It's because we're, to coin a phrase, "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

Media trains us to think bills pay themselves and jobs, going where the work is, is only an excuse to remain emotionally unavailable and probably scheme with guys like Ellis from Die Hard.

Man, Ellis was such a dick.

Hrm, yeah. Makes me feel a little better that my mother characters seem to be less than ideal so far.

Well, I said that as an understatement, but yeah.

Of course, if I remember right, the evil stepmothers in fairy tales were originally the biological mother.

I'm a bit tired of the only villainous female characters being the "special" ones.  I mean, okay, if you have a sexist head villain or something, they might not put women in the rank and file, but the bad guys are often the most racially diverse, so why can't we just have an evil army with equal representation of gender?

Science people who are full experts in everything deemed 'Science' by the lowest common denominator. God forbid they actually specialized in something and aren't proficient in anything else. I get it if it's in media aimed at children , but in the so-called adult world it reeks of a certain level of disrespect for people who dedicate their entire professional lives to a single demanding field, and then the mass media judges that too boring to represent properly. I know multidisciplinary scientists exist, but they are recognized as such and given additional credit for it. Not to mention they are extremely rare.