In current-day sitcoms, the father is always the dumb one.  The mother isn't quite as dumb as the dad -- but even she's no match for her smarter-by-far-than-any-stupid-parent-or-adult children.

I suppose that it's always amusing to turn reality on its head.  Make the fictional world upside-down from the real one.  Where the problem comes in lies in the fact that some people are dumb enough to be influenced by the sitcoms into thinking that's how things actually are...........so why should they listen to their stupid parents, anyway?

And in ones produced from 1930 to the mid 1960s, the wife was pretty much always the ditz. :: shrug :: O temps, o mores... (to be said with a few bars of the Brandenburg playing in the background)

docandraider.com -- the collected cartoons of Doc and Raider