{"id":47719,"date":"2012-06-06T10:00:26","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=47719"},"modified":"2012-06-03T17:38:08","modified_gmt":"2012-06-03T22:38:08","slug":"blaming-the-media-i-the-murphy-brown-non-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/06\/06\/blaming-the-media-i-the-murphy-brown-non-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaming the Media I: The “Murphy Brown” Non-Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure what effect prime-time sitcoms have on the general public.\u00a0 Very little, I suspect, but I don\u2019t know the literature on the topic.\u00a0 Still, it\u2019s surprising how many people with a similar lack of knowledge assume that the effect is large and usually for the worse.<\/p>\n

Isabel Sawhill, is a serious researcher at Brookings; her areas are poverty and inequality.\u00a0 Now, in a Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>article<\/a>, she, says that Dan Quayle was right about Murphy Brown.<\/p>\n

Some quick history for those who were out of the room — or hadn\u2019t yet entered the room: In 1992, Dan Quayle was vice-president under Bush I.\u00a0 Murphy Brown was the title character on a popular sitcom then in its fourth season —\u00a0a divorced TV news anchor played by Candice Bergen.\u00a0 On the show, she got pregnant.\u00a0 When the father, her ex, refused to remarry her, she decided to have the baby and raise it on her own.<\/p>\n

Dan Quayle, in his second most famous moment,* gave a campaign speech about family values that included this:<\/p>\n

Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong… Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong… It doesn\u2019t help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today\u2019s intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sawhill, citing her own research and that of others, argues that Quayle was right about families:\u00a0 children raised by married parents are better off in many ways —\u00a0health, education, income, and other measures of well-being —\u00a0than are children raised by unmarried parents whether single or together.**<\/p>\n

But Sawhill also says that Quayle was right about the more famous part of the statement \u2013 that \u201cMurphy Brown\u201d was partly to blame for the rise in nonmarried parenthood.<\/p>\n

Dan Quayle was right. Unless the media, parents and other influential leaders celebrate marriage as the best environment for raising children, the new trend —\u00a0bringing up baby alone —\u00a0may be irreversible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sawhill, following Quayle, gives pride of place to the media.\u00a0 But unfortunately, she cites no evidence on the effects of sitcoms or the media in general on unwed parenthood.\u00a0 I did, however, find a graph of trends in unwed motherhood<\/a>. It shows the percent of all babies that were born to unmarried mothers.\u00a0 I have added a vertical line to indicate the Murphy Brown moment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The \u201cMurphy Brown\u201d effect is, at the very least, hard to detect. The rise is general across all racial groups, including those who were probably not watching a sitcom whose characters were all white and well-off.\u00a0 Also, the trend begins well before \u201cMurphy Brown\u201d ever saw the light of prime time.\u00a0 So 1992, with Murphy Brown\u2019s fateful decision, was no more a turning point than was 1986, for example, a year when the two top TV shows were \u201cThe Cosby Show\u201d and \u201cFamily Ties,\u201d sitcoms with a very low rate of single parenthood and, at least for \u201cCosby,\u201d a more inclusive demographic.<\/p>\n

————————<\/p>\n

\u00a0 * Quayle\u2019s most remembered moment: when a schoolboy wrote \u201cpotato\u201d on the blackboard, Quayle \u201ccorrected\u201d him by getting him to add a final \u201ce\u201d \u2013 \u201cpotatoe.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThere you go,\u201d said the vice-president of the United States approvingly. (A 15-second video is\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

** These results are not surprising.\u00a0 Compared with other wealthy countries, the US does less to support poor children and families or to ease the deleterious effects on children who have been so foolhardy as to choose poor, unmarried parents.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog. I\u2019m not sure what effect prime-time sitcoms have on the general public.\u00a0 Very little, I suspect, but I don\u2019t know the literature on the topic.\u00a0 Still, it\u2019s surprising how many people with a similar lack of knowledge assume that the effect is large and usually for the worse. Isabel Sawhill, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,253,272,129],"class_list":["post-47719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-history","tag-marriagefamily","tag-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47719"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47757,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47719\/revisions\/47757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}