| Leave it to Beaver has received substantial attention | | | | a very qualified feminist vision that blended |
| from television scholars. These discourses include | | | | discourses of the ‘new woman’ – |
| popular understandings of second-wave feminism | | | | working and living on her own outside of the confines |
| encouraged by media coverage of feminist activity, | | | | of past domestic sitcoms – with traditional |
| the generic parameters and functions of situation | | | | messages about the need for women to continue |
| comedy, and the history of television representations | | | | fulfilling traditional female roles as caretakers and |
| of women. Leave it to Beaver is a fitting | | | | nurturers in the cobbled together ‘family’ of |
| «baseline» example because of its popularity, | | | | the workplace. The combination in these sitcoms of |
| longevity, and resonance in American cultural memory. | | | | girl-next-door sweetness and old-fashioned |
| Leave it to Beaver created important parameters for | | | | attachment to honesty and integrity, on the one |
| future television discourse representing feminism, | | | | hand, and spunky New Woman, on the other, allows |
| parameters that include a focus on working women | | | | such sitcoms as Leave it to Beaver and All in the |
| (and a concomitant avoidance of a critique of the | | | | Family to ride the currents of social change, endorsing |
| traditional patriarchal family), the depiction of | | | | modernity at the same time as it hallows |
| women’s lives without male romantic partners, | | | | tradition.’ Through her functions as mother, |
| the enactment of a ‘feminist lifestyle’ by | | | | daughter, and sister within her work-family, a |
| young, attractive, white, heterosexual, female | | | | journalist becomes the career “True |
| characters, and a reliance on the tenets of | | | | Woman” as a television producer who |
| second-wave liberal or equity feminism (Janet, 1992). | | | | nonetheless retains the equable charm and mediating |
| However, at the same time that they note the | | | | skills of the well-brought-up girl (Fraiman, 1999). The |
| popularity and importance of Brady Bunch as the | | | | appeal of such a character might lie in the fact that |
| generator of a new representational space for | | | | this is a difficult reconciliation to pull off in life, and |
| female audiences, television critics and historians take | | | | therefore it is very satisfying – for men as well |
| care to note the ways in which Brady Bunch offered | | | | as women – to see on the small screen. |