We're on TV! PTOs and PTAs in Prime-Time Shows

In recent years, school parent groups have become an increasingly regular topic on TV sitcoms and dramas. Meetings, fundraisers, family events, and even everyday volunteer tasks like working the lunch line have been featured in TV shows. Take it as recognition of the important role that PTOs and PTAs play in our family and cultural life.

Of course, TV writers like to exaggerate for effect, and unfortunately parent group leaders often bear the brunt of that. We tend to be seen as controlling and overbearing foils for the “regular” parents, usually portrayed by the shows’ stars.

On ABC’s Modern Family, volunteers, even when related to one another, are jealous, petty, and standoffish. On one episode, Claire, an “I’ll do it myself” control freak, is having a hard time letting her young, beautiful, personable stepmom, Gloria, help her in cochairing an upcoming dance. When Gloria rearranges the tables and chairs that Claire has already set up so the kids can have more room to dance, Claire goes into full attack. “Look, I’m sorry, but we’ve always done it this way,” she snaps at Gloria. Claire’s temper soars even higher when another mom tells Gloria she did a great job with the tables.

Frustrated, Claire sends Gloria to crawl under the school’s dark, smelly stage to get chairs for the dance, hoping to be rid of her for the night. The evening nearly ends in tears with a confrontation in the girls bathroom in which Claire admits to Gloria, “This [volunteering] is my only thing, and then you come along and steal my thunder with your tight dresses and your great ideas.”

OK, admittedly, parent group leaders can probably acknowledge saying “We’ve always done it this way” once or twice. But it’s annoying to see us all always represented as a catty and controlling lot who squabble over things like tables and tight dresses, don’t you think? After all, we PTOers know there are more important battles to pick—like potential school closings, teacher layoffs, budget cuts, and empty library shelves. It’s too bad we don’t see on TV anything remotely positive about those efforts.

The portrayal of PTA parents is no more heartening on the sitcom George Lopez, which originally aired on ABC and is in syndication on Nick at Nite. In one episode, George was pitted against a PTA leader at his son’s school who was inflexible, insensitive, and fundraiser-frenzied.

The storyline was this: The school held a candy bar sale to raise funds for an extravagant field trip to Florida to see a space shuttle launch. After George’s son raises only $120 toward the $600 student quota, Debbie from the PTA calls on George at home to collect the difference. At first, George has no intention of paying the money; after all, he contends, “Nobody needs to see a space shuttle launch!” But after realizing that his son may be ridiculed for being poor if he misses the trip, George agrees to pay up at the next meeting. When he and Debbie get into a heated and public exchange at the meeting (ignited after Debbie tells George, “Poverty is nothing to be ashamed of”), George sets fire to his $480 check in protest.

Suffice it to say, real PTOs must raise money, but would yours mandate that families meet a $600 candy bar quota to attend a field trip? Or publicly belittle those families who come up short? No to both of those, right? And your group hasn’t angered a parent to the point he’d torch a check, correct?

We’d all love to have more parents involved at school, but I doubt many real PTO leaders would put on the hard sell quite like the room moms on The New Adventures of Old Christine. The show, in syndication on Lifetime, originally aired on CBS. The two moms corner Christine at school and suggest that she doesn’t really care for her son because she hasn’t signed up to serve hot lunch. The next day, Christine is wearing a hairnet and scooping up mashed potatoes, but she’s not exactly enthusiastic.

In another episode, the moms single her out because she hasn’t bought tickets to the fundraising gala. At the gala, parents are encouraged to give generously “because if you don’t, your children will pay the price.” Ouch. Talk about peer pressure!

Another popular portrayal is the parent group leader as a power-hungry control freak. On ABC’s Desperate Housewives, Maisy, a pushy parent coordinator, refused to consider Lynette’s ideas for the school play unless she took on more volunteer tasks. After Lynette offered to sew the costumes, she started popping pills and pulling all-nighters to get the work done. And wouldn’t you know it, the leader still didn’t like the new ideas!

Now, we know that characters on Desperate Housewives do and say outrageous things, but if real-life leaders were half as mean as Maisy, they wouldn’t have any volunteers.

Comedian Louis C.K. made PTA folks a laughing matter on one episode of his FX Network sitcom, Louie. The way Louie sees it, PTA parents are self-appointed educational experts who highjack the principal’s time and do nothing but gripe. (It’s worth noting here, too, that Louie is applauded for being a newbie dad, yet when a newcomer mom later shares that it’s her first PTA meeting, too, she’s met with furrowed brows and silent stares.)

On this night, the leader wants to address a student “fatigue problem.” She notes that kids seem to be crashing after noontime and suspects it’s due to lack of physical activity since the school had to close its gym. Several parents proceed to interrupt her with their own insights as to why the kids are so tired, blaming the school’s overcompetitive nature, weak teaching methods, and outdated curriculum. “I mean, who even teaches math anymore?” asks one mom. Louie offers his (comic) 2 cents, too: namely, that kids are tired because they’re supposed to be tired and unmotivated because after all, reasons Louie, “It’s school!” As the silent but outraged parent group glares at him, he continues, “I mean, you do what you can to improve it, but in the end there’s a limit ’cause it’s school and school [insert colorful verb for stinks]...remember?”

Like the previously mentioned clips, the Louie vignette made for some pretty funny TV, but it depicts only half-truths about PTAs. Now do we, as PTO parents, ever unfairly judge a parent or two who aren’t regulars at our meetings? Maybe. And do we parents go off-topic at meetings? Yes. Do we bring up the occasional concern and solution to our principals? Indeed. But if writers here were going for authenticity, then one or two volunteers’ hands would have gone up to suggest holding gym outdoors, hosting a walkathon, building a new playground, or, at the very least, blazing a fitness trail in the nearby woods to help the cause. (Yes, we parent leaders can do more than whine!) And Louie’s quote about there being a limit to what parents can do for a school? So not true in real life.

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Speaking of far-fetched notions, have you ever noticed all the scintillating and climactic moments that unfold at PTA events on TV? I mean, not once has any mom come to a meeting and socked it to my PTO, like Stella in the song, movie, and TV show Harper Valley PTA. But on Desperate Housewives, Lynette went so far as to attack another mom in the restroom during a PTA meeting.

So far, no parent has crashed the podium at a school’s open house to announce that the cookies she brought to the event were poisoned (think Susan on Desperate Housewives). Art just doesn’t imitate life here.

There just aren’t that many head-turning and jaw-dropping moments in the real world of PTOs and PTAs—barring those long meetings when our heads turn nonchalantly to look at the clock and our jaws drop as we nod off.

TV writers do seem to get at least one thing right: PTA and PTO parents will jump at the chance to help their kids’ schools. How high they’ll jump, of course, is fodder for dozens, or maybe thousands, more scripted TV moments. For now, though, PTO folks are better off staying tuned in to their own real parent group instead.