Gender Stereotypes plus Debunking equals FOOBAR!!

As clio_1 and others have pointed out, the Pattersons are firm believers in a more old-fashioned dicision of gender roles than most. In their mind, the husband is supposed to be the more competent in the public sphere. Daddy holds down the job, brings home the bacon, pays the mortgage and decides the family's political and religious affiliations. Mommy, on the other hand, rules the domestic sphere; she raises the kids, cleans the house, cooks the food and helps with the homework. The division of roles thus propounded can only, in their minds, function correctly if both spouses stick to their roles: Mommy is supposed to not wade into Man's world nor is Daddy to do womens' work; people who propose to do otherwise are simply wrong and are either motivated by ignorance or malice. The reason that John and Elly seem to suck at what they're supposed to do is fairly simple to explain; Lynn, despite her convictions, is a product of her era. Back when Foob first made the scene, there was a trend towards revealing the seemy underbelly of the cultural norms of the fifties. Lynn decided to play follow-the-leader and give the world a barely-competent and hilariously unprofessional dentist Dad and a groaning, pouting, uninvolved Mom instead of the more reassuring Ozzie and Harriet types the genre might lead one to expect; the end result of that is that we're left to think that you have to do what you have to do, you have to suck at it and you have to hate it. Also, you can't change the rules or you're an extra-bad person who doesn't want your husband to have a hoooooome.