Frank And Monica's Disengaged Parents Do Their Families

Shameless, a show full of crazy adolescent kids, has been a popular show amongst people for the past couple years. Many will say the family is very dysfunctional, but they are a very dysfunctional, functional family. Frank and Monica have six children that range from three and twenty-one. Their children are Fiona, Phillip (Lip), Ian, Debbie ,Carl, and Liam. This show has many examples of the parenting styles, conflicts between parent and child, and even shows you the best and worst of sibling relationships.

The Gallagher parents do their parenting style a little different than most parents. I would consider Frank and Monica’s parenting style to be disengaged. Disengaged parents are described as showing low levels of demandingness and responsiveness.(Arnett, 2018) Monica made a few appearances in the show, but they made Monica out to be a disengaged mom. She was never really in the kids’ lives and when she did show up she showed them little in the way of love and the concern towards her six children. Frank, also a disengaged parent, was an alcoholic father that only cared about drinking. He was in and out of the house and not keeping track of his kids.

Disengaged parents do very little to monitor their kids which can lead to higher rates of problems for the kids.

(Arnett, 2018) The adolescent outcomes that were associated with disengaged parents were impulsiveness, delinquency, having early sex, and drug use, all of which the Gallagher kids faced. (Arnett, 2018) Impulsiveness in the show would be when Ian, who is gay, ran off with Nikki, his boyfriend, to Mexico. Ian got up one day, quit his job, and went on a road trip with Nikki. Carl became a delinquent when he got caught for selling heroin. An example of early sex in Shameless was when Debbie had sex at the age of 15 and got pregnant. Drug use played a big part throughout the show. Frank and Phillip (Lip) were alcoholics and smoked

marijuana.
“Adolescents are not like billiard balls that head predictably in the direction they are propelled. Adolescents may evoke certain behaviors from their parents.” (arnett, 2018) The Gallagher kids not only learned things from their parents, but Frank and Monica learned things from their kids when they were present. This is called bidirectional effects. An example of this would be how Lip grew up with Frank drinking constantly. Once Lip reached age eighteen or nineteen, he started drinking as much as his father. With parents like Frank and Monica, the kids were determined to stay together and make the best of what they had.

Although the Gallagher kids have disengaged parents, they stick together through thick and thin. The types of relationships that the siblings possess are caregiver and casual. The caregiver relationship is where one child that is usually a girl takes charge and cares for the rest of the siblings. (Arnett, 2018) According to the analysis of adolescence that Schlegel and Barry did, 80% of adolescent boys and girls had frequent responsibility for caring for their younger siblings. (Arnett, 2018) Fiona, the oldest child, takes over the role as the mom and provider of the household. The book states that adolescents usually rely on their older siblings for financial reasons. The children relied on Fiona to feed them. She also made sure that the bills were paid for the house that they were living in.
The casual relationship between the siblings is where there are not emotionally intense and have little to do with each other. (Arnett, 2018) This happened once the siblings started to get jobs and gain more friendships. For example, when Carl became involved with drug dealing, he was out of the house and was not spending a lot of time with his siblings. It also happened when Ian got a job at the restaurant Fiona worked at. He was spending all of his time there to also provide for the family. This resulted in them not seeing each other as much. Although they were growing up they still made sure to come back and check on each other.
With no parents around, they learned autonomy on their own. They had to learn to think for themselves and become responsible at a young age due to their disengaged parents. (arnett, 2018) I believe that this was a good thing because they had to grow up quick. Debbie took responsible for her child and decided to raise it by herself. Fiona took the initiative to better herself after getting in trouble with cocaine. The book states that if there is too much autonomy then it could lead them aimless or in harm's way. I believe that this is false because after watching the seven seasons of Shameless, the adolescents learn to become more independent and learn that they need to do what is right for not only themselves but for their other siblings as well.
Overall, it may be said that these adolescents have learned a lot growing up in the situations they have. Even though Frank and Monica were disengaged parents, the kids were able to rely on their other siblings for help. They were able to find the good in all of the bad thrown their way which proved that even growing up with a bad home life, they are still looking on the positive side of things.