Ferb's Family Dynamic

Animated families offer the animators the ability to create zany, unrealistic realities, yet they still contain a window to what a family was at the shows conception. While shows such as The Simpsons have been on air for a long time and have evolved, their window is to a time where a family had a mother, father, son, daughter, baby, dog, and cat, all the staples of a traditional nuclear family. Since then shows have adapted, including to shows where the children are staying with some non-parental family member, such a Gravity Falls, focusing around twins living with their great uncle for the summer in a strange town. In this way Phineas and Ferb’s crazy adventures can be put aside and one can focus on the family dynamic of the show to see

Instead, potrayals of real life in the fictional world that show the show’s family dynamic and values of that family is much more useful. The show’s family, the Flynn-Fletchers, consists of a mother, Linda Flynn, a stepfather, Lawrence Fletcher, a son, Phineas Flynn, a stepson/brother, Ferb Fletcher, and a daughter, Candace Flynn. What is initially obvious is this is not the traditional family, it is a family where the mother re-married, as did the father. This notion might have been considered taboo for television years ago, but is reflective of the “[l]ess than half (46%) of U.S. kids younger than 18 years of age living in a home with two married heterosexual parents [who are] in their first marriage. This is a marked change from 1960, when 73% of children fit this description, and 1980, when 61% did, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of recently-released American Community Survey (ACS) and Decennial Census data” (Livingston, Gretchen. "Less than Half of U.S. Kids Today Live in a 'traditional ' Family." Pew Research Center RSS.). While their portrayal cannot be generalized to all of America, based on this evidence one can say that the show’s portrayal of the American family is consistent with the family that most American children are

The show’s creators do not only show the Flynn-Fletcher family, but many others, two more than the rest. The first family that is shown is the family of Perry the platypus’ arch-nemesis, Dr. Heinz Doofensmirtz. Heinz was from a very standard nuclear family in his home country of Drusselstein, with a mother who sewed and cared for the family, and a manly father who claims he has “no son” when Heinz failed a rite of passage. This, combined with later life experiences where Heinz is divorced and has a daughter who stays with either him or his ex-wife, is a very strong push against the standard family, as it contratsts Heinz’s early and later life, and although being divorced is certainly not happy, it uses his early life as fuel for whatever evil scheme he is attempting to commit, and often makes references to his horrible experiences as a child in his mentally abusive family, which include neither of his parents showing up to his birth, him having to throw himself surprise birthday parties, being disowned by his parents and raised by ocelots, having to wear dresses his mother made, mistakenly thinking she was pregnant with a girl, having his brother write his name on his mother, effectively claiming Heinz’s parents and shoving him out of the family dynamic altogether. While it’s unlikely the shows creators intended to depict the nuclear family as the cause of all of these issues, it is important to notice the emphasis put on the negative experience Heinz had in such a