Ward Cleaver, Jr. is a
fictional character in the
American television sitcom Leave It to Beaver. Ward and his wife,
June, are often invoked as
archetypal suburban parents of the babyboomer 1950s. The couple are the parents of
Wally, a thirteen-year-old in the eighth grade, and seven-year-old ("almost eight") second-grader Theodore, nicknamed
"The Beaver". A typical episode from
Leave It to Beaver follows a misadventure committed by one or both of the boys, and ends with the culprits receiving a moral lecture from their father and a hot meal from their mother.