Pro-life vid of the day: Controversial 1970s TV moms
by LauraLoo
The recent death of Jean Stapleton allowed me time to reflect on the stark difference in two TV sitcom moms from the 1970s: Edith Bunker and Maude.
Edith Bunker was a slow-witted, big-hearted and submissive — up to a point — housewife on the groundbreaking series All in the Family.
On the other hand, Maude portrayed by Bea Arthur, often got into heated debates and occasionally succumbed to her liberal-thinking daughter Carol’s viewpoint. The show, controversial at the time, featured Maude’s unplanned pregnancy at age 47 and how her daughter tried to push abortion as the only logical solution due to her age and the fact that it was just made legal, thanks to Roe v. Wade:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxy0DTMXhwY[/youtube]
Watch Part 2 here, as well as commentary by the producer of both sitcoms, Norman Lear, on the controversy surrounding Maude.
Do you think millennials would buy into watching a new TV sitcom similar in comedy style to the submissive Edith Bunker, or the abrasive, more liberal Maude?
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
They’d watch the more liberal, brash Maude….submissive women, sweet or not, just don’t do well in that market. IMO…
Boy Maude’s daughter was obnoxious. Maude says she wants to have the baby and still she tries to bully and coerce and shame her mother into killing the unborn child. Some things never change.
Maude even told her daughter how she was young and poor when she carried her. Funny how all the people pushing for abortion GOT TO BE BORN themselves, huh? Even when circumstances weren’t so hot.
“the fact that it was just made legal, thanks to Roe v. Wade”
This is not quite true, the episode was actually first aired a few months before Roe Vs. wade. The show takes place in New York, were abortion has been legal since 1970.
By the same producers, All In The Family had the abortion topic. In season 5, 1974, ”Gloria’s Shock.”
(It occurs to me some may not know the characters.)
The Bunker’s daughter Gloria gets impregnated by her husband, Mike “Meathead” Stivek. Mike was often shown as comic and affable, but usually when intellectual, moral, or spiritual issues came up, he was portrated the most sympathetically, and as the most wise, respectable of the quartet. Archie was the prejudiced older guy stuck in the past, Edith was the submissive wife so her views are unknown except by the occasional maudlin facial expression of shock or embarrasment or disdain, and daughter Gloria was daddy’s little girl as a young adult female who was shown as ‘dizzy’ half the time, and know and then stumbling upon the realization of her adulthood or new-found feminism-delivered opportunity.
Mike was the “progressive,” reflecting the writer’s/producers values – this being Hollywood, abortion is just fine.
Upon learning that Gloria is pregnant, Mike goes on a rant about how they must abort because the planet will fall into environmental collapse due to the sheer pollution burden of Junior Stivek, later named “Joey.”
This lack of initial acceptance of course hurts Gloria greatly.
Well, now, 40 years later, we can see that the rumors of the earth’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Joey did not cast us into environmental armageddon.
Wikipedia has the AITF episodes listed and you can see the topics aas the years go by.
In my family’s home of “progressives,” we watched these shows admiringly because they either told us or reinforced for us our emerging “progressive” values.
Submissive wives?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/christiandomesticdiscipline/
Oh look, they have an instruction booklet, with pictures!
http://beginningdd.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/02/BeginnerPacketFinalCopy1.pdf
Reality as far as I can tell that “Christian Domestic Discipline” seems to be a Christian version of Dom/sub relationships. You wouldn’t be judging people’s personal relationship choices now would ya?
Ironically Adrienne Barbeau, who portrayed daughter Carolyn pushing her 47-year-old mother Maude to have an abortion, went on to have twins in real life – at the age of 51!
I made no judgement whatsoever Jack.
I merely supplied some information I had stumbled across which was relevant to the ‘submissive wives’ concept.
Thanks Hans – I forgot all about that! LL
BOTH Edith Bunker and Maude were housewives — albeit characters with radically different personalities. Married women who don’t engage in paid labor seemed to be a vanishing breed on TV sitcoms for awhile.
One reason I so enjoy “Married . . . With Children” is that Peg Bundy is a housewife. What’s more, she’s even more remarkable for being a lazy housewife who almost never cooks or cleans. She is endearing.