Haley is the oldest child of Phil and Claire Dunphy, and the sister of Alex and Luke. Haley is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and it's unclear what her academic fate has in store. She's always been much more focused on her social status and fashion than on her studies. She's quite gullible, and this is a trait that her younger sister Alex enjoys exploiting. Alex once talked Haley into rubbing her cell phone on her own head for an hour because she told her it would charge the battery. But Haley is also sometimes surprisingly astute and even sneaky with her cunning ways, having once tricked her parents into thinking she was talking on her cell phone when she shouldn't have been. She was actually talking into a bar of soap she'd carved to look like a phone.Haley is generally embarrassed by her parents, concerned that their antics will jeopardize her social standing. She is also both embarrassed of and concerned for her sister Alex, who she considers to be a total nerd. Alex is well read, studies hard and pays little attention to how she dresses, which are all reasons for Haley to think Alex is headed down the wrong road. She tries, on occasion, to get Alex to pay more attention to such things, but Alex doesn't seem too interested.Haley has an on-again-off-again boyfriend named Dylan, who is a little older than her and also not very bright. Claire worries that Haley invests too much in this relationship and doesn't think Dylan is the right guy for her. Phil, however, thinks Dylan is cool and, even better, thinks Dylan thinks he is cool. During one of Dylan and Haley's off moments, Phil seems more crushed than Haley.