Humor vs. Humiliation in Dealing with Teens

Published July 9, 1987. Not long ago I received my monthly edition of “Marriage and Family Living,” a Catholic magazine published in St. Meinrad, Indiana. The magazine is designed “to nurture the bond of marital friendship and to promote quality family relationships by affirming marriage and parenting as an awesome vocation created by God.” I think it is a good magazine.

Each month in the “Sights and Sounds” section, Edward McNulty reviews some of the recent movie and television programs from a Christian perspective. In the recent issue was an article called “An Open Letter to Bill Cosby.” McNulty disagrees with Bill Cosby in a very professional way.

For several years now we have been watching “The Bill Cosby Show.” It has constantly been among the top-rated, most-watched programs in America. With its frequent doses of humor, we have all gained some insights into family life, often thinking they are portraying our own family on their program. And it is the constant use of humor that McNulty questions. He writes:

Dear Mr. Cosby,

I say thank you for so many hours of fun and for the insights into the often funny and sometimes unnerving experiences of parenting. I appreciate your use of humor in family relationships, since teenagers I’ve known as a pastor seldom see adults, especially their parents, engage in such humorous exchanges. My wife and I kid our children and their friends a great deal, and at first other children don’t know how to deal with this, unaccustomed as they are to seeing adults do this. Which is all the more why I am delighted that you show to teens this other side of adulthood.

But humor can be a cutting affair, and this is what leads me to write you in this public way. I’ve noticed a disturbing tendency in a number of stories to put down one family member or another. I especially noticed this during the summer rerun of an episode involving Theo and his friends. Theo had done something dumb, you reprimanded him, and then he begged you not to bring it up before his friends who were about to come by for him. Of course, you did, and he was duly mortified. Similar incidents have happened to him and the other children in similar episodes.

I wonder if you’ve really thought this through. As you’ve shown in numerous episodes, teenagers are terribly sensitive to how they come across to their peers. A good teacher knows better than to humiliate a teen in front of classmates. And most parents do, too.

It’s one thing to reprimand or discipline a son or daughter in private – that’s basically good parenting. But it becomes cruel when the wrongdoer is held up to ridicule before peers. I don’t think you intended to do this, but the result of such treatment in real life would hardly foster the close family ties you portray so winningly in your show. It’s one thing to jokingly insult a child; everyone knows you really don’t mean it. But it’s something else to humiliate him before friends.

Please accept this as an attempt by an admirer to make a good show even better. No, not a good show – an excellent one! Please keep up the fine work, for you bring not only joy and laughter to so many, but you also serve as an example of what a good family can be. Although you make little reference to faith or religion, you embody much of what “Marriage and family Living” magazine is about.

Thank you – Edward McNulty

Do you, even with the use of humor, occasionally tease, humiliate or insult your teenagers in front of their friends? Think about it. Bill Cosby might get away with it with no apparent damage to family ties. But can you?