Answer of the Day: Why Did Every 80s Sitcom Kill the Mom

The 1980s were a dangerous time for many of us, but it was especially dangerous if you were from a specific demographic: A sitcom mother.

Go ahead, think about it. Have you ever noticed that while you were watching reruns of Diff’rent Strokes or Full House that there was never a mom around? To paraphrase a 90s sitcom, what’s the deal with that?

This was no accident. There was a reason why so many sitcoms were about single fathers dealing with multiple children, and the After Hours team at Cracked took a quick look at why “audiences tuned in week after week to laugh at grieving families and abandoned children?”

via GIPHY

In this video, Cracked uncovers the reason that the 80s were such a bad time to be a sitcom mom, or a sit-mom, as I’ll refer to them. Some reasons include: the success of the first example, Diff’rent Strokes led to copycats; the removal of a show’s moral center (the mother) would result in “dad’s burning dinners and uncomfortably buying bras,” as well as unaccompanied minors playing in a dump and getting stuck in a fridge. But ultimately, they discover that these shows were a response to rising divorce rates and the breakdown of the American nuclear family.

Check out the video and learn a little something about how the 80s were a golden age of abandoned kids and idiot fathers.