What does it say about society? That there's something problematic, inherently, with the concept of a "man of the house" as a necessary authority figure. Joyce Byers, in Stranger Things, is a strong-willed and determined woman, but it takes a village to raise a child, and she did not have that. Her 80s Indiana town is exemplary of the ways modernity--industrialization, capitalism, Calvinism--alienate us from one another, leaving mothers like Joyce with no ontology of family without a "man of the house," and no option but to install her eldest son in that role.

In this view, the greatest social crime committed in that series (aside from the government atrocities) is Chief Hopper's self-isolation. As a good man, with earnest intentions, his desertion of the town's emotional needs (regardless of his performance as a law enforcer) is a betrayal of their material needs.