Man of the House

In the post WWII days of American primetime television, the depictions of men at home as being the stable breadwinner who could solve any problem that faced the family was borne out of a need for the American populace to feel safe. The counterculture movement of the 1960's made those depictions seem outmoded and unrealistic. The shows of Norman Lear, most specifically _"All in the Family" (1968)_, broke open that mold, where the men were shown as being independent thinkers often regardless of the needs of the family. By the mid 1980's, these two trends melded with The Cosby Show (1984), where Cliff Huxtable had a very specific point of view with regard to how to raise his often defiant children. In the 1990's and beyond, the post-feminist era made the man at home more undefined, where he could be placed in almost any role, from the self-absorbed shlub (such as Ray Barone or Homer Simpson) to the self-doubting family man (such as Michael Steadman, Tony Soprano or Walter White). And different forms of the family and their associated issues are also now shown, from Modern Family (2009) to Big Love (2006) to The Bernie Mac Show (2001). —Huggo