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Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

The entire premise for many Dom Coms is that the lead characters are a family of maladjusted people who generally don’t get along. Usually they consist of an Al Bundy father, a mother who is either a paragon of common sense and efficiency or a repulsive harridan (or both, a la Roseanne), and two-three kids who are unhappy, dislike each other, and resent at least one of their parents. Also, the father and his mother-in-law tend to hate each other. The family is generally fairly poor, although not always -– Arrested Development is about a large, rich dysfunctional family.

Don't get them wrong, though; for all the family arguments, the typical dysfunctional family never engages in actual abusive behavior — any that did would immediately lose all audience sympathy. Furthermore, when the family is facing a major problem from outside, they will generally pull together to face it. Dysfunctional Families may not get along, but they rarely actually loathe each other, and often receive Aw Look They Really Do Love Each Other moments.

Note that this was originally a subversion of the Leave It To Beaver/The Brady Bunch almost-too-good-to-believe family, but eventually ballooned into a genre of its own.

Contrast with Quirky Household, where the people are merely weird, but generaly happy — indeed, more happy than more convential households.

See also Big Screwed Up Family who are more people and more dysfunctional.

Examples

Anime and Manga
  • Tsukihime reference: The Tohno Family who, due to their non-human ancestry, were basically a 'cursed' gene pool of insanity, various psychosis, and sanity-decaying superhuman abilities; their family tree was literally full of suicides, early deaths, disappearances, and the like. Needless to say, they didn't necessarily get along with each other, although they co-existed rather well.
  • The entire premise of The Daichis: Earth's Defense Family is one of these families being recruited as a pseudo-Super Sentai team just before the parents formally divorce each other - and the hilarity and angst that ensues.
  • The Tendou/Soatome household from Ranma One Half.
  • In the Josei manga With The Light, (almost) each child or parent Sachiko encounters has a dysfunctional family. This troper's personal favorite chapter had the saddest way to start: a father is stinking drunk and the son tries to run away- only to see his mother escaping asap in a taxi- leaving him alone. Another child, Eri-chan, refused to tell a teacher about Hikaru, an autistic boy, getting seriously hurt in fear that her father would hit her "just like he hits mommy".

Comic Books
  • The Fantastic Four of Marvel Comics fame were designed to be a rather dysfunctional and constantly bickering, but ultimately tight-knit and loving family unit, which is part of what made the comic so popular and part of what put Marvel Comics on the map; the fact that each member has superpowers only adds to the tensions and clashes between them. Although only Susan and Johnny were initially directly related to each other (sister and brother), Susan and Reed later married and started their own family.
    • Reed and Ben are the type of best friends that are so close they each consider the other their brother, blood relations be damned.

Film

Live Action TV

Theater

Western Animation