A picture-perfect family?

  Everyone knows the show: there's a family. A mom. A dad. Two, maybe three, kids of varying ages. They live in a suburban house together. Dad works. Sometimes, mom does too. Their lives revolve around school and work, but they take place mostly in the shared domestic spaces of the house: the disproportionately large living room, the roomy kitchen.
  From Leave It to Beaver to Family Ties, the family sitcom has been part of American television for over 60 years. Yet the formula, even in shows as recent as Fresh off the Boat and Black-ish, has been left relatively untouched. As a genre, the family sitcom is stuck representing a type of family that is no longer the reigning norm. [...]
  Despite prominent exceptions, the family sitcom remains white and, more strikingly, ethnically homogenous. […] It bears pointing out that Modern Family, in addition to featuring a gay couple, features a mixed-race couple, an even bigger rarity in this particular television genre. […] The ABC show remains a great example of the ways the family sitcom is incrementally moving towards greater diversity. Yet seven years since its premiere, there has been little to suggest the family sitcom genre as a whole has in any substantive way followed in its footsteps. Television's “modern” families are not as new as they appear.