My mom was the one who told me to look at The Big Bang Theory. It was a show about nerds—and I used to be a nerd. She thought I’d enjoy it. A friend had already mentioned that the essential character, Sheldon Cooper, was “exactly like” me. After I watched the show, at Mom’s encouragement, I joked that I had mixed feelings concerning the comparison.
The Big Bang Theory was extremely popular and never just with my mom; at its height, it averaged 20 million viewers an evening. But it never really resonated with actual dweebs. Its audience was largely Gen X women—not individuals who were Sheldon but individuals who “knew a Sheldon,” not the geeks themselves but their moms and friends.
It’s fitting, then, that the even-more-popular Big Bang spinoff could be Young Sheldon, a prequel concerning the title character’s childhood in East Texas—and that Sheldon’s relationship together with his mom, Mary, could be at the center of the show. Young Sheldon sits at the highest of the prime-time rankings; one recent week, the show (which streams on Netflix, Max, and Paramount+) topped all streamed content across US household televisions.
As Young Sheldon involves an end (its series finale airs May 16; a derivative starring two breakout characters—Georgie and Mandy—has already been announced), so too does the onscreen dynamic between Sheldon and Mary. So too does a nostalgic vision for a way the “science vs. religion” debate plays out in our families.
Mary is Sheldon’s opposite in nearly every way. He’s a logical atheist physicist with no people skills; Mary is a warm, folksy conservative Christian. In some ways, she serves as an audience surrogate. (For what it’s value, Mary was my mom’s favorite character on TBBT; she stopped watching when she felt just like the writers disrespected her faith by making her violate her Christian sexual ethics.)
Brainy Sheldon loves comic books and doesn’t imagine in God; his working-class family includes not only his deeply religious mom but in addition a football-coach dad, an eye-rolling sister, and a charmingly slow-witted brother. They don’t understand Sheldon; he doesn’t understand them. Therein lies the fun. Like many sitcoms, Young Sheldon makes comedy out of clichés. Jokes abound about how emotional and unreasonable women are, how lazy and dumb men are, how annoying kids are, and the way out-of-touch parents are.
The portrayal of Mary’s faith is just as stereotypical, if lighthearted. In season 7, she attempts to secretly baptize her granddaughter at her Baptist church out of fear her daughter-in-law Mandy’s mother will make her a Catholic first. She temporarily gets duped into giving money to a televangelist. She pushes her son and daughter-in-law, who’re “living in sin,” to get married.
These scenes are played for laughs. But Mary’s faith can be an obvious sticking point in her relationship with Sheldon. In season 7, episode 1, when Sheldon asks whether everyone within the family is okay after a natural disaster, Mary says, “Thank God, yes.” “You’re thanking the Deity who sent the tornado?” quips Sheldon. “I’m not within the mood for this!” she retorts.
“I don’t must seek help from an invisible man,” her son says in episode 4, rejecting Mary’s offer to hope for him. “You’re right. You’ve got your invisible strings,” she replies.
Young Sheldon’s portrait of the Christian-atheist divide conforms to old clichés about these two groups. We still associate religion with less education and secularism with more education; faith with emotion and atheism with logic; faith with women and atheism with men. Religious persons are backward and narrow-minded, though healthful and grounded. Atheists are smarter and boastful. We laugh at Sheldon’s mom—how silly she is to care a lot about which church a baby is baptized in! But we also cheer for Sheldon’s humiliation; he consistently brags about how much smarter he’s than the remaining of his family, and that’s annoying.
Some of those clichés are partially grounded in point of fact—not less than, they was once. More women than men have long been dedicated churchgoers. Post-Enlightenment, mental life within the West has been largely synonymous with secularism and science, while religion has been the domain of the non-college-educated working class.
But today, these demographic realities are flipping. Gen Z is the primary generation in ages where men outnumber women as regular churchgoers. Statistics show that the upper education you may have, the more likely you’re to be religious.
Young Sheldon’s portrayal of the atheist vs. Christian divide may be familiar, comprehensible, even funny—however it’s not entirely accurate.
Today, someone like Sheldon may need more in common together with his mom than not. Like many young men, he might take heed to Jordan Peterson; he might agree that Christianity is not less than metaphorically true, if not literally accurate. He might appreciate how Christians get up against various strands of “woke” ideology, which is increasingly rejected by young men and their married moms alike.
As Young Sheldon involves a detailed, Sheldon and Mary haven’t reconciled their disagreements. But they’ve learned to understand one another. Sheldon recognizes that his mother’s love has given him what he must thrive; he’ll miss her when he leaves for Caltech. Mary acknowledges her son’s brilliance; she knows that he needs to go away to access greater opportunities than she or his family can provide. They don’t understand one another. But they love one another. (Loving despite differences also defines Sheldon’s relationship together with his father, George, whose shocking death within the pre–series finale changes how Sheldon thinks of the family patriarch.)
The sitcom trope of an atheist young man and Christian older woman may be outdated in a couple of generations. But the vision of a family amicably “agreeing to disagree” is already old-school. For all of the Sheldons aligning with their conservative Marys, there are plenty more parents and kids experiencing estrangement over political, theological, and cultural debates.
“I’ll go [to church] with you, Mom,” Sheldon says in an earlier season. His sister replies, “Why are you going? You don’t imagine in God.” “Nope,” Sheldon agrees. “But I think in Mom.” “I’ll take it,” Mary says.
Can we imagine the same scene playing out today?
Christians and atheists, men and ladies, older and younger generations—Young Sheldon doesn’t take these conflicts too seriously, or not less than, it sees them as less vital than love. No wonder the show’s been so successful; since 2017, it’s provided relief from the rancor of a very offended time in American life. Grace could also be unpopular at the extent of today’s culture wars. But for seven seasons, audiences have found it value watching.
Joseph Holmes is a Christian culture critic and host of the weekly podcast The Overthinkers.
