Growing Pains is an American television sitcom created by Neal Marlens that ran on ABC for seven seasons from September 24, 1985, to April 25, 1992. The series follows the misadventures of the Seaver family, including psychiatrist and father Jason, journalist and mother Maggie, and their children Mike, Carol, Ben, and Chrissy. 166 episodes were produced.

The show centers on the Seaver family of Huntington, a town on Long Island, New York. Dr. Jason Seaver (Alan Thicke), a psychiatrist, works from home because his wife, Maggie (Joanna Kerns), has gone back to work as a reporter.

Jason has to take care of the children: ladies' man and rebellious troublemaker Mike (Kirk Cameron); bookish honors student Carol (Tracey Gold); and rambunctious Ben (Jeremy Miller), who follows Mike as his role model and becomes a troublemaker too. A fourth child, Chrissy Seaver (twins Kelsey and Kirsten Dohring; Ashley Johnson), was added in Season 4. In Season 7, Luke Brower (Leonardo DiCaprio), a homeless teen, was adopted into the Seaver family.

Soon after the cancelation of The Four Seasons, Joanna Kerns auditioned for a new series in late 1984, called Growing Pains, which was being developed by screenwriter Neal Marlens, alongside executive producer Mike Sullivan. She auditioned with Alan Thicke, who was coming off the failure of his syndicated late-night talk show Thicke of the Night. Kerns joked in many interviews that she and Alan had immediate chemistry, especially when she kissed him on his nose by accident during their audition together. Kerns and Thicke's chemistry won them both the parts of lead characters Maggie and Jason Seaver, and the two became great friends off the show. Both of them had many things in common, including being newly divorced single parents.

Tracey Gold auditioned for the role of Carol Seaver, but was passed over in favor of Elizabeth Ward, who had starred alongside Gold in the 1983 ABC Afterschool Special The Hand-Me-Down Kid. Test audiences did not find Ward to be suited for the role of Carol, and Gold promptly replaced her; scenes featuring Ward in the original pilot were subsequently reshot with Gold for the broadcast version.

Marlens and most of the original writing and producing staff—including Marlens' wife, Carol Black, who had quickly ascended from story editor to co-executive producer during the first half of the season—were let go from the series midway through its first season. Replacing Marlens and joining Sullivan as showrunners were Steve Marshall and Dan Guntzelman, who met and formed their writing partnership while working on WKRP in Cincinnati.

In 1991, Leonardo DiCaprio joined the main cast in the role of Luke Brower, a homeless teenager who is taken in by the Seaver family at the behest of Mike, who, by then, was a substitute teacher at the high school where Luke had masqueraded as a student. Co-star Joanna Kerns recalled DiCaprio being "especially intelligent and disarming for his age," but also mischievous on set.

Then-15-year-old DiCaprio was cast in a bid to appeal to teenage female viewers, similar to how Cameron gained heartthrob status with that demographic during the show's earlier seasons, but was written out towards the end of Season 7, in order to allow DiCaprio to begin work on the 1993 biographical drama film This Boy's Life. Still, the addition of DiCaprio—who earned a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Young Actor Co-starring in a Television Series for his work as Luke—did not improve the show's ratings.