hattan. And the final statement came from a Sunday morning discussion show on which a noted theologian pleaded for religious unity since we all live "cheek by jowl."

Thus, in the midst of growing concern about population, television's awareness of population problems registers as one comment out of our frontier past, one fleeting reference to an historical theorist, one wise-crack, and one religious plea that reached only those watching television at 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Just as population is not discussed on network television, the statistics on the average television family suggest that there is nothing to talk about. For each episode in our weighted sample, excluding animated programs, coders counted the number of children in television families. It was not necessary for a show to contain any environmentally relevant content; if a family was portrayed, pictorially or verbally, the number of children was noted. Children were counted only within the two main family units on any given showthat is, the primary and secondary families. Thus, if more than two families were presented within any show, their children were not included in our counts.

These counts indicated that by far the greatest number of television families with children had either one or two. Of the 168 television shows which portrayed primary families with children, 83 shows had one child. and 62 shows had two children. Together these two groupings comprise about 86 percent of the shows portraying primary families with children. Sixteen shows had primary families with three children, two shows had families with four children, three shows had families with five children, and two shows had families with six children. To complete the picture of primary television families, 15 shows portrayed childless marriages, and 12 shows presented primary families in which the number of children was not known. Also, in 177 shows, no family unit developed in the plot and hence no information about childbearing was available. The statistics for the number of children in secondary families run parallel to those for primary families. Thus, on an almost subliminal level, television may well legitimize small families. With little discussion and no fanfare, the size chosen for a fictionalized family is generally one or, at the most, two children.

There exists, however, a curious split. Although the ordinary, everyday television family may be small, the family is frequently larger when a television program is built around the story of a family. "The Brady Bunch" is the story of a merged six-children family; "The Partridge Family" has five children; "My Three Sons," "The Smith Family," "A Family Affair," and "Nanny

and the Professor" all have three children. Thus, it seems that, when television implicitly comments about family size, the family unit is small, with one or two children. But, when television explicitly portrays the institution of the family, it frequently portrays a large family, or at least a family of three or more children. This explicit celebration of the joys of larger families correlates with a strong undercurrent of much network programmingapproval of the American tradition of family life.

Attitudes toward families are difficult to capture in meaningful statistics, but a certain theme runs through our sample which requires some qualitative analyses. This theme weaves itself around the implicit goodness of raising children and of living within the family unit.

Clearly, television did not create the family-oriented story line; the family unit has long been a highly familiar and meaningful setting for the unfolding of a dramaticor humorous-plot. At the same time, however, television tends to glorify the family structure above and beyond this fact. The opening lines to "The Smith Family" clearly tell the viewer that "Life's a family on Primrose Lane" where the Smith family happens to live. In another case, the audience breaks into applause when Robert Young reveals in an interview with Joey Bishop that he has four daughters, five grandchildren, and that he hopes to become a great-grandfather one day. Joey Bishop retorts with a quip about Marcus Welby, M.D., great-grandfather.

Less explicit but perhaps even more to the point is a vignette from "Adam-12," a police drama. An exconvict, Delaney, is suspected of safe-cracking. The police questioning him become impressed with his professed innocence only when Delaney announces that he is now guardian of his niece and nephew and that the two children are his whole life. The unspoken assumption operating here is that raising children somehow makes you a more worthwhile character-type and no longer a burglary suspect. In the same understated vein, a female character on "Gunsmoke," a drama set during the period of the developing American West, overcomes her hatred of Indians through assisting a squaw in childbirth. The infant becomes a symbol of regeneration for both the new mother and the hostile midwife.

Having children symbolizes new life. Having a child is never represented as a personal choice with possible consequences for the aggregate. On television, food and resources are always available-and presumably always will be-and space is dictated primarily by the set designer's imagination and the show's budget. Overcrowding does not exist on the screen in any concrete sense. And since there is no visible awareness of a population problem, the basis is lacking for even raising questions about the possible need for population policy.

Thus, it is not surprising that those infrequent references to personal techniques of fertility control which do occur in our sample never take place within the context of any broader social issue.

Our coders gathered data in three areas of individual choice with regard to family size: adoption, abortion, and birth control. Not surprisingly, the adoption of a child is the most common population theme and one which network television consistently commends.

Adoption as a choice for potential parents is presented frequently and almost always in a favorable light. Out of the 86 statements concerning population, 30 were about adoption. Twenty-six of these thirty statements endorsed adoption, four expressed an unclear attitude, and no statement expressed a negative attitude toward adoption.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these statements on adoption is that they clustered primarily in the afternoon daytime serials. Twenty-seven out of the 30 statements on adoption took place on daytime serials; two occurred during the prime evening hours and one took place on a late night talk show.

A profile of the people participating in adoption on television indicates some fairly stereotyped casting, or at least no great deviations from what one might expect. The overwhelming majority of people involved in adopting children are young (25 to 34 years old), married adults who are white American natives in the average or well-to-do middle class. One characteristic deserves isolation: 76 percent of these individuals had no previous children. Perhaps this suggests that adoption is a choice for those who cannot or do not produce children-and not an alternative to natural childbearing.

There were nine statements about abortion in our network program sample. Five expressed some negative attitudes toward abortion, two were unclear or ambiguous, and two supported abortion as a possible alternative or choice for some people. Of the five statements expressing a negative attitude, two occurred on the afternoon daytime serials and three occurred during prime viewing hours and on top-rated shows. One of the unclear statements occurred on a daytime serial; the other occurred during the noon-to-6 p.m. time period, but not on a serial. The two statements supporting the choice of an abortion both occurred during the prime time period, and one of the two took place on a top-rated show.

Nine abortion statements do not represent much time on television. But what is significant here is that any time at all was spent in network programming. There was a time in broadcasting when abortion was generally an unmentionable; certainly a favorable or approving statement was not likely to be found. Now we

see the beginnings of some dialogue. What the above statistics may not reveal is that the reaction to abortion on television fairly accurately mirrors the reaction of individuals in the "real world." For example, twice in our sample, pregnant women, for whom babies early in marriage threaten their husbands' careers as well as their own, face-and in one case actually self-inducesabortion with a sense of realistic determination. In another situation, a middle-aged woman who clearly does not understand her daughter and who probably longs for a new grandchild registers shock at the possibility of abortion. Similarly, a concerned father asks his son-in-law, "Did you do something illegal?" Finally, a health-service administrator at a large university wants to change the school's policy on making an abortion part of a student's academic record, because he feels this is a destructive and archaic regulation. In all of these cases, a certain true-to-life quality emerges. For some, abortion is a fairly simple and necessary decision; for others, the choice is filled with anxiety and fearfulness.

In our entire sample, there were five mentions of birth control. Three of them were joking and certainly not disapproving references on late night talk shows. The remaining two occurred in the same episode of the highly rated "All in the Family," and both come from the lips of Archie Bunker. In one case, he expresses comical terror that his wife "can't do nothing right" and is pregnant. In the other case, he accuses his son-in-law of not having the brains to have kept "himself" from getting pregnant. "All in the Family" has been developed as a tradition-breaking program where no, or at least few, holds are barred, and as such has gained great viewer popularity. Thus, although only two statements about birth control occurred on prime-time network television, in terms of audience exposure, this particular episode reached an extraordinarily large number of viewers.

It is impossible to conclude this description of the population content of network programming without including a description of what may be the quintessence of problem denial.

Our overall sample included all network commercials as well as programs; and, although our primary interest was in programming, we did code the content of every sixth commercial. From a total of 626 commer cials coded, we judged 181 to have content relevant in some way to one of the seven environmental subject areas described above. The breakdown of these environmentally relevant commercials is as follows:

Attitudes toward nature-88 commercials Choice of transportation-63 commercials