As a guy watching television for over 45 years, I have noticed a pattern in sitcoms and I am sure many of you have noticed it as well.

Women with young children are still usually considered off limits as the target of humor. This also applies to children, but not to the elderly. My guess is that our instincts (both men and women) are to protect women of child bearing years (and children) and sub-consciously we find any derogatory humor towards them distasteful. Or maybe its the implication that if they are bumbling then maybe they are bad primary care givers.

On Home Improvement the writers attempted to make Jill (Tim's Wife) the target of the humor. The resulting complaint letters (mostly from women) forced them to only allow the men to be the brunt of the deprecating humor. Sure they can supply the humor as an insult to someone else (Tim), but usually not be the target. Sorry, I don't have the source, but even if you discount this paragraph the list of shows is rather large.

A couple exceptions that come to mind immediately are Rosanne and I Love Lucy.

Some examples:

Everybody Loves Raymond
Family Matters
Full House
Family Ties
Leave It To Beaver
According To Jim
Dick Van Dyke
Newhart (all incarnations)
Brady Bunch
Family Guy
The Simpsons
What's Happening
Who's the Boss?
The Donna Reed Show
Father Knows Best (no he doesn't)
The Partridge Family
Dennis the Menace
Married With Children

I know it is a controversial point, and certainly not a rule. But there is overwhelming evidences to support the point.

Not entirely sure what you mean. You're point is very broad. But I can think of a few where the funny was at the mom's expense:

Sex and the City (Miranda)
Absolutely Fabulous (Saffy)
Scrubs (Jordan & Carla)

That's off the top of my head, but I'm certain those defy what I believe is your point.

Married With Children?

Well, there was that Simpsons where Marge had a gambling problem.

King of the Hill. Peggy has always been less stable/intelligent/anything than Hank.

How about that Louis CK show, recently canned after a 10+ episode run on Showtime (I think)?

HBO and it got one whole season (13 eps) as Lucky Louie and is a decent example for this thread IMHO.

This show actually rejects both your points, with two mothers as the targets for humor and a young child frequently treated as dim-witted (not childlike, just straight-up stupid). Obviously, Jim is the primary target of the humor, but the show's not called According to the Fat Guy's Sitcom-Typical Hot Wife.

There aren't any significant mothers on these shows (unless you count Rebecca near the end of Full House or Stephanie from Newhart, who was the butt of countless jokes).

das

I'm writing down the username of anybody who's waxing eloquent about According to Jim so I can use your post against you next time you lament the cancellation of a good show.

Don't stop there. According to Jim isn't even close to the bottom of the list of the crap I watch.

das

Oh, I'm sure it's better than Torchwood and I've sat through season one of that twice already.

Ok, I will remove Newhart(not sure what I was thinking) and add:

"Grounded for Life"

Keep in mind ... there are exceptions. And I'm not talking individual episodes as much as the over all character behavior.

Just curious if anyone else has noticed the pattern.

Any series that can't at least wait until the first-season finale to is a bottom-feeder in my book.

das

Does that make you a glutton?

I don't think it's necessarily a formula to avoid making fun of women with young children, though I can definitely see the complaint. It's just that the common "family" sitcom has:
bumbling, oafish dad
mother usually younger, better looking, and the more responsible parent
teenage kids that are 100x smarter than either parent

The mother in Everybody Hates Chris is often treated unsympathetically. But considering who's she's based on, maybe that shouldn't be a surprise.

And this is why that show is such a breath of fresh air.

In Reba, Cheyenne was the butt of many a joke.

... and with Friends, I guess we could throw Pheobe and Rachel in there as well.

I'd submit that Reba is in fact less an example of a show that throws the mother out there as a joke target and more an example of a show that doesn't. Cheyenne isn't anybody's mother unless my casual viewing (thanks, mom) has led to me missing a child. She's a stepmom, and they're a target. Reba isn't so much a target, and she's the mother figure.

I don't think it's an absolute, but I'd have to agree with the OP to the extent that you can list far more shows that treat the mother with kid gloves than you can shows that go after her.

ETA: My casual viewing does seem to have betrayed me. Cheyenne is one of Reba's kids, right? In that case, I'd suggest that she is an acceptable target because she got pregnant at an earlier than socially acceptable age. That makes going after her okay.

Doris Roberts on Everybody Loves Raymond was the second biggest target for jokes behind Brad Garrett.

I also seem to recall that the heavyset mother on Yes, Dear was always referenced as being a drunk and a slut.

Doris Roberts portrayed not a mother but a grandmother. She was well past any childbearing or even raising. I submit that's different.

Yes, Dear falls into the same pattern many shows that make a mother a target use. She is somehow inferior to her uptight sister, which makes her a target of ridicule. I'd say the limited amount of times they took shots at her uptight sister would serve as a better example of that show departing from the norm.

But it was her motherly qualities, her passive-aggressive over-involvement in the lives of her adult children, that were the constant target for humor. Her character traits would have been the same whether Ray and Debra had children or not.

das

This is about mothers of young children. Adults can take care of themselves. Children are considered vulnerable and a bumbling incompetent mother is unacceptable. A bumbling inept father is considered the normal for sitcoms.

On Yes, Dear the party mom only did so after they made it clear that the kids would stay with super mom. They emphasized that party mom was really a great mom and that both fathers were inept morons.

In that vein, Debra was made fun of as well for being too uptight at times... it just paled in comparison to her oafish husband.

One thing that's definitely off limits for mothers on sitcoms is violence. There's been many shows that have the father getting hurt but never the mother. I think that's one thing we'll never see on a sitcom (Unless you count family guy)