Frank and Sue represent the quintessential absentee parents: both working, frequently fighting, on the verge of divorce, and no time to deal with their kids’ problems. After a particularly tense fight, Maureen (the youngest Murphey child) tells her mother, “Dad said you guys weren’t getting a divorce because you can’t afford it.” In another episode, the dog gets into a canister of chocolate ice cream and lies on the floor panting and ill only to go unnoticed because the parents are not around and too wrapped up in their bickering to realize what is happening within their home. As one writer has noted, the “where were you when Kennedy was shot” question becomes for Generation X “when did your parents get divorced?” įrank and Sue (the Murphey parents) are not divorced in the show, but they fight constantly, and avoiding divorce is alluded to frequently. Boomer teens dealt with missing father figures, but Gen X teens had to deal with missing fathers and mothers. In 1969, Ronald Reagan (who was then governor of California) signed the Family Law Act, allowing no-fault divorces where couples could divorce simply because of “irreconcilable differences.” By 1975, over 70 percent of divorce cases were filed by women. Between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s, the divorce rate doubled, largely due to increased leniency within divorce law, allowing women to file for divorce without permission from their husbands. Even advertisements from that year discuss how “times have changed” as women had begun to “work in industry” and the new women in the workplace were “the best in the business.” Įmployment kept parents out of the home, but so did divorce.
By 1973, when F Is for Family begins its story, the concept of both parents working had become commonplace. Women entered into the workplace in large numbers during this time as well, a fact made possible by both the advances in the women’s movement and by the economic conditions requiring families to have a second source of income. Gen X teens often had to work to aid with the family’s financial responsibilities. Stagflation (the combination of high unemployment rates, high inflation rates, and stagnating wages) forced families to live on credit and take on second jobs to supplement their insufficient funds. This period marked the time when the economic boom of the postwar years began its decline. That Gen Xers were left to their own devices was a reality that stemmed from changing economic and social factors in America beginning in the 1970s. It could be to go play wiffle ball, play with matches, throw rocks in someone’s pool, or have a crabapple fight. Burr recalls, “When I was a kid, you’d go outside and you and your friends would collectively decide with your kid brains what to do that day. Because they had to take care of themselves, Gen Xers became highly independent and skeptical toward authority figures, traits that are evident in all three Murphey children. Opposite of the helicopter parenting of today, Gen Xers were often “latchkey kids,” children who had to fend for themselves because the parents were rarely home due to divorce or having to work. “Come Home When the Street Lights Come On!”Īs a retelling of Burr’s childhood, F Is for Family traces the experience of Generation X, those born between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s. While the setting and the characters on the show are fictional, they represent actual historical moments, distinguishing the show as unique for its kind by depicting the tangible struggles and sensibilities of the 1970s. elites, or Rick and Morty, which presents a nihilistic message that gets buried in fantastical space-time adventures and parallel universes, F Is for Family is a snapshot of real life-not only as Burr’s childhood, but of the Seventies malaise experienced by real Americans.
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Burr wanted to animate the decade when “you could smack your kid, smoke inside, and bring a gun to the airport.” Animation series with bleak overtones are all the rage, but unlike shows such as BoJack Horseman, which wallows in preachiness and follows self-important characters relatable only to wealthy L.A. A dark comedy, the show portrays childhood in the 1970s from a realistic perspective without relying on clichéd Seventies tropes like platform shoes or lava lamps.
Released as a Netflix original series in 2015, F Is for Family follows the Murpheys, a fictional working-class suburban family based loosely off the life of comedian Bill Burr. Delivered as a talk at the Ohio University History Graduate Student Association Conference | March 22, 2019Ī Cartoon That Doesn’t Make the Seventies Cartoonish