Why did so many sitcoms from the 1980s have deceased or absentee mothers

[TMC]

I don't know if any of you have seen this video on that subject:


But to just to name a few, we had:

• Blossom - It's not really an '80s show, since it debuted in 1990, but still, since it was mentioned in the video, Blossom's mother, while not dead, abandoned her family none the less. Incidentally, the show that Mayim Bialik starred in right before Blossom, Molloy, did actually depict her mother as being deceased.
  
• Diff'rent Strokes - Arnold and Willis as well as Kimberly's own mother are deceased.
  
• Empty Nest
  
• Full House - This is probably the most obvious example of the children's mother being dead at the start of the series.
  
• Gimme a Break
  
• My Two Dads
  
• Punky Brewster - Punky's mother technically, abandoned her rather than passing away, but still, the other shoe fits.
  
• Silver Spoons - Ricky's mother didn't die but she obviously, wasn't around too much in his daily life.
  
• Valerie - When the show was retooled into The Hogan Family and Valerie Harper's character was consequently, killed off.
  
• Webster
  
• Who's the Boss? - Samantha's mother is deceased.

I'm sure that there are many others that I left out, but I just wanted to get to the "core" shows from Cracked's list.

[icecream]

Dead mothers were nothing new. Earlier shows like The Andy Griffith Show, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Bachelor Father, and Family Affair had them.

[Merry24]

I might be wrong. The movie Two men and a baby were popular. So the male raising the child was the mark I think a lot of shows were going for.

To add to the list..

Saved By The Bell

Slater was raised by his dad. Just no mention of his mother.


Amen
Thelma was raised by Decan.

[tenter]

The movie is Three Men and a Baby, not Two Men and a Baby

[Charles Knox]

Alvin and the Chipmunks were also abandoned by their mother.

[biffbronson]

The Dennis O'Keefe Show was an early instance of a TV household where there was no mother. Moving on quite a bit, another noteworthy example was Nanny and the Professor.

[MikeLutton]

don't forget my two dads

[MikeLutton]

Night court. Even Harrys Mother was Deceased

[favoriteshow]

Valerie doesn't count in my opinion as her role was cut through the series and wasn't intended to be a show without a mom.

Who's the Boss? had Angela and Mona, mothers on the show, and Samantha had surrogates with maternal guidance in the house from them. I even recall an episode with them buying her a dress and Tony couldn't handle seeing his daughter so feminine and grown up.

[MikeLutton]

Night court. Even Harrys Mother was Deceased

[franciis]

my 3 sons long,long,long running tv series......original kiddos...mike..robbie..chip...mike (son) left and ernie was adopted...ernie actor had played pal of chip ?ernie and chip actors were siblings....it was very hard process in those days...1960/s or early 70s to have a dad without a lady .....hard to adopt..be single MALE and adopt......social woker seen helper...uncle charley..tour teh douglas home and ernie was adopted...ernie's parents had died ..never married or ?

[icecream]

Originally Posted by MikeLutton

Night court. Even Harrys Mother was Deceased

Night Court was a workplace sitcom though, not a family sitcom.

[dee2364]

I remember this era well. There was a huge backlash against 1950s sitcoms that had nuclear families, going all the way back to the 1970s. People said they weren't realistic and old fashioned. The backlash is why TV sitcoms not only kept having missing parents, broken families, etc. but made every nuclear family dysfunctional (Roseanne, Married with Children, The Simpsons, etc.).

[TMC]

Family sitcoms still had a dark element you could say, going into the '90s. Not just Full House and Blossom, but there's The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, where Will had to be moved to Bel-Air because him and his friends were getting into trouble on the streets of Philadelphia and getting into fights. And there's Sister, Sister, where Tia and Tamera were both adopted by a different person and didn’t even know the other existed until running into each other while shopping, and spent a lot of the show wanting to learn about their biological parents.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by favoriteshow

Valerie doesn't count in my opinion as her role was cut through the series and wasn't intended to be a show without a mom.

Who's the Boss? had Angela and Mona, mothers on the show, and Samantha had surrogates with maternal guidance in the house from them. I even recall an episode with them buying her a dress and Tony couldn't handle seeing his daughter so feminine and grown up.

Somebody in the comments section for the video even noted that usually on these sitcoms, if the mother is not physically around, then the children still have a woman to serve as a mother figure in their life.

Like on Who's the Boss?, Samantha had Angela and by extension, Mona. On Full House, D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle had Becky as their surrogate mother figure. On Gimme a Break, the Kanisky girls had Nell Carter's character. On Webster, there was Katherine or Ma'am as the Webster character likes to call her. On The Hogan Family, there was Sandy Duncan's character after Valerie Harper was removed from the series. On Silver Spoons, Ricky had Kate, his dad's personal assistant and later, wife. On Punky Brewster, there was Mrs. Johnson, Punky's best friend, Cherie's grandmother. And on Diff'rent Strokes, when Mr. Drummond married Maggie, Arnold, Willis, and Kimberly gained a stepmother.