While the mid-1980s spin-off series The Flintstone Kids depicts Fred as a child, the series may be apocryphal due to its presenting Wilma as a childhood friend of Fred and Barney; the original series asserts that they first met as young adults.[13] Still, the series' depictions that Fred is the only child of Ed and Edna Flintstone (a handyman and a homemaker, respectively) might be taken as canon.
As young adults, Fred and Barney worked as bellhops at a resort. There, they meet and fall in love with Wilma and Betty, who were working there as cigarette girls. Fred and Wilma's mother, Pearl Slaghoople, also met and took an instant dislike to each other, starting a long-lasting rivalry between the two.[13] An unspecified amount of time later, Fred married Wilma.
Fred is a typical blue-collar worker, who works as a "bronto crane operator" at Slate Rock and Gravel Company (also known as Rockhead and Quarry Cave Construction Company in earlier episodes). Fred's job title in the second-season episode "Divided We Sail" is "geological engineer".[14]
During the original series' third season, Wilma gives birth to the couple's daughter, Pebbles. Years later, when Pebbles is a teenager, Fred and Barney join the Bedrock police force for a time as part-time police officers.[1] Eventually, Fred becomes a grand dad to the adult Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm's twins, Chip and Roxy. Fred's family grew again in A Flintstone Family Christmas, when he and Wilma adopted an orphaned caveboy named Stony, and despite a rough start, Fred and his new son bonded well.