Family Values Critical Analysis

Family Values with the Cosby Show Growing up in the mid 1980’s I can remember watching the Cosby Show. My family and I fell in love with the Huxtable family. The show was funny, witty, and dealt with serious issues at some times. It was also the first show that portrayed a black family living a successful middle class life style. The show’s concepts were very unusual to me, because around that time we thought America dealt with majority Caucasian problems and shows.

Growing up in a dysfunctional home in which my mother was always under lots of stress and my father was to drunk to care about how we live our lives it was just a sad fact of family life at that time. At the time it didn’t seem like it was a bad way to live. That is until I discovered a different aspect of family life and values. The family values displayed in the Cosby show were things that I had never seen before. It was a complete shock to my young mind to say the least. Mr. and Mrs.

Huxtable were the ideal parents. They displayed strong moral values, they also involved themselves in their children’s lives as loving guides, and they taught their children the value of how important it was to have an education. Despite all of these positive aspects surrounding their children they were still able to remain happily married. My siblings and I had a wonderful mother. Yet our family had a lack of morals and values that would serve to inspire us to do something with our lives.

Morals and values were those key components that the Huxtables were so good at portraying to there children. As a family we never felt that we weren’t loved. My mother was always very good at teaching us how to look out for one another. I can remember that that was one of the few good aspects from the show that I was able to identify with. The Huxtables always seemed to have a form of togetherness. They were good at relying on one another. Their parents made sure to keep the children away from bad influences like drugs and violence.

They instilled inside their kids those good morals and values that would help them to become good adults. Besides being loving parents Cliff and Clair Huxtable were friends to there children and thus enabled them to be parental guides when problems would arise. I think that it was that friendship that allowed for their children to open up and share there problems with them. This was the exact opposite of what it was like for my siblings and me. My mother didn’t involve herself in our daily lives causing me, in part, to become rebellious and secretive.

My mother and father never finished high school. So I think that to them it wasn’t that important for us to do so ether. On the Cosby show both parents were college grads and both were successful in there career fields. I noticed that in the show it was expected of the children to go to a university. I know that not finishing high school and going to college may sound strange to you the reader right now, but due to were and when I grew up it was perfectly normal to be a drop out.

Growing up in a poverty stricken drug and alcohol centered environment it would have been so easy for me to end up in a gang, or in prison, or maybe even dead. I believe that there are a number of positive factors that kept my family and me from suffering unfortunate events. Mainly it was our obedience and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I also believe that God has many different ways to speak to us. He is constantly throwing us life preservers, but it is up to us rather we grab hold to them or not.

At a young an impressionable age I stumbled across a television show that would eventually change and challenge my way of thinking. I learn examples of what it would mean to be a good father, why it was beneficial to go to college, and I learned what I wanted my personal family to be like. The Cosby show was definitely a grate show. The show was a pioneer in its time leading the way for many other shows like it. That family taught me life lessons that I will never forget. It was a very positive show that I enjoyed and that’s stayed with me even until this day.