# Was your family more like the Cosby family or the Connor family?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [September 7, 2009, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146 "2009-09-07T05:38:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2009, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/61 "2009-09-09T19:58:38Z")
Hmmm… I grew up in a decidely blue collar New York City neighborhood, but my parents were both teachers, and highly educated ones at that.
So, economically, we lived like a working class family, grew up around working clas people, but had intellectual interests and aspirations that most of or neighbors didn’t share.
Our house looked more like the one on “Roseanne,” but dinner conversation was much more like that on “Cosby” (actually, like that on “Frasier.”).
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### Author:  [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2009, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/62 "2009-09-09T20:09:09Z")
Make the boy the oldest of the three and made the dad a stepdad and we had an awful lot in common with the Connors in the broad strokes.
We even shipped of the older of my sisters and replaced her for a couple years.
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### Author:  [@woodstockbirdybird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woodstockbirdybird)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2009, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/63 "2009-09-09T20:14:59Z")
The Connors. In fact, even as a teenager, I couldn’t relate to The Cosby Show at all, and never enjoyed it.
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### Author:  [@Jennyrosity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jennyrosity)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2009, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/64 "2009-09-09T21:40:16Z")
Absolutely Fabulous. Mum and I were so like Edine and Saffy, it was like someone stole our lives and made them into a TV show - except we never had much money.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2009, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/65 "2009-09-10T05:07:28Z")
My family was not like anyone you’d ever want to watch on TV.
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### Author:  [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2009, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/66 "2009-09-10T05:09:39Z")
> [@Jennyrosity](#):
>
> Absolutely Fabulous. Mum and I were so like Edine and Saffy, it was like someone stole our lives and made them into a TV show - except we never had much money.
Sweet–did mum have a hilariously alcoholic best friend and did you have a batty old grandma? Loved Ab Fab.
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### Author:  [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2009, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/67 "2009-09-10T05:15:25Z")
> [@Biggirl](#):
>
> And the screaming and fighting-- even a fistfight or 10-- was smothered in love.
Not full of such anger and hatred that my kids today are stuck asking why Mom and Dad don’t eat at the kitchen table? I am glad that I never threw a cup of boiling coffee into the face of one of my daughters, nor she in mine.
There can be something to Mom and Dad not watching the communal dinner table.
(FTR, the thrown cup was at my father by his son (me), not a daughter at me. They often hold me in relatively-high regard.)
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2009, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/68 "2009-09-10T09:43:42Z")
_Bundy_.
With hints of _Bunker_ and _Brady_.
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### Author:  [@Jennyrosity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jennyrosity)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2009, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/69 "2009-09-10T13:49:17Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#):
>
> Sweet–did mum have a hilariously alcoholic best friend and did you have a batty old grandma? Loved Ab Fab.
Yes to both!
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### Author:  [@CT\_Damsel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CT_Damsel)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2009, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/70 "2009-09-10T13:58:24Z")
Combine: Running With Scissors, Parent Trap, (yes really each parent took one kid) and The Shinning.
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### Author:  [@CT\_Damsel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CT_Damsel)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2009, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/71 "2009-09-10T16:41:31Z")
> [@CT\_Damsel](#):
>
> Combine: Running With Scissors, Parent Trap, (yes really each parent took one kid) and The Shinning.
:smack:
Bugger! If I could edit my posts I could have fixed that “shinning” into “shining.”
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### Author:  [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2009, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/72 "2009-09-11T20:30:51Z")
My parents divorced when I was in pre-school.
With my mother and stepfather imagine if _King of the Hill_ took place in a racially-mixed ghetto, and Peggy was cultured and well-read.
With my father, it was a mix of the Connors and Reverend Jim from _Taxi_, with my dad being Reverend Jim (read: high all the time), and my stepmom being Roseanne Connor (read: acerbic and sharp-witted, but loving).
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### Author:  [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2009, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/73 "2009-09-12T20:36:42Z")
More like the Connors because my dad was starting up his painting business while mom stayed home with us three kids. But unlike the Connors, my dad was an angry alcoholic while my mom tried her best to keep our home as normal as possible. She was a cross between Dharma’s mom from Dharma and Greg, and June Cleaver.
Dinner was on the table by 6:00, and we often came home from school to a house filled with the smell of chocolate chip cookies. But she also grew organic food and had a very hippy-esque approach to childcare–breastfeeding and nourishing our minds as well as our bodies. I think she tried really hard to make our life as normal as possible even though we were living with my tyrannical father.
But yeah, overall we were definitely more like the Connors. Everything from the financial hardship to the constant bickering between my brothers and I mirrored that show. Maybe that’s why we liked it so much.
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### Author:  [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2009, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-your-family-more-like-the-cosby-family-or-the-connor-family/509146/74 "2009-09-16T10:26:46Z")
My parents were a physician and a school teacher, much more like the Cosby family. With a little _Leave It to Beaver_ thrown in: stay-at-home mom (she retired from teaching to raise her children). We ate dinner together as a family, and we went to church on Sunday as a family. Never saw either parent drunk, just in a jolly mood sometimes when they came home from a party, which actually made me happy to see because even parents should be able to get loose every once in a while. Very, very rarely did I ever hear my parents raise their voices to each other. They were married thirty years until my father’s death. All their children became college graduates.
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