This is what Robert Young said about the negative reactions to "Father Knows Best" in 1988:

JB: Do you accept the criticism the show sugar coated the concept of the American family?

Robert Young: No. It was of its time. When I watch old episodes today I see a show with only whites -but that was the reality of the American suburbs in the Fifties. At that time most women wanted to stay at home and look after their families. There was an episode when Constance Ford plays a cousin of Margaret's who is a famous foreign correspondent and visits and says this [the domestic life of the Anderson family] is all she's ever wanted! That was the prevalent philosophy. And America was doing much better in the Fifties than today. I played an insurance salesman and we lived quite well on a sole salary.

This excerpt was taken from page 30 of "Robert Young: Family Man" by James Bawden (JB) in the Fall 2015 (#82) issue of Films of the Golden Age (http://www.filmsofthegoldenage.com/). The episode Mr. Young is referring to is "An Extraordinary Woman" from season 5.

Thanks for posting that, it's an interesting quote.

I'm not certain what the interviewer meant by "the concept of the American family," and it's even less clear what sugar-coating refers to. The series did touch on subjects like poverty (the boy forced to live in an old bus temporarily) and assimilation of Hispanics, among others.

For a sitcom, I think it did have more than its fair share of "serious" episodes. There was a light touch, such as when the family tries to nurse a little bird back to health.

Sitcoms were not really the domain for subjects like drug abuse, domestic violence, racism, etc. -- this type of stuff was coming on in the early '70s (Ernie on My Three Sons -- "POT?" and of course All In the Family), much later than the FKB era.