Writing Lessons From… Growing a Family in Sitcoms
How to write about growing a family, and how NOT to write it
This week, I thought I’d look at one particular aspect from four TV shows, and how they each handled a particular topic common in sitcoms that focus on families.
However, that article turned out to be so long!
So I’ve cut it down to the two major shows I wanted to talk about, and my opinion as a writer about their creative choices when it came to representing people becoming parents and the difficulties that can arise.
It’s something that hits home for me every time, as someone who has fertility problems and is childfree not by choice. Sitcoms tackling the topic of starting a family, fertility and pregnancy have the power to make me either incandescent with rage or sitting on the floor sobbing, depending on the writing choices that have been made.
Before we crack on, a massive thank you to everyone who voted on the poll to decide which mini ebook about creative writing I should start with!
The winner was ‘The Basics of Editing’, which I’m going to start working on this week.
Watch this space!
From here on, there be spoilers for Big Bang Theory and Modern Family.
You have been warned.
(Modern Family is currently playing on E4 and the whole lot can be found on Disney+. Big Bang Theory is repeated on E4 and can be watched at leisure on Netflix.)
Let’s start with the rage…
Big Bang Theory has come in for a lot of criticism over its handling of Penny in the early days of the show, but also at the very end. I’m not the only person who thinks what I’m about to point out. Generally speaking, the handling of Penny at the beginning was misogynistic, although the handling of female characters became better as the show went on and Kaley Cuoco (who played Penny), and presumably the other actresses, were allowed more of a say.
The show might have eventually pretended to understand women – such as when Bernie (my favourite) explains how having a baby could ruin her career and everything she’s worked for and that she, under no circumstances, wants one – but the writers failed catastrophically.
Bernie gets accidentally pregnant and is magically all right with it. We never hear how her career is affected by having two babies back to back, everything just seems to go back to normal. This is not what happens to a woman who has back-to-back maternity leaves, particularly when working in a male-dominated industry as Bernie does.
That storyline alone could have been fascinating.
But no.
They’d much rather have Bernie be the good little mother, fitting into the good little woman box.
Towards the end of the show, we find out that Penny also doesn’t want children. It becomes a hiccup in her marriage with Leonard because he wants to be a dad (just as Bernie’s husband did). The desire to have children is often a deal breaker even in the best of relationships, so again, this could have made for an interesting storyline.
But no.
In the final ever episode, Penny is pregnant by accident (makes you wonder what these men are up to) and seems happy about it. The fact that she didn’t want children is not raised, and we’re supposed to just be happy for them. Yay!
I wasn’t happy.
What a load of unempathetic tosh.
What it boils down to is that the writers never allowed Penny to have autonomy over her body. In the beginning, they dressed her in revealing clothes and in the end, they made her pregnant when she didn’t want to be. And we were all supposed to just be content with this.
Having researched what others made of this, I’ve discovered that Kaley Cuoco was outraged for Penny and was against the whole pregnancy storyline.
The writers, on the other hand, have admitted that they messed up and declared that they wanted to drop hints that Penny was changing her mind about motherhood but didn’t have the time to include this in the scripts.
Because, you know, all women who decide they don’t want children will change their minds.
.All right, so some women do change their minds, but don’t just skim over the negative emotions to get to the happy ending quicker. What makes great character development is the pain alongside the humour. Make your characters real and do them justice.
What Big Bang Theory did here was dangerous, suggesting that women’s feelings and opinions don’t matter, even when it comes to growing another person in their body.
If they didn’t have time, they should have dropped the pregnancy storyline altogether.
How to do it right…
The flip side of the coin is Modern Family, and I’m looking at Mitch and Cam in particular.
You know the writing is good when it sticks with you, not just the content but the feeling it gives you.
Early on, Mitch and Cam decide they want a second baby, a boy, to complete their family, but it just isn’t happening.
Until, in one joyously brilliant episode, a Spanish mother goes into labour and she’s chosen Mitch and Cam to be the baby’s adopted parents. Filled with excitement and apprehension, they rush to the hospital with Gloria who is acting as translator.
The episode follows a Spanish soap opera theme, leaving Mitch and Cam bewildered and keeping the comedy in the situation. After learning that the baby’s grandmother has announced that she will raise the baby, they stop at a gas station on the way home.
Cam is trying to hold it together when Mitch walks off into the night.
He can’t do this anymore. He can’t take the pain. And as Cam rushes after him, all of that pain comes flooding out, until they’re lying side by side, looking up at the stars and putting their decision to grow their family on hold.
This episode never fails to make me cry. Even recounting it brought tears to my eyes, which Big Bang Theory certainly didn’t.
Yes, part of that is because I understand that pain. I’ve cried those tears. I’ve walked off into the night.
But mostly it’s because the writers managed to tap into that pain while telling a full, complete story with well-developed, believable characters. And they did it without leaving the genre’s format.
It all comes down to the E word
I understand that these two examples aren’t similar to one another. One represents a female character not being allowed her own feelings about her own body, while the other is about a gay couple struggling to adopt their second child.
The writing lesson here is that both scenarios are successful or a failure due to the empathy of the writers involved.
Don’t hide from feelings. If your characters are going through something painful, maybe even political, then go through it with them and do it properly. You owe them and your audience that.
Empathy is a word not used often enough when discussing how to write good stories, and yet it’s the most important thing.
Without empathy, how can you develop relatable, believable, interesting characters?
Without empathy, how can you expect your reader to keep turning the page?
Without empathy, how can you hope your audience will lie beside your characters and sob with them?
Even the most light-hearted genre will feature some heartache and pain. The pain and darkness can give your characters more depth, and if you’ve done your job right, the reader/audience will go right along with them, willing them to be okay and happy by the end.
If you haven’t experienced the specific pain first-hand, there is no excuse for sloppy writing.
Put yourself in that character’s place.
How would you feel? What would you do? Now, what would they do?
Ask people who have been there what it was like and how it felt.
Don’t just gloss over it because you don’t think people want to know. They do want to know. They may already know.
Depending on the genre, you also shouldn’t be afraid of going away from the ‘norm’. A lot of women are able to be open about not wanting children these days, and their wishes should be respected. There’s absolutely no reason why your character’s happy ending couldn’t be a negative pregnancy test, or fertility problems followed by adoption (as with Monica and Chandler in Friends), or a couple coming together to love each other whether they’re able to grow their family or not (Mitch and Cam do get their son in the end!).
Empathy only comes from well-developed characters and, when handling difficult subjects such as growing a family, you must have empathy and the courage to take your readers into the dark places, hoping that there will be light at the end.
Whatever shape or form that light takes.
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