Introduction
‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ portrays a middle-class family set in suburbs. This family set-up portrays a typical modern American household that is built in a loving but unequal marriage between Ray and Debra. The family is not purely nuclear since Ray’s overprotective mother, domineering father, and his overly insecure brother who lives across the street are all integrated as a single unit. This kind of integrative relationship between families is what Thomlison (2009) refers to as a blended family structure. The show portrays how daily life concerns can insignificantly impact family members as each member go about daily obligations in this blended family setting. Each family member is obligated to play specific roles in the family.
Characteristics of Raymond
To begin with, Ray is portrayed as the stereotypical male bearing all the character traits that are regarded as normal in a common American family setup. Gender roles are well defined in the show whereby both Ray and his father Frank are portrayed as domineering heads to their respective families. Nonetheless, the women in the show, namely Debra and Marie who is the latter’s mother-in-law, seem to be more knowledgeable than their men in matters of childcare and housework. The men in the show rarely take part in housework. Although they seem to be dominant, their wives make the most household decisions. For instance, Debbie decides when her husband can play golf, what bills to pay and she calls the tab when it comes to sex. Similarly, the husbands are portrayed as breadwinners for the family while their wives stay at home taking care of children alongside other household chores.
Development stages in families
According to Thomlison (2009), families do undergo different development stages to complete a full cycle. From the ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ show, each of the two families portrays a different stage of family development. From Thomlison’s (2009) classification, Marie and Franks’s family is in stage five which may also be referred to as ‘launching children’. This stage is characterized by exits and entries whereby children leave their parents’ homes to commence their own independent lives. However, this stage often causes emotional distress since some parents are unable to let their children free. This may create conflict in a transition that is supposed to be quite smooth (Thomlison, 2009). This is the case with Ray’s parents as they constantly monitor his wife’s actions which result in unending conflicts.
Ray and Debra’s family life
Apparently, Ray and Debra are a happily married couple by any standards except for some minor conflicts that are common to any other normal family. They have managed to bring up three children although most of the credits go to the mother Debra as the father seems to have no idea how to raise kids. As a matter of fact, Debra turns out to be a strong woman whom everyone admires as she does not give up on her family despite the numerous criticisms from her husband’s family. The title of the comedy tells it all as Ray’s parents always defend him over Debra even when he is in the wrong. Debra portrays the ideal strength of a woman who beats all odds to make her family successful. On the other hand, Marie also struggles to bring up a close-knit family through her overprotective nature causes suffocation. Nevertheless, despite the conflicts within and without the families they manage to stick together, and this turns out to be the utmost strength.
Family weaknesses
It is imperative to mention that some of the family weaknesses in ‘Everybody loves Raymond’ arise from various social problems that the family comes across. These social problems that cause conflicts in Ray’s family are both internal and external. The external pressures come from both Debra’s and Ray’s parents. Firstly, Debra’s parents are elite and seemingly less concerned who likes to show off and brag without care of the pain they cause to those who care for them. On the other hand, Ray’s parents especially his mother Marie and his brother Robert who are always competing with Ray. Marie is presented as the mother-in-law from hell who always criticizes Debra’s every activity. She causes so much strain and puts Ray in dilemmatic situations when he is supposed to either side with his wife or mother. Similarly, internal conflicts arise from the fact that Debra and Ray’s sex life is constrained as Debra being a stay-home mother of three is always tired and prefers to read than have sex.
Empirical studies in psychology
Empirical studies in psychology have identified various types of personalities that parents exhibit. The kind of personality that a parent possesses determines the kind of influence they have on their children (John, Robins & Pervin, 2008). Research has shown that there are parents who get attached to their children too much to a point of suffocating and sabotaging their freedom who are regarded as overprotective (John, Robins, & Pervin, 2008). These types of parents carry on advising their children even when they are old enough to be making their own decisions. The fact is they treat their children as small babies even when are adults and this kind of behavior is sometimes too intrusive to handle and causes strains to any kind of relationships their children may try to establish (John, Robins & Pervin, 2008). This is the case with “Everybody Loves Raymond’ whereby Marie does not let his son Ray be independent and wants to interfere with his life even after he gets married. It is imperative to mention that, research has shown that such parents more often than not feel hurt when their children reject or fail to head their domineering advice. This is because they do not seem to realize when it is necessary to keep a distance. Needless to say, such intrusive nature of parents to some extent has been attributed to a failure in some marriages where their daughters or sons-in-law are unable to handle the pressure (John, Robins & Pervin, 2008).
In addition, competition between Ray and Robert is unhealthy. Robert, a policeman, still lives with his parents despite being old enough to be on his own. As exemplified above, Marie as a parent had refused to let her sons grow to be responsible adults. We can assume that her nature has influenced her son Robert negatively. On the idea of siblings’ rivalry, resents everything about his brother Ray. Throughout the comedy the two brothers (Ray and Robert) have constantly competed repeatedly about everything. For instance, they compete over the basketball captain title, their appearances, their names, a price in a box of cereal and to recap it all, for their parents’ attention. At times, this competition contest has gone overboard to a point where they have fought physically, for instance, when Roberts promotion to a lieutenant attracted more attention than the concurrent announcement about Ray’s possibility of publishing a book.
Conclusion
From the above analysis, it is evident that the family exhibits more weaknesses than strengths. Therefore, timely and effective interventions are necessary to promote healthy relationships between family members. For instance, family members should learn to appreciate and support one another as part of eliminating unhealthy competition (Black, 2003). Similarly, Ray’s wife would be more responsive to his sexual needs if only he took part in some household duties and childcare tasks. On the other hand, parents should know when to let go of their children to avoid the conflicts evident in the show (Black, 2003). The fact that Robert is still living with his parents shows that overprotection makes children insecure to take control of their life. As a matter of advice, Ray’s parents should live further away from his family to pave way for Ray to run his family independently.
Concisely, ‘Everybody loves Raymond’ show is a perfect portrayal of a blended family whereby members have distinct roles defined by gender. In addition, it depicts the typical strengths and weaknesses that families exhibit and how each of these impacts the day-to-day life of individual family members. However, weaknesses can be controlled or eliminated altogether via timely and effective inventions to promote healthy family relations.
References
Black, S. (2003). How to build healthy family relationships. Nashville, Tenn: LifeWay Press.
John, O. P, Robins, R. W. & Pervin, L. A. (2008). Handbook of personality: theory and research. New York: Guilford Press.
Thomlison, B. (2009). Family Assessment Handbook: An introduction and practical guide to family assessment. Belmont, CA: Cengage learning.