Prime time dramas ignore kids

I've been watching the new ABC show, What About Brian, partly because it premiered in Grey's Anatomy's time slot (then moved to Monday night), partly Rosanna Arquette has a small regular role, and partly because it's got charmingly screwed up characters who are fun to watch. I'm struck, however, that, like so many other shows, the adults with children are noticably uninvolved with said children, because they are too involved with their own on-going dramas.

Now, I'm the last person in the world to even imply that adults should be devoted to their children to the exclusion of everything else. I think that's gross and very bad for kids. However, I think the current generation of parents, both as depicted in TV and in actual Real Life, often do seem more self-involved than is totally appropriate when they're responsible for raising the next generation. And while focusing on soapy drama makes for good TV, I would go so far as to suggest that shows like What About Brian actually encourage parents to be self-involved because it's depicted as normal and, well, so much fun. And while my religiously-obsessed friends like to blame the liberal media/culture for all our ills, I would suggest that most of what's wrong with "kids today" could be substantially mitigated if their parents just paid more attention to what they were doing.