"Portrait of a Family" is STILL being used as a college course

Many times I watch it on one of the many PBS channels we get on Dish.. For those of you who have never seen it, it's a 26-part series done by Annenberg..AGES AGO.. From the clothes, it appears to have been done in the 80's.

It's used as a sociology/family counseling/ class (and other credits too, probably)..

One that was on this morning was stunning..Its focus is on how "women who work" are constantly tugged at by family and job..

One snippet was about a woman (apparently a surgical nurse) comes home from work and cries because she's so stressed..asks herself "did I do a good job at work today?".."am I spending enough time with the kids"... the voice over says that 'women often wish there were more hours in a day"..

I cannot believe that this OLD series is still being used for college credit..

at the very least it should have been updated, and the older episodes used as background ...not as the general course..

A 20+ yr old textbook used in a current class would cause an uproar..I wonder what the students must think when they pay for a class and are subjected to such old material..

The only reason I even found this out was when i googled to see just when thse things were made...found no date..but lots of links to the colleges still using them and the schedules for the '06 classes..

Have the issues between work/family pressures faced by women changed fundamentally in the past 20 or 30 years?

:)

As a wife and mother who works, and is in fact the sole breadwinner for our family at the moment, I can tell you for a fact that things haven't changed. I am torn every day over "did I do a good job at work today" versus "I'm not spending enough time with my young daughter and husband". I love my job, but I also love my family and home and want to be there more. For me, there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to get done, either at work or at home. Sometimes I wish I were like the Indian Goddesses with 4 pairs of arms. Then maybe I could get it all done.

of the women in the series (for the most part..I have actually seen most of them...there's not much on tv in the wee hours) are mostly portrayed as "modern" women who WANT it all, and very little attention is paid to the fact that the second income is NEEDED.. The men portrayed seem to be very "old-style", and are likely top be shown reading the paper, while the "little woman cooks dinner" after she gets home from work..

I guess i was hoping that in college these days there would be a deeper conversation going on about family life, than the way it "was" in the 80's..

I think women in the 80's actually thought that working outside the home would be exciting, fun, and financially helpful..

The 80's were the years that my generation expected their "pay-off", but for most women in the outside-workforce , little really changed.. (except that they just had more work to do, and less time to do it)

I would agree with you. I'm sorry I didn't get the sense of where you were coming from initially. I haven't seen the series in a very long time but from what I remember of it, you are correct in your analysis.

20-30 years ago, it was rare that many women worked, now it is rare for a woman not to work.

I work full time, but from home and I am very rare, at least in this community.

It wasn't rare that women worked in 1985, it was hardly rare that they worked in 1975. What changed is what work we are now "allowed" to do.

I worked in 1985, but I was single.

if it showed a father being equally upset over the thought that he wasn't spending enough time with his children.

when it was made. I think that many of the truths in it remain today, and those that have changed? well, that's the source of discussion, isn't it? It's not a scholarly work, it's a documentary, the original reality TV show. What's remarkable about it is that it shows one family that seems so normal to the outside really is normal, the pressures and inner-family interactions are fairly spot on. Find the episode where the son tells his family he is gay.

This series is a basic sociology "course" with snippets of all different kinds of families and themes..

The Loud Family documentary was a great one though.. Did you see the new one they did??when Lance was dying of AIDS?? A real tearjerker..

I had them mixed up, still I think older video can still be teachable, if it's used well.

episode where Lance died. :-(