'The Cosby Show' Was Made To Show Parents As Being Smarter Than Their Kids On TV

“The Cosby Show” was Bill Cosby’s attempt to change the way parenting was portrayed on television, the actor told ABC News in a recent interview cited by Us Weekly, adding that he hated shows where children were portrayed to be brighter than their parents.

The popular show about an upper-middle class African-American family living in Brooklyn, which originally aired on NBC from 1984 to 1992, was based on two principles, Cosby said.

“Number one . . . I hated those series where the children were brighter than the parents, and those parents had to play dumb,” Cosby said. “Number two was that I wanted to ‘take the house back.'”

Cosby believes that children should not be entertained at the expense of parenting, adding that just because parents want to be well-liked they should not be made to look stupid.

“[We] parents make it difficult,” he said, “because we want to be well-liked. And I’m not saying that parenting, you shouldn’t want to be well-liked, but you also have to have some kind of judgment.”

“The Cosby Show” featured the lives of the Huxtables — a doctor and his lawyer wife raising their children in Brooklyn. According to a Jump Cut report, it was the most-watched program in the U.S. for four years from 1985.

The family issues that were featured on the show are still relevant today, making it a favorite in syndication, Keshia Knight-Pulliam, who played the youngest child in the series, told the Today show on the occasion of “The Cosby Show’s” 25th anniversary, Us Weekly reported.

A pop culture survey conducted by the National Geographic in association with Kelton showed that the Huxtables were the most-preferred ’80s television family that a majority of Americans wanted to be adopted by, Yahoo reported.