Do television writers have an anti-marriage bias? It sure seems that way. Turn on the TV any night and you'll see a glut of shows centered on attractive swinging singles with active, exciting sex lives.

Programs centered on a family unit -- once a TV staple -- are almost non-existent these days, and if you do come across a show that features a married couple, chances are they are shown as mismatched, unsatisfied in their sex lives and emotionally unfulfilled.

Today's TV landscape is littered with desperate housewives and philandering husbands. As proof one need look no further than CBS's summer bomb, "Swingtown."

According to Carol Barbee, one of the series' executive producers, "Swingtown" is "about sexual freedom, but because it's set in the '70s, it's not about sexual responsibility."

She added: "It's about emotional responsibility -- or lack thereof. I just want to hold the mirror up. It'll be interesting to see how far [the network] lets us go. We're doing a show about adult, free-thinking people having sex with whomsoever they choose. You don't want a scene to be a PSA for safe sex, and we don't want to punish people with TV morality."

Though TV producers and executives would have us believe they are merely daring to tell the truth and "hold a mirror up" to real life, "Swingtown" paints a picture of middle-class suburbia few Americans can identify with.

But "Swingtown" is not alone in its campaign to undermine marriage. A recent study by the Parents Television Council found that prime-time broadcast television overwhelmingly favors non-marital sex to marital sex.

On TV, sex in the context of marriage is either non-existent or is depicted as burdensome, rather than as an expression of love and commitment.

By contrast, extra-marital or adulterous sexual relationships are depicted with greater frequency, and overwhelmingly, as a positive experience.

With graphic sexual content, gruesome violence and explicit language filing up the airwaves, TV's negative treatment of marriage may seem a trivial matter. Surely, one might argue, there are more pressing concerns. But TV sets a powerful example.

It's why minority groups are right to be concerned about how they are represented on television -- or whether they are represented at all. It's why groups like the AARP and the AMA are right to be concerned when violence is treated as an acceptable solution to conflict on television.

If America's children grow up watching TV programs that teach them that marriage is a dull prison, while sexual flings with an ever-changing cast of partners is not only fun, but risk- and consequence-free, we'd have to be naÃØve to believe it won't shape their world-view and affect their decisions.

Surely TV writers can do better justice to an institution widely regarded as beneficial to individuals' health and happiness, stabilizing to society, and vital to a child's well-being and chances for success in life.

Until those writers and networks clean up their messages, the responsibility lies with each of us, as parents, to monitor what our children are watching. We must keep conversations open with our kids and actively speak out for what we want broadcast into our homes through supporting current legislation for cable choice.

• Karmel Larson, of Mapleton, is Utah County Chapter director of the Parents Television Council.