Performing adulthood: The adult-child and the child-adult in Modern Family and Roseanne

Ironically, "making America great again" has reinscribed the metropolitan metaphor for the US as adolescent, an adult-child accessing sudden power, but unable to manage it. Its reinscription is unexpected, since Neil Postman's thesis in The Disappearance of Childhood–that television has blurred the distinction between childhood and adulthood–is later confirmed in the superior command of the internet by children. This chapter explores the balance of presentational and representational comic styles in two US sitcoms: Modern Family and Roseanne. It compares the characters of Manny Delgado and Lily Tucker-Pritchett from Modern Family with Darlene Conner from Roseanne, who play in the liminal space of the adult-child identified by Postman, and explains the contrasting impact they have on the respective child-adult characters around them, the parents and other caregivers. The chapter argues that the celebration of the adult-child is a significant factor in the emergence of the child-adult, the figure Postman refers to as the "childified adult" as opposed to the "adultified child.".