'The Waltons' 40th Reunion Reflects Changes in TV Parenting

"The Homecoming," 1971 pilot of the Americana television classic, "The Waltons," celebrated its 40th anniversary with a reunion on NBC's Today Show. Compared to modern parenting on television today, MSNBC says, we need more family shows like "The Waltons." Here are details about "The Waltons" and why it became a television icon and TV parenting benchmark.

"Waltons" based on actual parents and family

"The Waltons" is the story of Earl Hamner, Jr., and retells many of his experiences growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, during the Great Depression. The pilot for the show came from Hamner's book "The Homecoming," and was set in 1933. Hamner says Ma and Pa Walton, Grandma and Grandpa and the seven children closely parallel his own parents and siblings. Hamner also wrote another long-running family drama called "Falcon Crest," based on his mother's Italian side of the family.

Show loved for wholesome image

Addressing student at the University of Cincinnati, Hamner discussed the "wholesome" qualities he imbued his television parents and family with. "Television has the power and the ability to enlighten, to educate, to lift viewers to new levels of experience, but there is also a lot of vulgarity. Too much of what we see seems to be written from the groin. I urge you to write from your heart," Hamner told students. He quit writing for television when networks pushed for more sex and violence.

Show "parented" child actors

On the Today Show reunion, host Matt Lauer wondered that none of "The Waltons" cast had written a tell-all expose about their television siblings and parents. Other child stars, like Barry Williams (Greg Brady on "The Brady Bunch") have dished about fellow cast members. Each of the seven "Waltons" children said they had become like siblings to each other and that bond united them. Lauer noted too, that offstage, they didn't exhibit scandalous tabloid behavior, like so many other family show child stars. Cast, crew and their television parents, they agreed, formed a kind of safety net for them as growing-up kid actors.

Ma and Pa Walton compared to modern TV parents

Cafe Mom's The Stir says that our obsession with big-family parents like Jon and Kate Gosselin or the Duggars, is really a quest for family shows like "The Waltons." Instead of the pageant moms of "Toddlers and Tiaras," we want to see parents interact with their children like they did int the old shows. We aren't looking for perfect parents or children, but for simplicity, integrity and family values, says The Stir. MSNBC says that instead of botoxed socialites who drink and spend too much and parent too little, parenting like it was done on "The Waltons," was parenting done right.