ABSTRACT

This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the changing ideas about children and childhood in the United States. Each chapter connects relevant events, attitudes, or anxieties in American culture to an analysis of children or childhood in select American television programs. The essays in this collection explore historical intersections of the family with expectations of childhood, particularly innocence, economic and material conditions, and emerging political and social realities that, at times, present unique challenges to America’s children and the collective expectation of what childhood should be.

chapter |22 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|20 pages

Rod Serling’s Damaged Children

The Twilight Zone

chapter 3|19 pages

The Trouble with Teenagers and the Case of Gidget

ABC and the 1960s Youth Market

chapter 4|19 pages

“And Then There Were Three”

Childhood, Bewitched, and 1960s America

chapter 5|21 pages

Like It or Not

How Sesame Street Influenced European Children’s Television

chapter 6|19 pages

Krofft Kids

Saturday Morning Innocence and Counterculture TV

chapter 7|19 pages

“Dance Your Cares Away”

Fraggle Ethics, or Jim Henson’s Response to Reaganism

chapter 8|20 pages

The End of Racism and the Last Family

The Cosby Show’s Fukuyaman Neo-Liberal Children

chapter 9|20 pages

Performing Adulthood

The Adult-Child and the Child-Adult in Modern Family and Roseanne

chapter 10|22 pages

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Children’s Horror Anthology Series in the 1990s

chapter 11|18 pages

On the Cusp

Exploring Male Adolescence and the Underbelly of High School in Freaks and Geeks

chapter 12|19 pages

“Be careful!”

Child Safety and Empowerment in The Legend of Korra

chapter 13|19 pages

Bob’s Burgers

Rewriting the Rules for Girlhood in American Television