Dr. Cliff Huxtable – Remember Him? Of Course You Do!

When you think of television parents, who comes to mind? Nowadays, with so many family centric shows on the air, there’s variety in the portrayal of parents on TV. But, backtrack to when most of us where kids, the parents that we watched on TV were not always the best role models or the smartest adults that we were exposed to. Bill Cosby on the other hand, broke from tradition in the 80’s when he created Dr. Cliff Huxtable. At a time of bad parenting on television, Cosby did his best to change the way parents were portrayed. And we all know and remember Dr. Cliff Huxtable, and still to this day refer to him as one of the best parents on television.

“I based the series on two important things: Number one … I hated those series where the children were brighter than the parents, and those parents had to play dumb,” he tells ABC News, via Yahoo News. “Number two was that I wanted to ‘take the house back.'”

Compared to similar TV dads of the time like Homer Simpson and Al Bundy, Huxtable was a breath of fresh air. But beyond just changing up the TV landscape, Cosby felt a strong parent on television set a good example for children at home.

He says that if you want to entertain children “at the expense of parenting, at the expense of keeping children out of harm’s way to get these laughs, to make these parents look stupid, to make kids look like they are ultra-bright but still lost, then we have a problem.” Cosby continues, “I’m not saying that in parenting, you shouldn’t want to be well-liked, but you also have to have some kind of judgment.”