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The theme during Sunday School today was sabbath day observance. I’m pretty comfortable with what I do with my Sundays. For a while a part of the ritual was coming home from church, changing into something decent, and sitting down to eat lunch while watching reruns of the Brady Bunch, a clean family show. A show that presents complicated life problems and how they can be solved in 22 minutes or less, typically after a lecture given by a parent. Today as I’m watching a thought occurred to me. When I was a kid the Brady Bunch was a novel concept. What a crazy large family. For those of you that grew up Mormon, was the Brady Bunch a novel concept? What a crazy small family.
Their family didn’t seem all that large to me. The novelties for me were remarriage, both parents working, and having a housekeeper. Now I’ve got the theme song stuck in my head.
:problem: The whole reason I took to the internet today was to look up how old Alice was when the show started to see whether I had reached “ancient” status yet. 😥 (Alice was oooooooold when I was a kid).
nibbler wrote:
The whole reason I took to the internet today was to look up how old Alice was when the show started to see whether I had reached “ancient” status yet.😥 (Alice was oooooooold when I was a kid).
WELL?? How old was she???
(I need to know whether I’m ancient, too. Or how long I have before I am.)
Reuben wrote:
(I need to know whether I’m ancient, too. Or how long I have before I am.)
If you have to ask, chances are you’re ancient.
They obviously filmed the TV show before it aired but at the time the first episode aired Ann B. Davis (Alice) was 45.
So yeah, we’re ancient now.
You guys are delving into deep doctrinal tangents here. WAY too deep for me! 
I don’t believe in a literal ancient. 🙂 It’s more of a relative ancient. Carol worked? Wasn’t Mike an architect or something? I don’t recall that Carol worked. I did not grow up in the church, but I don’t think a family of 6 children was all that unusual in those days outside the church. I’m the oldest of 6 and I have a set of 6 cousins from one aunt/uncle. I think the whole blended thing might have been unique, especially since they all got along so well (there was a never a “You’re not my father/mother” spoken). FWIW, I never liked Cindy and I did like Alice.
I thought my wife might give me some grief when I started watching TV on Sunday again. She didn’t. I’m not sure she’s a fan of the Brady Bunch and she doesn’t always watch when I watch.
Brady Bunch trivia: Quote:During the series run Florence Henderson lobbied the producers constantly to allow Carol Brady to get out in the workforce. Henderson thought this would be more in line with how she was in real life. The producers kept the character of Carol Brady unemployed, though she frequently did volunteer work and fundraising for charity.
Mr. Brady was an architect with an office in the home. So, he was around, mom was around, and the maid was around. Lots of adults around.
My favorite line…”Mom always said…don’t play ball in the house”. My and my brothers would repeat that whenever we broke something.
I don’t remember a live in maid being very normal for americans back then growing up.
As far as the size of the family…we had 7 in our family and while it was a large family and we got comments from time to time in public (I grew up in NJ), it was probably as unique as some of my orthodox catholic friends with families of 9 or 10. But, most families were small, so I would say it was unusual to have such a big family, but not unlike some others. It did seem like larger families were mostly more religious families. Likely a birth control issue or something.
I ended up getting old, probably I’m still younger now than Alice was in those shows…but not by much. Funny how I don’t feel that old..but I am.
Now I’m remarried and have a Brady Bunch of my own…4 of my own kids, 4 kids from my wife…8 all together, but are all almost grown and out of the house except the last 3. Interestingly, all our kids are the same exact age…kinda Brady Bunch style. Oldest 2 are within 9 days of each other, the next 2 within a couple weeks of each others, the next 2 within 2 weeks of each other, and the last 2 have the biggest age difference of 8 months.
We could use a live in maid.
I live in Catholic country now. Six kids is just getting rolling. The biggest irony of the show was having the perfect dad played by a gay man.
Yeah, I think the novelty of the show was a family of women marrying a family of men. There were a lot of “battle of the sexes” themed shows back then, perhaps because of the ERA.
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