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Modern Family depicts the journey of a tightly intertwined family dynamic and the certain challenges they face along the way. The focus of the show is a regular American family a father who is a realtor and a mother who works as a sales associate. Another family dynamic depicted in the show is that of a homosexual couple who adopted a child and are showing their own version of what a typical American family is like. The final family portrayed in the show is an older man who remarried a younger Hispanic woman who already had a child of her own. These different families all portray the ever-changing political, economic, and social climate in the United States while also challenging the formalities of American society. The television show Modern Family shows the best in-depth perspective of the rapidly changing political, economic, and social conditions for the average American.
The political climate of the United States in the past 10 years has fostered some of the most fearsome debates and groundbreaking policies in the history of our country. One of the most debated, male and female equality has been an issue of importance, especially the within the past ten years. Fox Television saw this opening and decided to capitalize on the debate of evolving gender equality. Episode 20 of the 8th season is titled “All Things Being Equal”. The main characters are shown participating in a Women's rights march and discussing it heavily throughout the episode. Both political parties, Democrat and Republican, have been advocating for wage equality and have had new policies over the last decade. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which allows victims of pay discrimination to file a complaint with the government against their employer within 180 days of their last paycheck.[endnoteRef:1] This is one of the major steps in the past ten years to try and close the wage gap that was initiated by the government. Earlier in season eight, episode five, discusses the gun control debate and portrays a more gruesome look at reality than most viewers would have liked. The gun control debate is not by any means a new issue, but especially over the last 10 years it has made its way into the political agenda of both parties. Democrats for the most part, advocate for gun control while republicans advocate against. The show especially portrays the entire gun control debate as just a scapegoat for the true problem in America which is unneeded violence. [endnoteRef:2]Per the FBI, 1,604 people were killed by “knives and cutting instruments” and 374 were killed by “rifles” in 2016. Granted that guns do make killing easier but they are by no means the only weapon used in attacks against people. The television show also brings to light the heavily debated topic of abortion. Over the runtime of the show which has been ten years, abortion has become a household term discussed by everyone across the country and especially...
