a trivial matter. Surely, one might argue, there are more pressing concerns?
But TV sets a powerful example. If America's children grow up watching TV programs that teach them that marriage is soul-killing while sexual flings are not only fun, but risk and consequence free, we'd have to be naive to believe it won't shape their worldview and affect their decisions.
Bob Sherman
Chicago Chapter Director
Parents Television Council