Here is a brief excerpt from one of my favorite testimonials (for the full interview, see below) given by Shelley Lubben:
“We were raised on television. All the time. Where do you think I learned all my false negative thinking about what love is; and what marriage is? I was sexualized as a kid, watching TV. I was sexually abused. The only training I ever got was 'Little House on the Prairie,' thank God I got a little bit from, honestly, that TV show...Nobody raised me. The devil raised me.
Although the entire retelling of her amazing story (a life filled with struggles) is always completely uplifting, I found most fascinating Shelley's reference to the 1970s TV show Little House on the Prairie. As Shelley and I are from the same generation, I too had fond memories of the series. The show was a sane speck in a world of entrainment that had been taken over by softcore porn, for the most popular shows of that era regularly attempted to push the sexual envelope: All in the Family, Maude, Soap, Charlies Angels, and Threes Company. All of them promoted the new alternative lifestyles of the day: cohabitation, homosexuality, promiscuity, exhibitionism, and abortion. They erased these once taboo evils and renamed them free expressions of the burgeoning woman's movement and gay liberation. Going directly against that tide, were the simple life lessons in Little House on the Prairiethat often revolved around the importance and the centrality of the family. The show has often been unfairly lambasted as being saccharin sweet, but many of the episodes were often dark; i.e the horrific death of Mary's baby. Only, Michael Landon, the shows producer and a man who endured his own difficult childhood and two failed marriages, usually guided everything back to the nurturing and healing bastions of Faith and the family. Perhaps, his troubled early years and personal relationship problems, instilled a desire to create healthy and committed families on the screen. Thankfully, one of his son's, Michael Landon Jr., has gone on to produce some of the only family friendly fare (Love Comes Softly and others) of the past decade. So far, his family life seems to mirror that which eluded his father.