Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: A few episodes address the kids' being embarrassed by having famous parents, especially when they themselves are dragged into Dad's doings, such as the newsreel about burying old-fashioned pencils to make way for mechanical ones, which the children never hear the end of at school. Other times the whole family falls victim to an inaccurate portrayal in the press.
Deadpan Snarker: Dad has a talent for sarcasm, but it clearly runs in the family (leading to Snark-to-Snark Combat). Bill and Martha are probably the leading examples among the children. Even Tom the handyman is a Servile Snarker.
Mother Nature, Father Science: Mother the psychologist and father the efficiency expert. Both apply their respective fields in raising a huge family, and both know that their attitudes complement each other. However, after Dad dies, she takes over his position as prime mover in the field of motion study.
Dad
Big Fun: Dad weighs a good deal over two hundred pounds and is quite jovial, with a mischievous sense of humor.
Clock King: The major driving force of Dad's character. The authors relate a story about how he cut himself shaving and resented the added time needed to put on a bandage more than the cut. The mistake would be in thinking that obsessing over efficiency would necessarily mean a joyless existence.
Directionless Driver: Dad frequently got lost while driving, that he ever admitted it. In fact, he frequently blamed the person trying to give him directions for getting him lost.
Drives Like Crazy: Dad tends to drive far too fast for Mother's comfort. He also doesn't necessarily see the other vehicles with which he's sharing the roadway.
Education Mama: Gender inverted; Dad is obsessed with making everything educational, via methods like having the kids listen to language records in the bath, and there's a whole chapter called "Skipping through School" about his efforts to have them skip as many grades as possible.
Mother
Badly Battered Babysitter: Mother usually has the home situation well in hand, but she ends up worn out after taking all the children to visit her family in California while Dad is in Washington helping with the war effort. The baby was sick and Lillian had a hurt foot on the way down and everyone gets whooping cough on the way home.
Fiery Redhead: Inverted; Mother is auburn. She is very calm and spends a lot of time smoothing ruffled feathers. That said, you don't want to make her put her foot down.
Red Is Heroic: She is redheaded and is goodnatured and helpful.
Silk Hiding Steel: She is almost-perpetually calm and polite, yet when she talks, everybody listens.
Annoying Younger Sibling: When the Gilbreth girls started dating, the younger Gilbreths, jealous of the way their older sisters' boyfriends were affecting family dynamics, took it upon themselves to make them uncomfortable.
Huge Girl, Tiny Guy: Anne's first boyfriend, Joe Scales, wasn't even as tall as her shoulder.
