80s & 90s sitcoms. Middle class families from those shows would today be priced out of their houses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Middle class TV families from the 80s/90s would be recategorized as UMC families in 2021. Families Ties, Who’s the Boss, Growing Pains, My So Called Life, Life Goes On, Wonder Years etc.

Roseanne & Married with Children are exceptions.

But they were not presented to us as UMC in the 1980s and 1990s.

Wasn’t the mom on who’s the boss running a company? And growing pains-was the dad a dr?
I think they were definitely UMC families. No idea about the other shows.

Yup, they were all UMC professionals or business owners. The Growing Pains dad was a psychiatrist. Family Ties mom was an architect. Mom on Who's the Boss was a corporate executive. My So Called Life mom owned a printing company. Etc.

And yet....we considered them middle class American families. Only through today’s eyes do we say they’re UMC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Middle class TV families from the 80s/90s would be recategorized as UMC families in 2021. Families Ties, Who’s the Boss, Growing Pains, My So Called Life, Life Goes On, Wonder Years etc.

Roseanne & Married with Children are exceptions.

But they were not presented to us as UMC in the 1980s and 1990s.

Wasn’t the mom on who’s the boss running a company? And growing pains-was the dad a dr?
I think they were definitely UMC families. No idea about the other shows.

Yup, they were all UMC professionals or business owners. The Growing Pains dad was a psychiatrist. Family Ties mom was an architect. Mom on Who's the Boss was a corporate executive. My So Called Life mom owned a printing company. Etc.

And yet....we considered them middle class American families. Only through today’s eyes do we say they’re UMC.

Not everyone did.
They seemed rich to me, and to others I know.
My parents didn’t have office jobs. No one on those shows was working overnights. No factories.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Middle class TV families from the 80s/90s would be recategorized as UMC families in 2021. Families Ties, Who’s the Boss, Growing Pains, My So Called Life, Life Goes On, Wonder Years etc.

Roseanne & Married with Children are exceptions.

But they were not presented to us as UMC in the 1980s and 1990s.

Wasn’t the mom on who’s the boss running a company? And growing pains-was the dad a dr?
I think they were definitely UMC families. No idea about the other shows.

Yup, they were all UMC professionals or business owners. The Growing Pains dad was a psychiatrist. Family Ties mom was an architect. Mom on Who's the Boss was a corporate executive. My So Called Life mom owned a printing company. Etc.

And yet....we considered them middle class American families. Only through today’s eyes do we say they’re UMC.

Not everyone did.
They seemed rich to me, and to others I know.
My parents didn’t have office jobs. No one on those shows was working overnights. No factories.

I think back them factory jobs were lower middle class/blue collar, and “middle class families” had station wagons and picket fences

[Anonymous]

Look at the car in the driveway. Definitely a middle class household.

[Anonymous]

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3941-Ethel-Ave-Studio-City-CA-91604/20032844_zpid/

Blossom. $3 million 500k

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TV housing has never reflected financial reality. It’s no more realistic than Elsa’s ice castle.

+1. I remember laughing when I saw that a single, free lance writer in NY could live in a gigantic old world apartment in NY with a huge closet for her shoes in Sex and the City

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Middle class TV families from the 80s/90s would be recategorized as UMC families in 2021. Families Ties, Who’s the Boss, Growing Pains, My So Called Life, Life Goes On, Wonder Years etc.

Roseanne & Married with Children are exceptions.

But they were not presented to us as UMC in the 1980s and 1990s.

Wasn’t the mom on who’s the boss running a company? And growing pains-was the dad a dr?
I think they were definitely UMC families. No idea about the other shows.

Yup, they were all UMC professionals or business owners. The Growing Pains dad was a psychiatrist. Family Ties mom was an architect. Mom on Who's the Boss was a corporate executive. My So Called Life mom owned a printing company. Etc.

And yet....we considered them middle class American families. Only through today’s eyes do we say they’re UMC.

Not everyone did.
They seemed rich to me, and to others I know.
My parents didn’t have office jobs. No one on those shows was working overnights. No factories.

My parents did have white collar jobs, and I always understood that those families more affluent than we were.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TV housing has never reflected financial reality. It’s no more realistic than Elsa’s ice castle.

Seriously. How many struggling young writers/architects/etc on TV live in fabulous apartments in NY? Sex and the City was realistic? Remember the movie Broadcast News? I know the person who actually lived the house they used to film Holly Hunter’s place, and they made a LOT more money than her character would have.

NYC used to be all renters and many rent controlled or rent stabilized. My aunt recently died at 91 in 2018. She lived in Gramercy Park. Her husband was a nyc police captain. She was a stay at home Mom. She got married at 19. Had kids right away and got her three bedroom apartment, with formal dining room and a parking spot at 23. She had it 57 years. She paid 750 a month rent when she died

I lived in NYC in a rent stabilized unit and we had some rent controlled people in building in 1996 paying $390 a month for tiny studios in Murray hill. My begin had hers 40 years.

They really slaughter rent control way back and only extremely elderly have them.

Wood Allen filmed Hannah and her sisters in Mia’s Faroh rent controlled apt.

Even Friend that is Monica”s aunts rent controlled unit. Seinfeld those are rent stabilized units. Even odd couple that is Oscars rent controlled apt.

People who were middle class often had big apartments in Manhattan

There were more people who were paying ridiculous amounts of money to live in closet-sized apartments. You don’t understand economics if you don’t realize that rent control was the problem (if you weren’t lucky enough to be Mia Farrow).

[Anonymous]

I am officially evicting Family Matter's cop father and Blossom's unemployed musician father from their million dollar houses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Wonder Years is supposed to take place in Silver Spring.
They were solidly middle class.

And in the 70’s, Cleveland Park and Old Town Alexandria were blue collar neighborhoods. When I moved to Cleveland Park in the 80’s, my neighbor was a taxi driver. What’s your point? Things change. The population has grown. Neighborhoods gentrify.

Not to mention that the average house size has doubled in size since the 50’s.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525283

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Family Matters father was a cop. No way can he have a $1 million dollar home.

Cops are frequently priced out of the neighborhoods they serve. It can be a problem for many reasons.

[Anonymous]

Super interesting thread. But you're citing homes from 25 years ago. Suburbs and exurbs have grown a lot since then. And the Sun Belt has exploded with growth. Wasn't the Family Matters cop dad in Chicago? He'd be retired in Florida right now, collecting a $100k pension and free health care, and likely about to cash in a second public pension from a second career in Florida.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:





Alf. $2 million+ (Recently remodeled)

Family Matters. $1 million+ (Recently torn down)

Blossom $3 million+ (Remodeled 25+ years ago)

I know this is just television and not reality but it just goes to show how far we have come and not in a good way.

Middle class family sitcom life is not possible anymore in major metropolitan areas of this country.

These are only 3 examples but there are many more examples out there.

A middle class family sitcom setting in 2021 would have to take place in a shady, run down neighborhood.

In my Econ class in the 1990s, my professor argued those homes were not attainable by the middle class even then.

[Anonymous]

These families always seemed pretty rich to me growing up in 1980s/1990s, never came across as middle class at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These families always seemed pretty rich to me growing up in 1980s/1990s, never came across as middle class at all.

Same! My friends and I did not live in houses like that.