History of the Family in Advertising

The image of the nuclear family sitting down to dinner has provided a rich vein of inspiration for the ad industry through the years.

A quick look at the images used in advertising in the earlier part of the century reveal a time when consumers expected to see mother at home doing the household chores while father was out earning money. Children were often 'seen and not heard', except when it was time to pipe up and compliment Mum on her wonderful cooking.

No More 'Average' Families

At the beginning of the next century things look decidedly different at the family dinner table. Recent research shows that in the UK we're having less children than ever before, with one in four women born in 1972 still childless when they reach 45. Two out of ten couples in the UK don't even believe that you need children to make a family - a demographic that the ad industry calls 'childless nesters'.

Add to this picture the advent of gay marriage, working parents and adult children returning to live in the family home (so called 'boomerang children') and the ad industry's beloved 'average family' doesn't look so average any more.

Changes Round The Dinner Table

One interesting way to look at how advertising families have evolved is to look at how the way that gravy stock - a traditionally family-focused product - has changed over the years.

When Oxo first started advertising on UK screens in 1958 their ads showed a traditional housewife claiming that the product 'gave meals man appeal'. The subtext being that, by making her husband happy, the housewife enjoyed a blissful family life.

Fast -forward to 1983 and things were very different. The brand wanted to modernise their ads and so started as series of 'soap opera' style TV adverts designed to reflect more modern sensibilities. Although tame by today's standards, the ads revealed a family that were far from whiter-than-white. For a start the family bickered at dinnertime, and had to deal (however humorously) with changing social realities. For example, in one of the ads the daughter invites her vegetarian boyfriend to dinner - and in another one of the sons heads off to live with his girlfriend. In later adverts a wok was seen in the kitchen, revealing how British tastes were changing. Though controversial the adverts proved a success, with sales rising 10% after the first ad was screened.

The Changing Role Of Men In Adverts

One of the brand's pivotal gravy ads aired in 1991 when Dad was forced to cook in place of his wife. The episode was played for laughs (the family got a burnt dinner that night) but it did show that men were increasingly being expected to take their place at the stove.

Because of the advent of male celebrity chefs, the sight of men cooking in adverts is no longer beyond the pale. However, while women are often seen preparing meals for a family onscreen, men tend to be shown preparing food for a wife or lover.

The future

With the floodgates open for more realistic portrayals of modern family life, advertisers have increasingly shown the darker side of the dinner table. These adverts may be truer to life, but they haven't necessarily been popular with viewers. In 2007 two of the most complained-about TV adverts included one showing a couple arguing at their local hardware store and another showing a daughter playfully threaten her father with a fork.

With this in mind, perhaps it is time to return to a more 1950s view of the family. Market research shows that 75% of UK families see the Waltons as the perfect ideal of family life. As contemporary parents try and protect their children from the modern world by offering a retro-style childhood, perhaps the advertising family of the future will have more to do with meal-times of the past.