Television today is full of destructively dysfunctional families — are they accurate portrayals or cautionary tales?

Do you remember the last time you had a fight with your family? Did it end in a stunning betrayal that cut you out of the family business? Or a contentious blowup that culminated in a car smashing through your Christmas dinner?

No? Great! Then I have some good news for you: your family is neither the Roys in “Succession” nor the Berzattos in “The Bear.”

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Look back at television 20, 30 or even just 10 years ago, and you’ll see drastically different portrayals of families. They were sources of frustration, sure, but hardly vehicles for suffering. The fathers might have been blundering Phil Dunphys and the mothers, nagging Estelle Harrises, but they ultimately meant well.

The same cannot be said for today’s TV families. Whether they love each other, never mind mean well, is thrown into question. It seems that TV today prefers to portray families as sources of pain and trauma rather than a safe haven.

Yes, families can absolutely inflict immense trauma. But not all families, right?

FX’s “The Bear” and HBO’s “Succession,” two stunningly popular works of prestige television, are TV’s most recent offenders. Both shows center on dysfunctional families as the origins of pain, loss, trauma, pettiness, grief and anger. Children in both shows are left reeling, attempting to navigate their lives with the cataclysmic baggage unceremoniously dumped on them by their family members.

Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen-White) of “The Bear” and Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) of “Succession” both carry the weight with different results, but have two things in common: anxiety and anguish.

How have families changed on TV over the years?

The 1950s, often called “the golden age of television,” introduced America to one of its most iconic television families: the Cleavers.

One of the first shows of its kind, 1957’s “Leave it to Beaver” depicted an idealized, almost fantastical suburban family: father Ward Beaver, hardworking and fair, was keen to teach Beaver life lessons; stay-at-home mother June, always perfectly coiffed, lovingly nagged her sons; older brother Wally fought with his younger brother, but Beaver ultimately idolized him; and Beaver, the youngest, was always getting into trouble.

Other shows, typically sitcoms, followed suit. The Bradys in “The Brady Bunch” had a dash more of harmless dysfunction, but were loving and reliable. The Taylors in “The Andy Griffith Show” gave audiences a glimpse into affectionate single fatherhood. Even sitcoms that were created years later, like “Family Ties” and “The Cosby Show,” focused on the frustrations and ultimate devotion of family dynamics.

All had similarities: a wise and good-humored father, a devoted mother and aggravating siblings. Life certainly wasn’t perfect for any of these families, but at-home life was practically perfect.

Then, in the early 2000s, there was a shift. With popular shows such as “Modern Family” and “Arrested Development,” a new kind of sitcom family took over: imperfect and comedically dysfunctional.

Parents were still well-meaning and loving, but typically woefully imperfect, clueless and sources of contention. Fathers became bumbling; mothers, high-strung. Or, like in the case of “Arrested Development,” parents were comically neglectful.

“We have moved from what’s most ideal to what’s most entertaining,” James Hibberd, TV editor of The Hollywood Reporter in 2010, told CNN at the time. “During the golden age of television, the focus was on these families that everyone would like to have that were also amusing and entertaining. With the advent of reality television, we introduced the dysfunctional family in the 1990s.”

The families of reality TV added a further layer to television families. Realistically flawed families, such as those portrayed in reality shows of the past like “John & Kate Plus 8” or even “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” gave families a look at others that were a little more like them.

“I think families are less idealized than ever,” Todd Gold, Fancast managing editor in 2010, told CNN. “Reality TV, which is still heavily produced, does allow for a more accurate portrayal and more extremes.”

Families have taken up their fair share of space in TV dramas, too. The 1978 series “Dallas” followed the Ewing family. Sure, the show’s 13-year run was stuffed with conniving and backstabbing, but the dysfunction was more in line with soap operas than real life.

There are other famous, fictional families of note, such as titular family of “The Sopranos” and the Duttons in “Yellowstone.” While the Duttons and the Sopranos often fought amongst themselves, their loyalties to each other remained strong.

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Then along came “Succession” and “The Bear.” Both shows — each recently nominated for an impressive amount of Emmys, with 27 for Succession and 13 for “The Bear,” per USA Today — have their fair share of dramatics, but receive acclaim for the realistic grittiness that both FX and HBO are known for.

Both depict different, but destructively dysfunctional families. Sibling squabbles among the Roys and the Berzattos don’t just lead to terse family dinners. They hasten the crumbling of democracy, cars smashing through homes, suicide and other shocking, rippling effects.

The emotionally violent chaos of the Berzattos in ‘The Bear’

Each of the Berzatto children have a lot of trauma to unpack: Carmy is plagued with all-encompassing panic attacks; Natalie (Abby Elliott) is performing a continual balancing act, desperately and exhaustively trying to keep a thousand spinning plates in the air at once; and Mikey (Jon Bernthal), the eldest Berzatto child, took his own life shortly before the start of Season 1.

But it’s not until Episode 6 in the latest season of “The Bear” that fans finally catch a devastating, unflinching and jaw-dropping glimpse of where that trauma likely stems from.

It is by far the most emotionally violent episode of the show. In the backdrop of a chaotic Christmas dinner, nestled in an even more chaotic home, members of the Berzatto family dole out cutting remarks as painful and as vicious as actual acts of violence.

The source of all the frayed nerves is quickly revealed: Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), the Berzatto family matriarch, is clearly teetering on the edge of mental wellness while desperately trying to make a beautiful feast of seven fishes for her family.

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She tears through the kitchen, leaving a trail of mess and hurt in her wake, screaming and insisting that her family don’t care for her as she cares for them. “I make things beautiful for them,” she tells Carmy, “and no one makes things beautiful for me.”

It all culminates shockingly. Uncle Lee (Bob Odenkirk) repeatedly calls Mikey “nothing,” feeding into Mikey’s own black hole of pain and self-doubt. Natalie, trying to calm her untethered mother, asks her if she’s OK for the millionth time, leading Donna to explode into an unhinged outburst.

After a brawl between Mikey and Lee erupts over the dinner table, Donna drives a car through the dining room. As Mikey pounds on the car window, yelling, “Ma, what did you do?” Carmy looks on, looking dazed and shellshocked.

In a messy house, a messy kitchen and an even messier dining room, Carmy gazes at the cannolis he laid out earlier — with the fork Mikey threw at Lee protruding out — presumably his sole contribution of the night. And even that, maybe the only thing left beautiful in the broken Berzatto home, has been maimed by the carnage of Christmas dinner.

This episode gives viewers a sense of why Carmy finds it so hard to accept love from Claire (Molly Gordon), a new love interest in Season 2. “Why wouldn’t (Carmy) be prepared (for love)?” Christopher Storer, creator of “The Bear,” tells The Los Angeles Times. “Why is he in this place of maybe not being able to accept something that was so pure and honest and be afraid of somebody loving him?”

According to Storer, the chaos of Episode 6 gives us direct insight into Carmy’s fear. “This is why Carmy could never accept the love from Claire because he thinks some crazy (expletive) like this is going to happen.”

The back-stabbing Roys in ‘Succession’

If the Berzattos in “The Bear” are messily and passionately dysfunctional, then the Roys are cunningly so. Yes, the altercations between the Roys sometimes lead to shouting matches. But more often than not, they play out as metaphorical knives to the back and unabashed lies to the face.

Similarly to “The Bear,” to find the source of the Roy’s dysfunction is to focus on one person: Logan Roy (Brian Cox).

We were granted a few brief peeks into Logan’s tumultuous past. Logan and his siblings fled from Scotland in the midst of World War II alone. His sister died young of polio, for which Logan blamed himself. There were even signs of physical abuse — during a brief scene in Season 1, we get a glimpse of deep, prominent scars on Logan’s back.

Logan’s murky past likely fueled his treatment of his children. During Logan’s eulogy, his daughter Shiv (Sarah Snook) explains that he rarely let his children in. Instead, they spent their childhood playing outside his spacious office.

Instead of raising capable adults, Logan neglected his children, causing them to be inadequate and spoiled. As a result, Kendall, Shiv, Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Connor (Alan Ruck) grown into flailing adults — taking themselves deathly seriously, but in reality are woefully incompetent.

It’s something Logan touches on in the final season: “I love you, but you’re not serious children,” he tells them. Shortly thereafter, Logan dies, leaving his children scrambling (and ultimately failing) to claim on the family throne.

“I thought it was interesting how well the show’s writers were able to articulate what it looks like to have family trauma,” licensed marriage and family therapist, and author, Elizabeth Earnshaw told The Los Angeles Times. “How individual children can all grow up in the same family and respond so incredibly differently.”

Earnshaw diagnoses each of the Roy children with insecure attachment styles, common for those who grow up in dysfunctional families, per The Attachment Project. According to Earnshaw, Kendall, Connor and Roman are anxious-preoccupied, while Shiv is fearful-avoidant. Logan, according to Earnshaw, is dismissive-avoidant.

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“He’s so abusive that he can’t let any of them do anything else with their lives,” Earnshaw told The Los Angeles Times. “I think the saddest thing throughout the entire show is that none of them see themselves as separate from their dad, they only see themselves within the reflection of him.”

“They might puff up or try to do something underhanded to get him back, but you can see their sense of self is totally reliant on him. And anytime it changes — they have a relationship or a new way of living — he very quickly removes it from them so they go back to being totally reflective upon him.”

Dysfunctional families on TV: accurate portrayals or cautionary tales?

The dysfunction portrayed in “Succession” and “The Bear” is likely written to make for good television — and to entice audiences to keep watching — but how accurate is dysfunction among families?

According to a 2019 poll on estrangement, 70% to 80% of Americans identify their families as dysfunctional, per Forbes. Furthermore, 10% of mothers are estranged from their children and 40% of those polled had experienced family estrangement.

What’s more, family dysfunction can lead to deep-rooted, psychological trauma among family members. And that trauma can be carried from generation to generation — as is portrayed in “Succession” and, to a lesser extent, “The Bear.”

What are the characteristics of a dysfunctional family?

There are many things that can breed a dysfunctional family, according to TalkSpace. Among them are abusive, deficient or absent parents, “a large family,” a personality disorder or substance abuse among a parent, “dynamics of previous dysfunctional generation,” “insecure family attachments” and more.

Common patterns can be found among dysfunctional families. Triangulation, for example, is a “manipulation tactic where two family members team up against another,” per TalkSpace. We see this often in “Succession” — how many times did two Roy siblings team up to betray another? Or all the Roy children band together to take down their father?

We also see this in “The Bear.” Mikey and Donna, during the contentious Christmas episode, continually rag on Carmy for moving to Denmark. Despite this, they harass and badger him into begrudgingly telling them that he loves them.

Children of dysfunctional families will inevitably feel the repercussions into adulthood. According to TalkSpace, “Children who grow up in a dysfunctional family often have trouble in their personal and professional relationships later in life.”

It’s also common for children to develop mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and more.

“When a child is unable to depend on their caregiver to help them regulate their emotions, the part of their brain that helps them make sense of their feelings doesn’t develop properly,” therapist Catherine Richardson told TalkSpace. “Most mental illness emerges in adolescence and early adulthood.”

‘The Bear’ and ‘Succession’ are compelling tales of dysfunctional families — and delve into the devastating consequences

While “Succession” and “The Bear” both outline the consequences of dysfunctional families, the outcomes in both shows are gearing up to be wildly different.

In “The Bear,” there’s a glimmer of hope. By gutting out his family restaurant The Beef and changing it into The Bear, Carmy is slowly (but surely) gutting out the pain of trauma that resides in himself. But in “Succession,” the Roy children catapult themselves to their fate with grim, resigned finality.

The two differences likely reflect the real-life consequences of dysfunctional families: change is possible, but only if one is willing to hopefully put in the work. If not, trauma and pain threatens to be carried to the next generation.

And there are glimmers of the next generation of Berzattos and Roys in both shows: in the latest season of “The Bear,” Natalie is pregnant. Shiv too is pregnant in the last season of “Succession.” Since both women had turbulent relationships with their mothers, the type of motherhood they’ll inflict upon their own children is likely on their minds.

Family dysfunction is a vicious cycle — one that takes an active choice to break.

“It is hard to be optimistic about relationships when your own family has let you down your whole life,” psychologist Mark Travers wrote for Forbes. “However, creating emotional and physical distance from your past — and leaving the ‘perfect family’ fantasy behind — can help you look at yourself and your family in a new light. It may even inch you one step closer to forgiveness.”