The same issue is happening on a show like Everybody Loves Raymond now, which is in its eighth year and struggling to come up with good stories. It'll be interesting to see how they do. The bottom line is, it starts with the writers and ends with the writers.
As a dad, he thinks that his philosophy is morally correct. He has no conscience whatsoever about letting his kids put a penny in a light socket to find out electricity is not so good for you, and if you want to learn how to swim, you have to be thrown into the deep end.