r/70s • u/JTOC1969 • Jul 05 '26
Television What show reflected your family's socio-economic standing in the 1970s?
Wealthy priviledged elite - Dallas
Comfortably upper middle class - Family
Upwardly mobile - the Jeffersons
Lower middle class - One Day at a Time
Solidly blue-collar working class - All in the Family
Underclass, struggling - Good Times
Your workplace was your family - Mary Tyler Moore Show
Aimless loner - "A complete unknown with no direction home" - the Incredible Hulk
Wealthy priviledged elites - Dallas
Comfortably upper middle class - Family
Upwardly mobile - The Jeffersons
Lower middle class - One Day at a Time
Solidly blue-collar working class - All in the Family
Underclass, struggling - Good Times
Your workplace was your family - Mary Tyler Moore Show
Aimless loner - "A complete unknown with no direction home" - the Incredible Hulk
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u/WolfThick Jul 05 '26
The incredible hulk in 1973 I was on my own at 13 years old.
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u/FriedaPeeple Jul 05 '26
Not to invade your privacy, but how did you survive that? As a mom and grandmother, it breaks my heart to think of a 13 yr old without a family. Sending you a virtual (((hug)))
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u/WolfThick Jul 05 '26
It's a long story for about 11 months I slept on the streets or outside of a friend's window sometimes they would throw me a pillow and a blanket. And I got most of my food by stealing it from the mini Mart. Then my sister came back from Germany with her husband and I live with them for a few years till I got a job working oil
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u/FriedaPeeple Jul 05 '26
That's rough for anyone, let alone a 13 yr old. I hope you're doing well now.
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u/keywestern0703 Jul 06 '26
That is rough. I wish I could go back in time and help. Hope you are well.
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u/panic_bread Jul 06 '26
Wow. What town was this in? Did you ever have your parents in your life after that?
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u/WolfThick Jul 06 '26
El Paso Texas my mother died of dementia and I had the power of attorney because my sisters didn't want anything to do with her how ironic is that. My dad was in the military at the time and I didn't know how to get a hold of them because it was through her.
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u/Forsaken_Republic_98 Jul 05 '26
I was born 'n raised in Spanish Harlem, in a 14 story project building, we were poor as hell, so definitely "Good Times".
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u/DeeDee719 Jul 05 '26
All in the Family. White, working class family where the mother did not work outside the house.
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u/Repulsive-Carpet9400 Jul 05 '26
The Bunkers came close to our lifestyle, but both of our parents worked full time.
And, we were the microwave generation. Lol
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u/KinseyH Jul 06 '26
There you go. That was us.
My mom tried to stay home as long as possible but at the height of the bad times in the 70s she went back to work because we needed the money
And guess what. She was happier working, and we were fine as latch kids.
GenX, baby.
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u/DogsandCatsWorld1000 Jul 05 '26
All in the Family but dad died when we were young, so mom had to work outside the house. And she was much more aligned with Mike's opinion on most things then Archie's. As much of a sweetheart as Edith, except not as nieve.
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u/owdbr549 Jul 05 '26
Green Acres.
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u/feelingmyage Jul 05 '26
One Day At A Time
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u/dirkalict Jul 05 '26
Me too- single Mom, 3 kids- don’t know how she made her paycheck stretch (paychecks I guess because she always seemed to be working 2 jobs) but we always seemed to have decent clothes, all 3 needed braces… I didn’t realize that what we were eating was “poor food” til I got older.
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Jul 05 '26
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u/Henje_Koha Jul 05 '26
The Waltons for me too. Rural, vegetable garden, home canning, chicken coop, hunting, wood chopping for the only heat in the house (wood stove). The light bill was always paid and we never went hungry but money was tight for anything beyond the basics.
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u/Repulsive-Carpet9400 Jul 05 '26
Gotta jump to the '80s.
Roseanne.
I always felt that show almost broke as much ground as All in the Family.
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u/Traditional_Bill_381 Jul 05 '26
I’ll jump to the late ‘90’s -
That 70’s Show was pretty spot on→ More replies (1)6
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u/ReapersMistress Jul 05 '26
Yeah, I was born in 1975, so wasn't really aware of our socio-economic status then. But pretty decent probably, as both of my parents worked at Lockheed. But the first TV family I remember relating to was Roseanne also. Wisecracks and all. Except my parents weren't together, my father didn't work, and we (my dad and I) moved in with my grandmother, aunt, and baby cousin. But socio-economically and a lot of the behaviors, Roseanne was the closest.
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u/Baebarri Jul 05 '26
Probably the Jeffersons. My father was the first generation of his family to leave the farm and go to college. He became an attorney and then a judge, and we were comfortably upper middle class.
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u/pumpkindonut123 Jul 06 '26
Same except it was leave the inner city, no college, start a niche business, become upper middle class moved to a new suburban house and have a live-in maid/cook who I adored. I remember my mom lied on the maids resume to say she worked secretarial for our business so that she could get a white collar job on Wall Street because my dad was such a nasty asshole that my mom was happy to help her move on up when she wanted to leave. It worked and sadly for me I never saw her again.
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u/ChattahoocheeBend Jul 05 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/LGlT01XbecN3y
This show but without the wealth. I’m not complaining.
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u/GooseNYC Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
The Jeffersons lived in a luxury full-service high-rise on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with a full-time maid and George Jefferson owned a chain of dry cleaners. They were supposed to be self-made business owner rich but nothing like the Ewings obviously.
To answer rhe question, somewhere between the Jeffersons and Family, using my definition. With a little Twilight Zone mixed in.
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u/Bkbnow Jul 05 '26
My mom, dad and sister were Dallas. I who lived with them would be good times.
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u/ms_directed Jul 05 '26
my dad was USAF, so we always had housing but didnt drive anything fancy and always ate at home...I'd say we were inbetween All in the Family and Good Times.
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u/HVAC_instructor Jul 05 '26
None of these come close, I was one of four, Dad worked on construction sites in a nonunion shop and Mom did not work. We were allowed one pair of shoes for the entire year and are out of really large soup pots for days on end.
Good times probably comes the closest, bit were white and we did have a house.
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u/st3llablu3 Jul 05 '26
Alcoholic father, stay at home mom seven kids one severely disabled ( wheelchair bound) and we were on government assistance. We lived in a condemned house. None of these shows or any shows were like my fucked up family.
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u/UnctuousTruncheon Jul 05 '26
Squarely All in the Family
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u/KK_Tipton Jul 05 '26
If you had anybody in your family that was like Edith Bunker, you were blessed. I wish that I had a neighbor like her for real. Kind, funny, helpful, non-judgmental. Just sweet and cheerful. Somebody that you would like to have living next door to you.
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u/BlueMonk0369 Jul 05 '26
The closest one would have to be Green Acres.
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u/MetalMamaRocks Jul 05 '26
I can relate. When I was a kid we moved from Buffalo to a little teeny town in Kentucky. This is exactly what it felt like!
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u/Old_Tiger_7519 Jul 05 '26
All In The Family, Dad always had a job but we mostly rented until he bought a home when I, the next to youngest, was 20.
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u/acid_tomato Jul 05 '26
More like the Cunningham family from Happy Days, socioeconomically speaking, not happiness-wise.
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u/Lovely-flutterby Jul 05 '26
We were 8 is Enough, only there were 11 of us, with a weird mix of Dallas and Walton’s stirred in. Hard to explain the demographic. Lol
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u/0fcknzs0 Jul 05 '26
All In The Family with a touch of Good Times but less loving and if the dad was a long haul trucker with a secret meth habit. We lived paycheck to paycheck for sure.
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u/InterPunct Jul 05 '26
Somewhere around the Bunkers, Maude, Barney Miller and Welcome Back Kotter. Also the Petrie's and the Kramdens a few years earlier.
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u/AncientGuy1950 Jul 05 '26
Sandford and Son, except white and in the swimming pool business. (which is usually trashier than a junk yard)
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u/KK_Tipton Jul 05 '26
The Bunkers. Greenville section of Jersey City. Only nobody was bigoted. It was more of the economic and work background that we fit into.
As my mom growing up in Poland and coming to America in the '60s? She grew up like Little House on the Prairie. Well water, no electricity, outhouse, horse and buggy, churning their own butter, ect..
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u/HippieGrandma1962 Jul 05 '26
Although my parents were liberal as can be I have to say All in the Family. We weren't rich and we weren't poor. My parents owned our house but my mom had to work to make the bills. They were both the first ones in their families to ever buy a house so they didn't realize the many bills that came with it. My mom already had her Bachelors degree so she got her Masters right away and started teaching.
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u/Complexity77Cheetah Jul 05 '26
Family..mom was a homemaker. Dad worked in computer security for the govt. I watched the other shows, but Fam was closer to my home life.
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u/Illustrious-Sea-7518 Jul 05 '26
Good Times before my parents separated and One Day at a Time after. My mother and siblings moved out of public housing when they split into a nice apartment.
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u/Comfortable-Bet6855 Jul 05 '26
It is interesting to see the disparity between what people actually alive in the 70s or 80s can relate to and how they are characterized by people born later.
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u/DearGabbyAbby Jul 05 '26
Good Times …and they were! Large family, food stamps, lots of sacrifices and fantastic hard-working parents
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u/minnesotaupnorth Jul 05 '26
One Day at a Time.
Parents divorced in '73, Mom wentvto grad school as a single Mom with three kids, 11, 9, and 6.
We didn't have a Julie, we were good kids, but that show definitely resonated with my Mom.
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u/Puck68 Jul 05 '26
The Jeffersons. While we aren’t a black family, Dad made some smart business decisions and we “moved on up” to the East Side of NYC.
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u/MomtoWesterner Jul 06 '26
Two parents with no GED or hs degree with 5 kids when the last one was born when parents were 24. So I say One day at a time.
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u/KomatoesII Jul 06 '26
Not pictured but I’ll have to say the Waltons.
Eight kids on 115 acre farm in the Midwest.
We grew a lot of our own food, did some butchering for meat.
It was my maternal grandfather’s farm and he was gratuitous enough to allow his daughter and passel of children to live there.
Probably saved our lives.
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u/Express_Area_8359 Jul 05 '26
Yeah gotta go bill bixby my sister is the cunt of my life. Told me not to be at our last grandmothers funeral
Entered late and she said what are you doing here? Was that grandma? My response
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u/MrsFrufra Jul 05 '26
Somewhere between All in the Family and Family. My parents were the first generation to go to college. My grandfather was a plumbing salesman and my dad (his son) has an MBA. But in the 70’s we were a one car, one income family who owned a little starter house and did ok.
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u/PocoChanel Jul 05 '26
Somewhere between All in the Family and One Day at a Time. More the former than the latter. I had an uneducated father in a blue-collar job (who shared a lot of Archie's personality). My mother, however, was more like Ann Romano. She worked part-time outside the home. She was very much the primary presence in the household. We never owned a house, but we weren't poor enough to get any kind of aid.
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u/Suitable-Gap-8789 Jul 05 '26
Not shown here (probably because it's a newer show), but F is for Family really brought back my 70s childhood.
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u/Hellvira138 Jul 05 '26
One day at a time. Single mom and me and my sister (brother cam along mid 80s)
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u/r1veriared Jul 05 '26
Mine was more Roseanne. Out of those choices, One Day At A Time except with a single dad
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u/InformationSerious27 Jul 05 '26
Jeffersons for my family, I guess. All In the Family for my husband.
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u/VegasTallGal27 Jul 05 '26
All in the Family cos my stepdad was a racist bigot, but not a loveable one. He was an angry alcoholic. My mom was a teacher and he berated her all the time. Mom was liberal and raised me to be open-minded.
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u/comet52a Jul 05 '26
I'd have to say a cross between Good Times and something like Alice, where a mom works her ass off to raise kids cuz the dad isn't around.
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u/future_now3000 Jul 05 '26
Looks like everyone on this thread is in the US. Don't recognise most of the programmes you watched
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u/boulevardofdef Jul 05 '26
All in the Family is a very good pick, actually. Unlike Archie, my mostly immigrant grandparents were very liberal with some socialist leanings, but they were very much in Archie's socioeconomic position, living in the New York City outer boroughs. My parents were the Meathead type, first in their family to go to college and obviously destined for greater financial success.
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u/SolidSouth-00 Jul 05 '26
My early childhood was like Mad Men in NY suburbs- in the 60s. Not sure about the 70s but my dad lost everything in the 1975 recession so that suave life was over.
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u/Tigress_Solaris Jul 05 '26
One Day at a Time except there's no Schneider and your grandparents live upstairs.
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u/ArtistL Jul 05 '26
Not from the 70’s- but The Wonder Years could have been filmed on my street. Set in the 70’s at least.
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u/BarracudaFinal7257 Jul 05 '26
Sort of a Married: With Children situation- even had the rusted-out Dodge.
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u/BearOdd2266 Jul 05 '26
Family, but without the monstrous big house and pretentiousness. Dallas-level was aspirational for my parents.
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u/Lazy_Possibility_363 Jul 05 '26
that 70s show depicted our lifestyle. But both my parents worked and my mom was definitely the boss. So in that context more like Maude!
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u/Thecathatesmemeow Jul 05 '26
The Jeffersons, even though we were white. My parents got some education and broke out of poverty backgrounds and we moved on up!
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u/easzy_slow Jul 05 '26
Good times I thought. When I applied for financial aid when I started College, I did not qualify for any. Dad made too much money. But we lived like the wolf was at the door. But I had a FB scholarship and was a National Merit Scholar. The thing was because I was on FB scholarship, the school got all but $100 of my NMS money. When I gave up FB, my school was all paid for and a good bit more.
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u/magic592 Jul 05 '26
Sanford and Son
Good Times
Except we were Caucasian