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Essay about Family Values & Traditions: Prompts + Examples

A family values essay (or a family traditions essay) is a type of written assignment. It covers such topics as family traditions, customs, family history, and values. It is usually assigned to those who study sociology, culture, anthropology, and creative writing.

In this article, you will find:

• 150 family values essay topics
• Outline structure
• Thesis statement examples
• “Family values” essay sample
• “Family traditions” essay sample
• “What does family mean to you?” essay sample.

Learn how to write your college essay about family with our guide.

• 👪 What Is a Family Values Essay about?
• 💡 Topic Ideas
• 📑 Outlining Your Essay️
• 🏠️ Family Values: Essay Example
• 🎃 Family Traditions: Essay Example
• 😍 What Does Family Mean to You: Essay Example

👪 Family Values Essay: What Is It about?

What are family values.

Family values are usually associated with a traditional family. In western culture, it is called “ a nuclear family .”

A nuclear family represents a family with a husband, wife, and children living together.

The nuclear family became common in the 1960s – 1970s. That happened because of the post-war economic boom and the health service upgrade. That allowed elder relatives to live separately from their children.

These days, the nuclear family is no longer the most common type of family. There are various forms of families: 

• Single-parent families
• Non-married parents
• Blended families
• Couples with no children
• Foster parents, etc.

How did the nuclear family become so wide-spread?

The nuclear family culture was mostly spread in western cultures. According to many historians, it was because of the Christian beliefs.

However, many people believe that Christianity was not the only reason. The industrial revolution also played a significant role.

Nowadays, the understanding of the term varies from person to person. It depends on their religious, personal, or cultural beliefs.

Family Values List

Cultural background plays a significant role in every family’s values. However, each family has its own customs and traditions as well.

Some common types of family values include:

• Having a sense of justice
• Being honest
• Being respectful to others
• Being patient
• Being responsible
• Having courage
• Participating in teamwork
• Being generous
• Volunteering
• Being respectful
• Featuring dignity
• Demonstrating humanity
• Saving salary
• Prioritizing education
• Doing your best at work
• Maintaining respectful relationships with coworkers/classmates
• Being caring
• Willing to learn
• Treating others with respect
• Being modest
• Family game nights
• Family vacations
• Family meals
• Being patriotic
• Being tolerant
• Following the law
• Being open-minded

💡 150 Family Values Essay Topics

If you find it challenging to choose a family values topic for your essay, here is the list of 150 topics.

• Social family values and their impact on children.
• Divorce: Psychological Effects on Children.
• Do family values define your personality?
• Toys, games, and gender socialization.
• The correlation between teamwork and your upbringing.
• Family Structure and Its Effects on Children.
• What does honesty have to do with social values?
• Solution Focused Therapy in Marriage and Family.
• The importance of being respectful to others.
• Parent-Child Relationships and Parental Authority.
• Political family values and their impact on children.
• Postpartum Depression Effect on Children Development.
• The importance of patriotism.
• Social factors and family issues.
• Is being open-minded crucial in modern society?
• Modern Society: American Family Values.
• What role does tolerance play in modern society?
• Does hard work identify your success?
• Family involvement impact on student achievement.
• Religious family values and their impact on children.
• Native American Women Raising Children off the Reservation.
• What does spiritual learning correlate with family values?
• Modest relations and their importance.
• The role of parental involvement.
• What is violence, and why is it damaging?
• Myths of the Gifted Children.
• Work family values and their impact on children.
• When Should Children Start School?
• Does salary saving help your family?
• Family as a System and Systems Theory.
• Why should education be a priority?
• Child-free families and their values.
• Family violence effects on family members.
• Why is doing your best work important for your family?
• School-Family-Community Partnership Policies.
• Moral values and their impact on children.
• Does being trustworthy affect your family values?
• Gender Inequality in the Study of the Family.
• Can you add your value to the world?
• Your responsibility and your family.
• Family in the US culture and society.
• Recreational family values and their impact.
• Balancing a Career and Family Life for Women.
• Family vacations and their effects on relationships.
• Family meal and its impact on family traditions.
• Children Play: Ingredient Needed in Children’s Learning.
• Family prayer in religious families.
• Family changes in American and African cultures.
• Hugs impact on family ties.
• Are bedtime stories important for children?
• How Video Games Affect Children.
• Do family game nights affect family bonding?
• Divorce Remarriage and Children Questions.
• What is the difference between tradition and heritage culture?
• How Autistic Children Develop and Learn?
• The true meaning of family values.
• Egypt families in changed and traditional forms.
• Does culture affect family values?
• Are family values a part of heritage?
• The Development of Secure and Insecure Attachments in Children.
• Does supporting family traditions impact character traits?
• Parents’ Accountability for Children’s Actions.
• Does your country’s history affect your family’s values?
• Do family traditions help with solving your family problems?
• Impact of Domestic Violence on Children in the Classroom.
• Does having business with your family affect your bonding?
• Family as a social institution.
• Different weekly family connections ideas and their impact.
• Different monthly family connections ideas and their impact.
• The importance of your family’s daily rituals.
• Group and Family Therapies: Similarities and Differences.
• Holiday family gatherings as an instrument of family bonding.
• Should a family have separate family budgets?
• Parental non-engagement in education.
• Globalization and its impact on family values.
• The difference between small town and big city family values.
• Divorce and how it affects the children.
• Child’s play observation and parent interview.
• Family fights and their impact on the family atmosphere.
• Why are personal boundaries important?
• Single-parent family values.
• Gender Differences in Caring About Children.
• Does being an only child affect one’s empathy?
• Grandparents’ involvement in children upbringing.
• Use of Social Networks by Underage Children.
• Same-sex marriage and its contribution to family values.
• Does surrogacy correspond to family values?
• Are women better parents than men?
• Does the age gap between children affect their relationship?
• Does having pets affect family bonding?
• Parenting Gifted Children Successfully Score.
• Having a hobby together and its impact.
• Discuss living separately from your family.
• Shopping together with your family and its impact on your family values.
• Movie nights as a family tradition.
• Parents’ perception of their children’s disability.
• Does being in the same class affect children’s relationships?
• Does sharing a room with your siblings affect your relationship?
• Raising Awareness on the Importance of Preschool Education Among Parents.
• Pros and cons of having a nanny.
• Do gadgets affect your children’s social values?
• The Role of Parents in Underage Alcohol Use and Abuse.
• Pros and cons of homeschooling.
• Limiting children’s Internet usage time and their personal boundaries.
• Is having an heirloom important?
• Divorce influence on children’s mental health.
• Is daycare beneficial?
• Should your parents-in-law be involved in your family?
• Children’s Foster Care and Associated Problems.
• Pets’ death and its impact on children’s social values.
• Clinical Map of Family Therapy.
• Passing of a relative and its impact on the family.
• How Do Parents See the Influence of Social Media Advertisements on Their Children?
• Relationship within a family with an adopted child.
• Discuss naming your child after grandparents.
• The Effects of Post-Divorce Relationships on Children.
• Discuss the issue of spoiling children.
• Discuss nuclear family values.
• Parental Involvement in Second Language Learning.
• Children’s toys and their impact on children’s values.
• Discuss the children’s rivalry phenomenon.
• Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act History.
• Relationship between parents and its impact on children.
• Lockdown and its impact on family values.
• Financial status and children’s social values.
• Do parents’ addictions affect children?
• Corporal punishment and its effects on children.
• Discuss step-parents’ relationship with children.
• Severe diseases in the family and their impact.
• Developing Family Relationship Skills to Prevent Substance Abuse Among Youth Population.
• Arranged marriages and their family values.
• Discuss the age gap in marriages.
• The Effects of Parental Involvement on Student Achievement.
• International families and their values.
• Early marriages and their family values.
• Parental Divorce Impact on Children’s Academic Success.
• Discuss parenting and family structure after divorce.
• Mental Illness in Children and Its Effects on Parents.
• Discuss family roles and duties.
• Healthy habits and their importance in the family.
• Growing-up Family Experience and the Interpretive Style in Childhood Social Anxiety.
• Discuss different family practices.
• Dealing With Parents: Schools Problem.
• Ancestors worship as a family value.
• The importance of family speech.
• Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?
• Mutual respect as a core of a traditional family.
• Experiential Family Psychotherapy.
• Should the law protect the family values?
• Family as a basic unit of society.

Couldn’t find the perfect topic for your paper? Use our essay topic generator !

📑 Family Values Essay Outline

The family values essay consists of an introduction, body, and conclusion. You can write your essay in five paragraphs:

• One introductory paragraph
• Three body paragraphs
• One conclusion paragraph.

Family values or family history essay are usually no more than 1000 words long.

What do you write in each of them?

Learn more on the topic from our article that describes outline-making rules .

Thesis Statement about Family Values

The thesis statement is the main idea of your essay. It should be the last sentence of the introduction paragraph .

Why is a thesis statement essential?

It gives the reader an idea of what your essay is about.

The thesis statement should not just state your opinion but rather be argumentative. For the five-paragraph family values essay, you can express one point in your thesis statement.

Let’s take a look at good and bad thesis statement about family values templates.

Need a well-formulated thesis statement? You are welcome to use our thesis-making tool !

🏠️ Family Values Essay: Example & Writing Prompts

So, what do you write in your family values essay?

Start with choosing your topic. For this type of essay, it can be the following:

• Your reflection about your family’s values
• The most common family values in your country
• Your opinion on family values.

Let’s say you want to write about your family values. What do you include in your essay?

First, introduce family values definition and write your thesis statement.

Then, in the body part, write about your family’s values and their impact on you (one for each paragraph).

Finally, sum up your essay.

Family Values Essay Sample: 250 Words

🎃 Family Traditions Essay: Example & Writing Prompts

Family traditions essay covers such topics as the following:

• Family traditions in the USA (in England, in Spain, in Pakistan, etc.)
• Traditions in my family
• The importance of family traditions for children.
• My favorite family traditions

After you decide on your essay topic, make an outline.

For the introduction part, make sure to introduce the traditions that you are going to write about. You can also mention the definition of traditions.

In the body part, introduce one tradition for each paragraph. Make sure to elaborate on why they are essential for you and your family.

Finally, sum up your essay in the conclusion part.

Family Traditions Essay Sample: 250 Words

😍 What Does Family Mean to You Essay: Example & Writing Prompts

The family definition essay covers your opinion on family and its importance for you.

Some of the questions that can help you define your topic:

• How has your family shaped your character?
• How can you describe your upbringing?

In the introduction part, you can briefly cover the importance of family in modern society. Then make sure to state your thesis.

As for the body parts, you can highlight three main ideas of your essay (one for each paragraph).

Finally, sum up your essay in the conclusion part. Remember that you can restate your thesis statement here.

What Does Family Mean to You Essay Sample: 250 Words

Now you have learned how to write your family values essay. What values have you got from your family? Let us know in the comments below!

❓ Family Values FAQ

Family values are the principles, traditions, and beliefs that are upheld in a family. They depend on family’s cultural, religious, and geographical background. They might be moral values, social values, work values, political values, recreational values, religious values, etc. These values are usually passed on to younger generations and may vary from family to family.

Why are family values important?

Family values are important because they have a strong impact on children’s upbringing. These values might influence children’s behavior, personality, attitude, and character traits. These can affect how the children are going to build their own families in the future.

What are Christian family values?

Some Christian family values are the following: 1. Sense of justice 2. Being thankful 3. Having wisdom 4. Being compassion 5. Willing to learn 6. Treating others with respect 7. Modesty

What are traditional family values?

Each family has its own values. However, they do have a lot of resemblances. Some traditional family values are the following: 1. Having responsibilities to your family 2. Being respectful to your family members 3. Not hurting your family members 4. Compromising

Family Values: What They Are, What They Are And Examples

Every time we have thought that the families of our friends or close acquaintances are different from ours, we usually end up reflecting on the reason for their priorities. Families form a system of values ​​that is generally transmitted from generation to generation, a system that allows them to evaluate the most appropriate and healthy ways to achieve interpersonal and intrapersonal coexistence.

Family values are the fundamental beliefs, principles, and norms that guide the behaviors, attitudes, and interactions within a family unit. These values shape the family’s identity, culture, and cohesion, influencing how members communicate, relate to one another, and navigate life’s challenges together. In this article, we delve into the significance, components, and importance of family values in fostering strong and resilient relationships.

Table of Contents

What are family values

Family values ​​are precepts, norms or agreements that guide the members of each family to have a harmonious, fluid and balanced coexistence. Generally, family values ​​are based on various concepts of love. Love as the basis of different relationships usually leads to a coexistence of tolerance, mutual growth, respect, solidarity and empathy. That is, family values direct attitudes, interests and thoughts towards human development

As Ramos explains (1) , boys and girls need to be educated based on the existence of clear, well-configured values ​​with a coherence that gives them credibility. Double speech or double life cannot exist here because experiences are transmitted and lived. On the other hand, children learn from home even when their parents have no intention of doing so due to the powerful factor of imitation.

The notion of good and evil is not something innate in children; it is adults, with their way of approving or disapproving certain attitudes, who will propose the rules. For example, from the age of 3, good is what makes mom happy and calm and bad is what makes her angry; This is how the child’s moral conscience is born. In the following article you will find more information about Ethical Values: what they are, list and examples.

Significance of Family Values

Family values serve as the cornerstone of healthy and functional family dynamics, providing a framework for:

• Identity Formation : Family values help shape individuals’ sense of identity, belonging, and self-concept by instilling a shared set of beliefs, traditions, and customs.
• Socialization : Family values play a crucial role in socializing children and teaching them essential life skills, moral principles, and ethical standards that guide their behavior and decision-making.
• Relationship Building : Family values foster strong bonds, trust, and communication among family members, promoting empathy, understanding, and mutual respect.
• Conflict Resolution : Family values serve as a foundation for resolving conflicts, managing disagreements, and promoting forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing within the family unit.

Components of Family Values

Family values encompass a wide range of beliefs, attitudes, and practices, including:

• Love and Support : Unconditional love, acceptance, and emotional support are central to family values, fostering a sense of security, belonging, and well-being among all members.
• Respect and Empathy : Respect for individual differences, perspectives, and boundaries promotes empathy, tolerance, and harmonious relationships within the family.
• Communication and Trust : Open, honest, and respectful communication builds trust, transparency, and understanding among family members, facilitating meaningful connections and problem-solving.
• Responsibility and Accountability : Teaching responsibility, accountability, and integrity instills a strong work ethic, moral values, and a sense of duty to oneself and others.
• Tradition and Ritual : Honoring family traditions, rituals, and celebrations fosters a sense of continuity, heritage, and belonging across generations, strengthening family bonds and collective identity.

Importance of Family Values

Family values play a vital role in shaping individuals’ attitudes, behaviors, and relationships, contributing to:

• Stability and Resilience : Strong family values provide a stable foundation that helps family members navigate life’s challenges, transitions, and crises with resilience and adaptability.
• Well-Being and Mental Health : A supportive family environment characterized by positive values promotes emotional well-being, self-esteem, and mental health for all members.
• Social Connectedness : Family values reinforce the importance of social connectedness, fostering a sense of belonging, community, and solidarity that extends beyond the immediate family unit.
• Generational Legacy : Passing down family values from one generation to the next preserves cultural heritage, traditions, and wisdom, ensuring continuity and cohesion within the family lineage.

Defining family values ​​for children

Family values ​​are all those recommendations that our parents have given us at certain times or recommendations on how we should behave with our friends, family and neighbors. It is also all the advice that they give us on how to deal with the things that worry us, make us sad or upset.

Many times family values ​​guide us to respect any living being, including schoolmates, friends, siblings, cousins, teachers, animals, nature and any other person we know. That attitude of respect that family values ​​teach us allows us to accept and promote the freedom of every living being.

List of family values

The most important family values ​​are the following:

• Solidarity.
• Resilience.
• Responsibility.
• Compassion.
• Conviction.
• Discipline.
• Independence.
• Commitment.
• Perseverance.
• Self-control.
• Friendship.

If you want to know more about other types of values, in the following article you will find information about the 20 Professional Values: what they are, list and examples.

Examples of family values

Finally, it is important to be aware that family values ​​teach us to live with our peers, although without a doubt we are not all the same. Below we leave you some examples of how to apply family values ​​in our lives:

• Solidarity and equity : We are not all the same nor have we lived the same experiences. A child who has grown up in a community far removed from the city with few services at home (for example, electricity and water) will be relatively limited in some aspects in relation to another who has grown up in the metropolis (with more services and access than facilitate their development); both children despite differences in their performance (social, academic, emotional, cognitive, and so on). Both express the same interest in growing, so solidarity guides us towards supporting the interests of both. A child who learns that there will be notable differences in people will know that this does not correspond to the exception of the practice of family values.
• Gratitude : the learning of this family value is observed, for example, in those moments where the child is taught the corresponding social skills – especially in recognizing how important a person and his or her efforts are – guiding him or her to practice verbal and bodily gestures. (a hug, a handshake and its corresponding articulation). Here we explain what gratitude is and how it is practiced.
• Empathy : An example from childhood of this family value is the frequent attitude of the child when he observes one of his classmates or a little brother crying and he approaches to ask – What’s wrong? – and maybe a few pats on the back too. Empathy allows the human being – and in this case the child – to try to understand the emotional life and everything else that happens in the people, events and animals that surround them.
• Friendship : From childhood we must be able to learn the value of friendship, mutual affection and the loyalty that is born from contact with others.

Family values are the bedrock of strong, nurturing, and harmonious relationships, providing guidance, stability, and support for individuals and families as they navigate life’s journey together. By upholding and embodying positive family values, individuals can cultivate a sense of belonging, purpose, and fulfillment within their family units, fostering bonds that endure through time and adversity.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Family values: what they are, what they are and examples we recommend that you enter our Social Psychology category.

• Maria Ramos. (2000). To educate in values. theory and practice. UC Edition.

• What Are Family Values...

What Are Family Values Exactly and Are They Important?

by Rick Stephens

What are family values? Do they differ from other values? Are they important? Do you need them? Can they change? Most parents trying to raise thoughtful and responsible kids find themselves asking these kinds of questions more often than you might think.

Most of us believe we are clear on our values and generally live our lives accordingly. But then we get married and perhaps have children. Suddenly, we’re tested in all kinds of ways, making some small and some very large decisions that affect our partners and our kids. It’s then that we realize our priorities might have to change.

For some, that comes easily. For others, it can be a difficult evolution. At Raising Families, we talk about values and family values a lot. We want to make sure you’re clear on what exactly family values are and why they’re important.

Personal Values Help You Make Decisions

Personal values are the characteristics or habits that motivate us to make a particular decision or act one way or another. Whether we consciously think about it or not, we all have our own values that guide the decisions we make and how we live day-to-day.

Our values provide the foundation for nearly all decisions we make as individuals and as parents. They determine our priorities and often are the measure by which we decide if we are living our best life. That’s why it matters that we become familiar with our true values and figure out if those are family values we want to pass on to our children.

What Are Family Values?

Family values are the values you and your partner intentionally or unintentionally use to guide your family. These are most likely a combination of your and your partner’s personal values. And yes, they can absolutely change over time as your children mature and you both gain wisdom and insight as parents.

Even if you haven’t had a discussion with your partner or as a family about the values you believe are important for your family, you’ve been basing the family decisions on your family values. These can include decisions about what you do together, where you live, and how you spend the family money.

Here are some examples of both personal and/or family values:

• Love and respect for others
• Honesty and openness
• Patience or tolerance
• Forgiveness
• The importance of hard work
• Flexibility
• Wanting to learn
• Spirituality
• Importance of education
• Personal accountability

Personal and Family Values Aren’t Always the Same

Your family values will most likely overlap with your personal ones, but they can include different ones as well. Personal values at work may not be appropriate to the family setting. Maybe you value being right and having the last word in your business environment, but you may soon find that children play by different rules than employees.

Do you value having quiet and obedient children? Or do you want them to feel seen and heard and be intrinsically motivated to contribute to the family team? You may want to revise your priority of being right and instead prioritize connection before correction.

That may look like you doing the internal work to stop yelling at your children for minor mistakes (valuing control and being right) and instead finding a way to take a breath and work on problem-solving together (valuing your relationship more than rule following).

Maybe you’re fine (prefer even) eating lunch by yourself and scrolling social media every day at work. At home, however, you feel strongly that eating together as a family each night is an important tradition. It makes you feel like a good parent, so you make a commitment to share that time, free of cell phones and other distractions.

Understanding our personal values raises our level of self-awareness and helps us to be more thoughtful and intentional with our children and partners. Ultimately that makes for happier, more cooperative, and higher functioning families.

How Family Influences Your Values

Values will be different for everyone. Your personal and family values are based on things that you’ve been exposed to and that influence you. You can get your values from your parents, your beliefs, the media, or the experiences you’ve had, to name a few.

Your family can be one of the most influential things when it comes to developing your own values, which is one of the reasons it’s so important to be intentional with your family values. Even without meaning to, you are passing on your values to your children  in an unconscious way through everyday interactions, simple conversations, and how you use your resources like time, money, and attention. This can create a problem if your children often spend time with extended family and their values don’t align with your family values .

Why Family Values Are Important

Whether you’ve intentionally thought about your family values or not, you have them. If you don’t intentionally decide on what your family values are, you end up making decisions that ultimately impact your entire family based on things that may not be important to you or your family.

Another way of saying it is your family values represent what your family judges to be important in life. If your family believes something is important, you’ll spend time and money to acquire it. If not, your family won’t care as much about having it.

Your finances, time, and emotional stamina can be invested in any number of ways. The key to living an intentional and fulfilled life is to align those investments with your family values.

One of the keys to a prosperous and harmonious family life is aligning those values with those of your partner. If you aren’t sure what your values are or whether or not they’re aligned with your partner’s, take a look at your actions. Your actions reflect what you value. Are your actions consistent with what you believe your values are? If not, how can you change your actions to show what you do value?

If you know that your actions, the results of your decisions, are rooted in your values, then it only follows that what you experience in life is directly related to those values.

Just because you say you value something doesn’t mean your actions support it. With new awareness, however, you have the power to make changes in the right direction.

It is paramount that you talk as a family team about your values, why you make the decisions you do, what’s most important to you, and whether your values are really in sync with your behaviors. Remember, values are the root of everything.

Values Are At the Root of Everything

A workbook for parents to identify and align their family values around money, time, and emotional resources.

• Designed for parents to do together
• 16 page PDF workbook
• Includes four simple exercises to do together

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Rick Stephens

Rick Stephens is a co-founder of Raising Families. With 33 years of experience as a top-level executive at The Boeing Company and having raised four children of his own, he is able to support parents and grandparents by incorporating his knowledge of business, leadership, and complex systems into the family setting.

In his free time Rick enjoys road biking, scuba diving, visiting his grandkids, and generally trying to figure out which time zone he’s in this week. Read full bio >>

Essay about Family: What It Is and How to Nail It

Humans naturally seek belonging within families, finding comfort in knowing someone always cares. Yet, families can also stir up insecurities and mental health struggles.

Family dynamics continue to intrigue researchers across different fields. Every year, new studies explore how these relationships shape our minds and emotions.

In this article, our dissertation service will guide you through writing a family essay. You can also dive into our list of topics for inspiration and explore some standout examples to spark your creativity.

What is Family Essay

A family essay takes a close look at the bonds and experiences within families. It's a common academic assignment, especially in subjects like sociology, psychology, and literature.

So, what's involved exactly? Simply put, it's an exploration of what family signifies to you. You might reflect on cherished family memories or contemplate the portrayal of families in various media.

What sets a family essay apart is its personal touch. It allows you to express your own thoughts and experiences. Moreover, it's versatile – you can analyze family dynamics, reminisce about family customs, or explore other facets of familial life.

If you're feeling uncertain about how to write an essay about family, don't worry; you can explore different perspectives and select topics that resonate with various aspects of family life.

Tips For Writing An Essay On Family Topics

A family essay typically follows a free-form style, unless specified otherwise, and adheres to the classic 5-paragraph structure. As you jot down your thoughts, aim to infuse your essay with inspiration and the essence of creative writing, unless your family essay topics lean towards complexity or science.

Here are some easy-to-follow tips from our essay service experts:

• Focus on a Specific Aspect: Instead of a broad overview, delve into a specific angle that piques your interest, such as exploring how birth order influences sibling dynamics or examining the evolving role of grandparents in modern families.
• Share Personal Anecdotes: Start your family essay introduction with a personal touch by sharing stories from your own experiences. Whether it's about a favorite tradition, a special trip, or a tough time, these stories make your writing more interesting.
• Use Real-life Examples: Illustrate your points with concrete examples or anecdotes. Draw from sources like movies, books, historical events, or personal interviews to bring your ideas to life.
• Explore Cultural Diversity: Consider the diverse array of family structures across different cultures. Compare traditional values, extended family systems, or the unique hurdles faced by multicultural families.
• Take a Stance: Engage with contentious topics such as homeschooling, reproductive technologies, or governmental policies impacting families. Ensure your arguments are supported by solid evidence.
• Delve into Psychology: Explore the psychological underpinnings of family dynamics, touching on concepts like attachment theory, childhood trauma, or patterns of dysfunction within families.
• Emphasize Positivity: Share uplifting stories of families overcoming adversity or discuss strategies for nurturing strong, supportive family bonds.
• Offer Practical Solutions: Wrap up your essay by proposing actionable solutions to common family challenges, such as fostering better communication, achieving work-life balance, or advocating for family-friendly policies.

Family Essay Topics

When it comes to writing, essay topics about family are often considered easier because we're intimately familiar with our own families. The more you understand about your family dynamics, traditions, and experiences, the clearer your ideas become.

If you're feeling uninspired or unsure of where to start, don't worry! Below, we have compiled a list of good family essay topics to help get your creative juices flowing. Whether you're assigned this type of essay or simply want to explore the topic, these suggestions from our history essay writer are tailored to spark your imagination and prompt meaningful reflection on different aspects of family life.

So, take a moment to peruse the list. Choose the essay topics about family that resonate most with you. Then, dive in and start exploring your family's stories, traditions, and connections through your writing.

• Supporting Family Through Tough Times
• Staying Connected with Relatives
• Empathy and Compassion in Family Life
• Strengthening Bonds Through Family Gatherings
• Quality Time with Family: How Vital Is It?
• Navigating Family Relationships Across Generations
• Learning Kindness and Generosity in a Large Family
• Communication in Healthy Family Dynamics
• Forgiveness in Family Conflict Resolution
• Building Trust Among Extended Family
• Defining Family in Today's World
• Understanding Nuclear Family: Various Views and Cultural Differences
• Understanding Family Dynamics: Relationships Within the Family Unit
• What Defines a Family Member?
• Modernizing the Nuclear Family Concept
• Exploring Shared Beliefs Among Family Members
• Evolution of the Concept of Family Love Over Time
• Examining Family Expectations
• Modern Standards and the Idea of an Ideal Family
• Life Experiences and Perceptions of Family Life
• Genetics and Extended Family Connections
• Utilizing Family Trees for Ancestral Links
• The Role of Younger Siblings in Family Dynamics
• Tracing Family History Through Oral Tradition and Genealogy
• Tracing Family Values Through Your Family Tree
• Exploring Your Elder Sister's Legacy in the Family Tree
• Connecting Daily Habits to Family History
• Documenting and Preserving Your Family's Legacy
• Navigating Online Records and DNA Testing for Family History
• Tradition as a Tool for Family Resilience
• Involving Family in Daily Life to Maintain Traditions
• Creating New Traditions for a Small Family
• The Role of Traditions in Family Happiness
• Family Recipes and Bonding at House Parties
• Quality Time: The Secret Tradition for Family Happiness
• The Joy of Cousins Visiting for Christmas
• Including Family in Birthday Celebrations
• Balancing Traditions and Unconditional Love
• Building Family Bonds Through Traditions

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Family Essay Example

For a better grasp of the essay on family, our team of skilled writers has crafted a great example. It looks into the subject matter, allowing you to explore and understand the intricacies involved in creating compelling family essays. So, check out our meticulously crafted sample to discover how to craft essays that are not only well-written but also thought-provoking and impactful.

Final Outlook

In wrapping up, let's remember: a family essay gives students a chance to showcase their academic skills and creativity by sharing personal stories. However, it's important to stick to academic standards when writing about these topics. We hope our list of topics sparked your creativity and got you on your way to a reflective journey. And if you hit a rough patch, you can just ask us to ' do my essay for me ' for top-notch results!

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FAQs on Writing an Essay about Family

Family essays seem like something school children could be assigned at elementary schools, but family is no less important than climate change for our society today, and therefore it is one of the most central research themes.

Below you will find a list of frequently asked questions on family-related topics. Before you conduct research, scroll through them and find out how to write an essay about your family.

How to Write an Essay About Your Family History?

How to write an essay about a family member, how to write an essay about family and roots, how to write an essay about the importance of family.

Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

Related Articles

Essay on Importance Of Family Values

Students are often asked to write an essay on Importance Of Family Values in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Importance Of Family Values

What are family values.

Family values are the beliefs and ideals that families consider important. They guide how family members treat each other and others outside the family. Common values include honesty, kindness, and respect.

Teaching Respect and Love

Support and strength.

Family values give support. When life is hard, family members help each other. This makes everyone feel strong and able to face challenges.

Guiding Choices

Values help children make good choices. Knowing what is right and wrong helps them grow into responsible adults who can take care of themselves and others.

250 Words Essay on Importance Of Family Values

One important family value is respect. When children learn to respect their parents and siblings, they also learn to respect others. This helps them make friends and do well in school. Love is another key value. When family members show love to one another, they feel safe and happy. This love helps kids grow up to be caring adults.

Families that share strong values give each other support. For example, they help with homework or cheer at sports games. This support makes family members feel strong, even when they face tough times. It also means they have people to turn to for help and advice.

Passing Down Traditions

Family values include traditions, like holiday meals or weekend outings. These traditions create lasting memories and bring everyone closer. They also teach kids about their family’s history and culture, which is important for their identity.

In short, family values are very important. They teach kids how to act, help families support each other, and keep traditions alive. These values shape children into good people and create a loving home where everyone feels they belong.

500 Words Essay on Importance Of Family Values

Family values are the beliefs and ideas that families think are important. They are like a hidden guide that teaches us how to behave, how to tell right from wrong, and how to treat other people. These values include things like being honest, kind, and respectful to others. Just like a tree gets strength from its roots, we get our strength and shape from our family values.

Learning Good Behavior

Feeling safe and loved.

A family that has strong values creates a safe space for everyone. When children feel safe and loved, they grow up to be confident and happy. They know their family will always support them, even when they make mistakes. This feeling of security is like a cozy blanket that keeps us warm and protected.

Helping Each Other

Families with good values help each other, just like a team. When one person is having a tough time, others step in to help. This teaches us that we are not alone and that it is good to help others. It’s like passing the ball in a soccer game so that the team can score a goal.

Respecting Differences

Family values also teach us to respect people who are different from us. In a family, everyone is unique, but they all are loved the same. This helps us understand that in the big world, people may look or think differently, and that’s okay. We learn to treat everyone with kindness, no matter what they look like or believe in.

Working Hard

Staying together in tough times.

Life can sometimes be hard, like a storm that shakes the trees. But just like trees with strong roots stay standing, families with strong values stay together during tough times. They talk to each other, solve problems together, and keep each other strong. This teaches us that no matter what happens, we can get through it if we stick together.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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27 Top Family Values Examples (to Strive For)

When someone says they have “family values”, they typically mean that they put their family above all else.

Sometimes, family values also refers to the idea that they uphold certain moral and ethical principles that were instilled in them through their childhood by their parents or other family members.

These principles ostensibly guide their behavior, decision-making, and importantly, affect who they will choose to have a relationship with (the idea being that they seek someone else whose personal values embrace the same family values as them).

Definition of Family Values

The term ‘family values’ is vague and contextual to the point you may have to ask the person who says they have family values to unpack what it means to them.

Key ideas that it might entail include:

• Valuaing behaviors and morals that are conducive to the raising of children
• Valuing the behaviors and morals that were given to you by your parents
• Valuing and loving your family above all else

The term is also often used as shorthand to suggest a traditional or conservative perspective on ethics and morality, often associated with strong beliefs in traditional marriage, the importance of the role of the parent, respect for authority figures within the family, and sometimes even religious principles (such as principles about the family found in religious texts or teachings).

For example, someone who adheres to “family values” in a traditional or conservative sense may prioritize a same-sex marriage that can lead to raising children and maintaining a stable family unit. They may place high importance on traditional gender roles within the family. Similarly, there may be a sense of commitment to family activities that are conducive to raising a well-mannered child.

Nevertheless, as I’m sure many of my readers would argue, many people’s idea of ‘family values’ may differ from the conservative image outlined above, and again I’d refer back to the idea that ‘family values’ is a rather vague concept, sometimes to the point of being entirely meaningless beyond saying “I think family is extremely important to me.”

Family Values Examples

The below examples of family values may represent what many people mean when they use the term, but as I hope I’ve already stressed, the term’s vagueness means it is hard to pin-down exactly what someone means when they use the term.

1. Family First

When referring to family values, we’re often referring to the fact that we place family above all else. We need to have this mindset in order to be good providers to our children.

When individuals make a conscious decision to put their families first it sends the message that their loved ones’ well-being takes precedence over other competing interests.

This can manifest itself in various ways – be it spending more quality time together by scheduling regular outings or setting aside time for meaningful bonding activities; making personal adjustments (changing work schedules or geographic location), and ensuring uninterrupted quality time at home even in the face of outside obligations .

Prioritizing family provides emotional support where members can depend on each other for encouragement, guidance and fulfilment of shared values.

Moreover, putting family first lays the foundation for passing down valuable lessons including teamwork, collaboration and empathy towards others – qualities that shape children into emotionally intelligent adults capable of nurturing relationships towards building stronger communities.

Loyalty is a fundamental value that plays a crucial role in building strong and healthy families. It refers to the commitment and dedication that members have towards each other, especially during challenging times.

Loyalty is demonstrated when family members support and defend each other through thick and thin, regardless of their personal opinions or disagreements.

For instance, if one family member faces an adverse situation, all others must come forward without any delay or hesitation to stand by them.

Loyalty also means supporting one another’s goals and aspirations while helping them overcome any obstacles they might encounter along the way.

Moreover, loyalty helps to maintain family bonds even through turbulent times such as financial hardships or unexpected life events such as illnesses or deaths. Having strong relationships with family members ensures no one feels alone in difficult situations resulting in more positive communal outcomes – be it sharing resources or emotional support.

3. Caring for One Another

Caring for one another is an essential family value that facilitates the development of meaningful relationships, support systems, and emotional well-being. It refers to the act of showing concern for each other’s physical, emotional, and social needs.

Caring for one another is demonstrated by sharing responsibilities and helping out in everyday tasks such as cooking a meal together or offering assistance with household chores or errands. The ability to make small gestures shows an interest in contributing to another person’s comfort.

Emotional support is equally important when it comes to caring in a family context. It involves being there for family members through challenging times such as sicknesses, breakups or job losses – offering a listening ear as well as words of encouragement.

Family members who practice compassion and empathy towards each other in all circumstances creates strong bonds within the unit – leading to better mental health outcomes including reduction in stress levels, anxiety or depression.

4. Community

When it’s time to settle down and raise a family, people often return to small towns or tight-knit communities where they can ‘put down roots’. Part of the appeal of this is that you can have a close-knit and safe community in which you can raise your children.

A solid community that cares for its children fosters the creation of supportive and positive social networks beyond the immediate household.

Being part of a community allows family members to form meaningful relationships with others outside their home and provides opportunities to engage in activities that can be beneficial for the entire family. Children learn new things and broaden their horizons from interacting with various members of society including building social skills.

Community involvement teaches children that as members of a larger group, we are responsible towards contributing positively towards the betterment of others too.

5. Quality Time

In today’s fast-paced and technology-driven world, quality time has become an extremely valuable commodity for many families. It refers to the time that family members spend together in meaningful ways, building strong connections and relationships with each other.

Often, when we talk about wanting a partner with family values, we’re using it as a shorthand to say we want to be with someone who has time for their family.

Quality time is also important because it helps to create a sense of security and belonging within the family unit. When children feel loved, valued, and supported by their parents and siblings, they are more likely to develop self-confidence and a positive self-image which makes them emotionally stronger individuals ready for challenges in life.

By spending quality time together, families can also establish traditions that hold significance throughout generations. Simple weekend routines or holiday traditions can be the glue that keeps everyone close-knit even when busy schedules may be pulling them apart.

Related: The 8 Types of Values

It is very common to hear the phrase ‘family values’ being promoted by religious adherents, whereby they believe their religion teaches values that are conducive to a good family life.

Religion can provide a sense of structure and order within family life, with regular attendance at services, prayer, or other rituals creating an anchor or routine for families to come back to.

Having a shared faith can also promote strong moral and ethical principles among family members. Faith-based values such as love, forgiveness, compassion and humility become central tenets within families that help guide them in making decisions throughout life.

7. Hard Work

Hard work and work ethic are important family values that emphasize the importance of diligence, perseverance, and responsibility towards one’s professional or personal goals .

This value embodies the discipline to continuously strive for success by setting and achieving measurable targets as a marking of progress.

Teaching hard work within families can set children on the path to establishing a successful life and avoiding a path of delinquence. They learn that sustained commitment is required beyond any instant gratification periods in order to achieve long term rewards.

Work ethic also helps instill a sense of pride and accomplishment when meeting targets and achieving desired results thereby increasing self-esteem.      

Moreover, embodying this value teaches children discipline necessary for both academic pursuits as well as any personal projects they may undertake in life – hobbies that bring them joy too!

As parents model industrious behavior within their careers it sets an example for their children about financial management – showing how only diligent effort can lead to their dreams being met.

Honesty is a critical family value that emphasizes the importance of having truthfulness, integrity and transparency in all interactions and relationships within the immediate household. 

Honesty ensures that every individual understands the value of telling the truth, being transparent in their communication, actions or even intentions. This involvement strengthens emotional ties and builds a solid foundation of trust – one where mutual respect thrives.

By establishing honesty as a core family value, parents or guardians can set an example for how children communicate with each other.

They understand that dishonest behavior damages foundations of communication – creating strife- leading to difficulty problem solving – thereby making interpersonal relationships challenging overt time.

Moreover, imparts important life skills- understanding personal ownership of consequences while boosting self-awareness beyond just instant gratification living.

Honesty reinforces community values by demonstrating appropriate ways to navigate difficult conversations and maintain a strong reputation within your work and social environments.

Respectfulness highlights the significance of treating each other with courtesy, consideration and equality.

When family members treat each other with respect, it leads to better communication, better understanding and more positive engagement in day-to-day activities. This is because everyone feels valued and appreciated which helps foster good relations among everybody irrespective of differences that may exist.

Respect in a family context also involves recognizing individual choices and genuinely considering the opinions of each family member during shared decision-making processes- whether big or small.

When all members feel heard and considered when varying viewpoints are given fair weightage it results in more productive outcomes.

Moreover, fostering respect helps instill an environment for children where they are encouraged to be kind towards others, promoting empathy and strong character development. 

10. Accountability

Accountability as a family value refers to the idea that family members should be responsible for their actions and decisions, and are willing to accept the consequences of those actions.

One of the ways in which accountability becomes a family value is through communication. When family members communicate openly and honestly with each other, they are more likely to hold themselves accountable for their behavior.

For example, if one family member makes a mistake or behaves inappropriately, they should be held accountable by others in the family who are affected by their actions.

Another way in which accountability can become a family value is by setting clear expectations and boundaries.

Parents need to establish rules and guidelines for behavior within the family unit so that everyone knows what is expected of them. When these expectations are violated, it is important for there to be consequences that reinforce the importance of being accountable.

When accountability becomes one of the core values of a family unit, it not only leads to better communication but also helps build strong relationships based on mutual trust and respect.

Additional Family Values

• Forgiveness
• Open-mindedness
• Self-reliance
• Cooperation
• Self-discipline

Related Article: The Sociology of Values (Why do we have values, anyway?)

While the term ‘family values’ is vague and depends upon the person using it, it generally points toward a mindset of a person whose personal qualities are rooted in family. For these people, family comes above all else, and they behave in a way that is conducive to raising children in a wholesome, safe, and morally upstanding environment. While all families need to come up with their own set of values to live by, generally, if a person says they seek a mate with good family values, they’ll be looking for someone with love and loyalty to their family before anything else.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Self-Actualization Examples (Maslow's Hierarchy)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ Forest Schools Philosophy & Curriculum, Explained!
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ Montessori's 4 Planes of Development, Explained!
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ Montessori vs Reggio Emilia vs Steiner-Waldorf vs Froebel

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How to instill family values that align with your own

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What are family values?

Why family values are important, how do family values affect society, types of family values, 8 family value examples, how to instill values in your family, how family values transfer to the workplace, uncover and implement family values that matter to you.

A huge chunk of your day is spent at work. But for many people, most of their time outside of work is spent with their families.

How that time is spent — and the quality of that time — is often informed by family values.

Not all families consciously instill values in their members. Often, family values get passed down from generation to generation  implicitly. Those values don’t ever get questioned, even if they’re not the right fit for the current generation.

But family values have the power to shape the people you, your partner, your children, and anyone else who is part of your family unit. Whether you’ve explicitly outlined those values or not, they’re present. And once you take ownership of those values, you can shape them to be in line with what you envision your family to be.

Let’s define family values, why they’re important, and how you can instill them into your family starting today.

Family values are similar to personal values  or work values , but they include the entire family. Regardless of what your family looks like, how many parents and children it may (or may not include), these values inform family life and how you deal with challenges as a unit.

They also establish the value system under which children grow up and everyone (old and young) mature and develop as individuals. Family values can guide your entire family to become the kind of people you want to be. And ultimately, if your family includes children, family values can have a huge influence on child-rearing.

These values don’t necessarily have to be focused on child-rearing. They can be aligned with whatever your family most believes in. For example, a family can prioritize quality time together instead of pursuing careers that consume most of your time. This is valid even without children to care for. Family members of all ages are worthy of quality time.

Whenever someone in your family goes through a teachable moment, your family values will shine through. This is true whether those values are intentional or not.

Here’s how family values contribute to your loved ones and relationships.

1. They guide family decisions

Family values define what you and the other people in your family consider to be right or wrong. These values can help you stay consistent when making decisions  in everyday life. They can also guide those decisions in moments of uncertainty.

This is especially true when you’re tempted to make rash decisions based on an emotional reaction . When you have clearly established family values, you can take a step back. Instead of acting impulsively, what do your values suggest is the right course of action?

For instance, how do you deal with someone who has lied to another family member? How do you set boundaries  with your partner and with younger children in the family unit?

2. They provide clarity and structure

Children learn by modeling what the people around them do. Because of the plasticity of their brains , they can adapt and change depending on what environment they grow up in.

When their parents or guardians follow a set of clear values, they have clarity on what is right and wrong. Values give them structure and boundaries within which they can thrive.

On the other hand, unclear values can create inconsistencies for children. They may struggle to figure out right from wrong if their family values constantly change.

And while you may have clear personal values, other adults in the family may have completely different values. When those values clash, it can be confusing for the children involved.

Defining your family values helps avoid confusion and creates a clear definition of right and wrong.

3. They help your family achieve a sense of identity

Growing up is difficult. Children are constantly trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be. And because their brains aren’t fully developed yet, this process can be grueling on its own.

When you add in the other challenges that life can throw at them, you can imagine how hard it is to grow up.

Clear family values can help children build a sense of identity. While the rest of the world around them is uncertain, they know they can rely on their family values to identify themselves.

Family values can also give the family its own sense of identity as a family unit.

4. They improve communication among family members

When values are clear, communication is easier . Everyone is on the same page. All family members are working with the same definition of right and wrong.

It’s much easier to have productive conversations when there isn’t any ambiguity in values. This can help maintain a healthy family dynamic.

Family values are the roots of the next generation. They inform what kind of people our future decision-makers will grow up to become.

For example, if several families implement generosity in their values, the next generation will grow up to be more generous. As a result, adults in this generation are more likely to take other people’s needs into consideration when making important decisions.

While younger generations  are still growing up, they’ll one day be the ones holding positions of power.

They’ll also be the ones to raise the next generation of young people when they have their own families.

In that sense, family values are one of the most impactful components of society. Even if you don’t yet see the connection, your family values are directly connected to how society will evolve .

Most core values for families fall into specific categories.

Here are five types of family values that all families should establish. Not all families will have the same approach to these values, but defining them is important.

1. Relationship to others

Your family likely has a set of values that dictate how to behave around others. These values can also define how you develop relationships with other people .

You don’t just have to define values for how you want to treat the people you have close relationships with. How do you and your family believe you should treat other people in general, including strangers?

Some families believe everyone deserves respect. Other families believe this respect needs to be earned first.

How your family views their relationships with others can also help you determine how to handle unpleasant situations. For instance, how would you deal with children in your family being bullied? Or, how would you react if children in your family bullied someone else?

And how do you treat relationships with your extended family?

These are all important questions to consider when establishing your family values.

2. Relationship with each other

In some cases, the way you handle family relationships will differ from how you handle outside relationships.

For instance, some families work under the assumption that family comes first, no matter what. Other families prefer a more egalitarian approach .

In either case, it’s important to define values that determine how family members treat each other. These values can define:

• How children should act with each other
• How children should act toward their parents
• How spouses deal with their children (how child care is handled)
• How spouses treat each other
• How parents co-parent

3. Relationship to oneself

Family values can set rules for how to treat others, in and out of the family. But they can also guide how every person treats themselves .

How should individuals act  when they’ve done something wrong? What should they do when they’re having a bad day or having a hard time dealing with their emotions ?

Values about how to treat oneself can often be forgotten or set aside. But how you treat yourself is just as important as the way you treat others.

4. Priorities

What does your family prioritize? Some values can define what matters to your family first and what’s less important.

Some examples include:

• How you spend family time
• What spiritual or religious rituals matter to your family
• What type of education you’ll provide for your children
• How you deal with  holiday stress
• How you create traditions and celebrate different cultures

Defining priorities can also guide your family when making tough decisions. For example, where will you make budget cuts when your family is under financial stress ?

5. Dealing with challenges

Challenges are inevitable. No matter how much you prepare yourself and your family, you’ll one day have to face hardships. Your values dictate how your family reacts and adapts when these challenges come your way.

Examples may include:

• Perseverance

When you establish these types of values, you’ll give your family the tools they need to get through tough times.

There are endless possibilities for a potential list of values you can instill in your family. In case you need a starting point, here are eight examples of modern family values.

1. Self-compassion

Self-compassion  means you should be kind to yourself first. It also means you should avoid negative self-talk .

If this is one of your family values, it’s important to teach everyone in your family how to be compassionate to themselves. By learning how to be kind to themselves, they’ll also learn how to be compassionate toward others.

For example, clinical psychologist Chris Germer teaches people to use physical touch, like touching your hand , with a self-compassionate statement. You can say something like, “I’m going through a challenging time, but I’m trying my best.”

2. Empathy and kindness toward others

Once the youth in your family learn how to be kind to themselves, they have a solid base to be kind and empathetic toward others .

When you implement this value, you can learn to see the world through other people’s eyes. This can inform the way you treat others.

3. Responsibility

When responsibility is part of your moral values, those in your family prioritize taking responsibility for their own actions.

But learning responsibility is also an amazing way for younger family members to learn how to contribute to the household. They can grow into a specific role within the family.

For example, you can use a simplified RACI matrix  to establish who’s responsible for what. Then, everyone can take ownership of their responsibilities.

Honesty is an important value that many adults like to uphold. However, not all adults practice honesty with children.

If you decide to implement honesty as a family value, it’s important that everyone within your family upholds this value to everyone else, regardless of age. Children will learn by seeing what you do.

5. Integrity

Some people confuse integrity with honesty. However, they’re not the same.

Integrity requires honesty . But it goes deeper than just being honest.

Someone with integrity is reliable and trustworthy . They also value openness. Plus, someone with integrity will usually be responsible and accountable for their own actions.

Having integrity means respecting yourself and others. It’s also important to express gratitude when others help you. Conversely, you should help others who are in need, as long as you don’t jeopardize your own health or safety by doing so.

6. Implementing and respecting boundaries

Everyone should be able to uphold their own boundaries. But not all families make it a point to set and prioritize those boundaries .

Families who value boundaries need to learn how to communicate effectively. That’s because it’s difficult to remind others of your boundaries when you’re not sure how to communicate them.

If you have children, communicating boundaries is crucial to help them learn that they are allowed to say no. They’ll also learn that they need to respect the boundaries of other people, too.

7. Family time

When family time is part of your values, making space for quality time together is a priority.

Everyone in a family will have other things going on in their lives. However, this value ensures that everyone sets aside the time to regroup and bond with each other.

Family time can happen monthly, weekly, or even daily. One way that you can prioritize family time is to implement at least one family meal a day where everyone is fully present. This could mean electronic devices are put away during the meal.

You can also establish recurring traditions. Examples include:

• A monthly outing to the park
• Weekly family meetings
• Annual apple picking in the fall

8. Perseverance

Teaching and prioritizing perseverance and hard work is a way to help your family not give up at the first signs of failure.

Perseverance helps to normalize failure. It helps children to accept that failure  can be an important part of learning .

It also teaches them how to be patient when they don’t immediately get the end result they were hoping for.

Perseverance is an important skill in nearly all aspects of life. At work, perseverance can help you get promoted . At home, it can give you the strength to keep going when personal projects fail.

However, it’s important to teach children to respect their limits, too. Perseverance shouldn’t come at the expense of well-being . Perseverance without self-care  can lead to burnout .

There’s more than one way to instill values in your family. Each method has its pros and cons. Plus, not everyone will respond the same way to each method.

Here are three methods you can consider when implementing your family values.

1. Modeling what to do

This method involves modeling the values you want to teach. It works well for people of all ages.

Before you can expect younger members of your family to follow along, you and other adults need to model the behavior yourself.

Let’s say you want to instill self-compassion in your family. When you make a mistake, acknowledge it and treat yourself with kindness instead of making self-deprecating comments.

2. Moralizing

Moralizing means that you speak and explain values to your family. You need to sit down and walk them through the values you want to instill.

You should still model those values to avoid conflicting information. For instance, avoid gossiping and speaking behind people’s backs if you value kindness and compassion.

3. Clarifying

Clarifying values is a great way to involve other people when instilling family values. You can guide and help others identify, understand, and question their own values.

As a family, you can clarify what values matter to you.

Family values inform who you are as a person. They influence how you’ll show up at work and what your work ethic will be. They also affect how you do your work and prioritize tasks.

Bringing family values to the workplace can:

• Promote innovation  by providing a different perspective
• Help you develop coping skills
• Improve how you relate to others

That’s why it’s important for your work to match your personal values . Even if your place of work doesn’t uphold the same values, they should at least be compatible with each other.

For example, if family time is a priority, your work needs to provide opportunities for you to have a good work-life balance .

The impact of family values stretches way beyond the confines of the home. The values that you consciously or unconsciously decide to uphold can shape the members of your family, especially if you have children. They can also influence how you experience your life at work.

Need help setting family values that work for you and your family? You don’t have to figure it out alone.

With BetterUp, you can get personalized coaching to gain clarity on what matters to you and what to do next. Request a custom demo of BetterUp  to experience how personalized coaching can help.

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Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

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Article contents

Family, culture, and communication.

• V. Santiago Arias V. Santiago Arias College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
•  and  Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.504
• Published online: 22 August 2017

Through the years, the concept of family has been studied by family therapists, psychology scholars, and sociologists with a diverse theoretical framework, such as family communication patterns (FCP) theory, dyadic power theory, conflict, and family systems theory. Among these theories, there are two main commonalities throughout its findings: the interparental relationship is the core interaction in the familial system because the quality of their communication or coparenting significantly affects the enactment of the caregiver role while managing conflicts, which are not the exception in the familial setting. Coparenting is understood in its broader sense to avoid an extensive discussion of all type of families in our society. Second, while including the main goal of parenting, which is the socialization of values, this process intrinsically suggests cultural assimilation as the main cultural approach rather than intergroup theory, because intercultural marriages need to decide which values are considered the best to be socialized. In order to do so, examples from the Thai culture and Hispanic and Latino cultures served to show cultural assimilation as an important mediator of coparenting communication patterns, which subsequently affect other subsystems that influence individuals’ identity and self-esteem development in the long run. Finally, future directions suggest that the need for incorporating a nonhegemonic one-way definition of cultural assimilation allows immigration status to be brought into the discussion of family communication issues in the context of one of the most diverse countries in the world.

• parental communication
• dyadic power
• family communication systems
• cultural assimilation

Introduction

Family is the fundamental structure of every society because, among other functions, this social institution provides individuals, from birth until adulthood, membership and sense of belonging, economic support, nurturance, education, and socialization (Canary & Canary, 2013 ). As a consequence, the strut of its social role consists of operating as a system in a manner that would benefit all members of a family while achieving what is considered best, where decisions tend to be coherent, at least according to the norms and roles assumed by family members within the system (Galvin, Bylund, & Brommel, 2004 ). Notwithstanding, the concept of family can be interpreted differently by individual perceptions to an array of cultural backgrounds, and cultures vary in their values, behaviors, and ideas.

The difficulty of conceptualizing this social institution suggests that family is a culture-bound phenomenon (Bales & Parsons, 2014 ). In essence, culture represents how people view themselves as part of a unique social collective and the ensuing communication interactions (Olaniran & Roach, 1994 ); subsequently, culture provides norms for behavior having a tremendous impact on those family members’ roles and power dynamics mirrored in its communication interactions (Johnson, Radesky, & Zuckerman, 2013 ). Thus, culture serves as one of the main macroframeworks for individuals to interpret and enact those prescriptions, such as inheritance; descent rules (e.g., bilateral, as in the United States, or patrilineal); marriage customs, such as ideal monogamy and divorce; and beliefs about sexuality, gender, and patterns of household formation, such as structure of authority and power (Weisner, 2014 ). For these reasons, “every family is both a unique microcosm and a product of a larger cultural context” (Johnson et al., 2013 , p. 632), and the analysis of family communication must include culture in order to elucidate effective communication strategies to solve familial conflicts.

In addition, to analyze familial communication patterns, it is important to address the most influential interaction with regard to power dynamics that determine the overall quality of family functioning. In this sense, within the range of family theories, parenting function is the core relationship in terms of power dynamics. Parenting refers to all efforts and decisions made by parents individually to guide their children’s behavior. This is a pivotal function, but the quality of communication among people who perform parenting is fundamental because their internal communication patterns will either support or undermine each caregiver’s parenting attempts, individually having a substantial influence on all members’ psychological and physical well-being (Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013 ). Subsequently, parenting goes along with communication because to execute all parenting efforts, there must be a mutual agreement among at least two individuals to conjointly take care of the child’s fostering (Van Egeren & Hawkins, 2004 ). Consequently, coparenting serves as a crucial predictor of the overall family atmosphere and interactions, and it deserves special attention while analyzing family communication issues.

Through the years, family has been studied by family therapists, psychology scholars, and sociologists, but interaction behaviors define the interpersonal relationship, roles, and power within the family as a system (Rogers, 2006 ). Consequently, family scholarship relies on a wide range of theories developed within the communication field and in areas of the social sciences (Galvin, Braithwaite, & Bylund, 2015 ) because analysis of communication patterns in the familial context offers more ecological validity that individuals’ self-report measures. As many types of interactions may happen within a family, there are many relevant venues (i.e., theories) for scholarly analysis on this subject, which will be discussed later in this article in the “ Family: Theoretical Perspectives ” section. To avoid the risk of cultural relativeness while defining family, this article characterizes family as “a long-term group of two or more people related through biological, legal, or equivalent ties and who enact those ties through ongoing interactions providing instrumental and/or emotional support” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 5).

Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the most relevant theories in family communication to identify frustrations and limitations with internal communication. Second, as a case in point, the United States welcomes more than 50 million noncitizens as temporary visitors and admits approximately 1 million immigrants to live as lawful residents yearly (Fullerton, 2014 ), this demographic pattern means that nearly one-third of the population (102 million) comes from different cultural backgrounds, and therefore, the present review will incorporate culture as an important mediator for coparenting, so that future research can be performed to find specific techniques and training practices that are more suitable for cross-cultural contexts.

Family: Theoretical Perspectives

Even though the concept of family can be interpreted individually and differently in different cultures, there are also some commonalities, along with communication processes, specific roles within families, and acceptable habits of interactions with specific family members disregarding cultural differences. This section will provide a brief overview of the conceptualization of family through the family communication patterns (FCP) theory, dyadic power theory, conflict, and family systems theory, with a special focus on the interparental relationship.

Family Communication Patterns Theory

One of the most relevant approaches to address the myriad of communication issues within families is the family communication patterns (FCP) theory. Originally developed by McLeod and Chaffee ( 1973 ), this theory aims to understand families’ tendencies to create stable and predictable communication patterns in terms of both relational cognition and interpersonal behavior (Braithwaite & Baxter, 2005 ). Specifically, this theory focuses on the unique and amalgamated associations derived from interparental communication and its impact on parenting quality to determine FCPs and the remaining interactions (Young & Schrodt, 2016 ).

To illustrate FCP’s focus on parental communication, Schrodt, Witt, and Shimkowski ( 2014 ) conducted a meta-analysis of 74 studies (N = 14,255) to examine the associations between the demand/withdraw family communication patterns of interaction, and the subsequent individual, relational, and communicative outcomes. The cumulative evidence suggests that wife demand/husband withdraw and husband demand/wife withdraw show similar moderate correlations with communicative and psychological well-being outcomes, and even higher when both patterns are taken together (at the relational level). This is important because one of the main tenets of FCP is that familial relationships are drawn on the pursuit of coorientation among members. Coorientation refers to the cognitive process of two or more individuals focusing on and assessing the same object in the same material and social context, which leads to a number of cognitions as the number of people involved, which results in different levels of agreement, accuracy, and congruence (for a review, see Fitzpatrick & Koerner, 2005 ); for example, in dyads that are aware of their shared focus, two different cognitions of the same issue will result.

Hereafter, the way in which these cognitions are socialized through power dynamics determined socially and culturally by roles constitutes specific interdependent communication patterns among family members. For example, Koerner and Fitzpatrick ( 2006 ) provide a taxonomy of family types on the basis of coorientation and its impact on communication pattern in terms of the degree of conformity in those conversational tendencies. To wit, consensual families mostly agree for the sake of the hierarchy within a given family and to explore new points of view; pluralistic families allow members to participate equally in conversations and there is no pressure to control or make children’s decisions; protective families maintain the hierarchy by making decisions for the sake of achieving common family goals; and laissez-faire families, which are low in conversation and conformity orientation, allow family members to not get deeply involved in the family.

The analysis of family communication patterns is quintessential for family communication scholarly work because it influences forming an individual’s self concept in the long run. As a case in point, Young and Schrodt ( 2016 ) surveyed 181 young adults from intact families, where conditional and interaction effects between communication patterns and conformity orientation were observed as the main predictors of future romantic partners. Moreover, this study concluded that FCPs and interparental confirmation are substantial indicators of self-to-partner confirmation, after controlling for reciprocity of confirmation within the romantic relationship. As a consequence, FCP influences children’s and young adults’ perceptions of romantic behavior (e.g., Fowler, Pearson, & Beck, 2010 ); the quality of communication behavior, such as the degree of acceptation of verbal aggression in romantic dyads (e.g., Aloia & Solomon, 2013 ); gender roles; and conflict styles (e.g., Taylor & Segrin, 2010 ), and parental modeling (e.g., Young & Schrodt, 2016 ).

This suggests three important observations. First, family is a very complex interpersonal context, in which communication processes, specific roles within families, and acceptable habits of interactions with specific family members interact as subsystems (see Galvin et al., 2004 ; Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013 ). Second, among those subsystems, the core interaction is the individuals who hold parenting roles (i.e., intact and post divorced families); the couple (disregarding particular sexual orientations), and, parenting roles have a reciprocal relationship over time (Le, McDaniel, Leavitt, & Feinberg, 2016 ). Communication between parenting partners is crucial for the development of their entire family; for example, Schrodt and Shimkowski ( 2013 ) conducted a survey with 493 young adult children from intact (N = 364) and divorced families (N = 129) about perceptions of interparental conflict that involves triangulation (the impression of being in the “middle” and feeling forced to display loyalty to one of the parents). Results suggest that supportive coparental communication positively predicts relational satisfaction with mothers and fathers, as well as mental health; on the other hand, antagonist and hostile coparental communication predicted negative marital satisfaction.

Consequently, “partners’ communication with one another will have a positive effect on their overall view of their marriage, . . . and directly result[ing in] their views of marital satisfaction” (Knapp & Daly, 2002 , p. 643). Le et al. ( 2016 ) conducted a longitudinal study to evaluate the reciprocal relationship between marital interaction and coparenting from the perspective of both parents in terms of support or undermining across the transition to parenthood from a dyadic perspective; 164 cohabiting heterosexual couples expecting their first child were analyzed from pregnancy until 36 months after birth. Both parents’ interdependence was examined in terms of three variables: gender difference analysis, stability over time in marriage and coparenting, and reciprocal associations between relationship quality and coparenting support or undermining. The findings suggest a long-term reciprocal association between relationship quality and coparenting support or undermining in heterosexual families; the quality of marriage relationship during prenatal stage is highly influential in coparenting after birth for both men and women; but, coparenting is connected to romantic relationship quality only for women.

Moreover, the positive association between coparenting and the parents’ relationship relates to the spillover hypothesis, which posits that the positive or negative factors in the parental subsystem are significantly associated with higher or lower marital satisfaction in the spousal subsystem, respectively. Ergo, overall parenting performance is substantially affected by the quality of marital communication patterns.

Dyadic Power

In addition, after analyzing the impact of marital interaction quality in families on marital satisfaction and future parental modeling, it is worth noting that marital satisfaction and coparenting are importantly mediated by power dynamics within the couple (Halstead, De Santis, & Williams, 2016 ), and even mediates marital commitment (e.g., Lennon, Stewart, & Ledermann, 2013 ). If the quality of interpersonal relationship between those individuals who hold parenting roles determines coparenting quality as well, then the reason for this association lies on the fact that virtually all intimate relationships are substantially characterized by power dynamics; when partners perceive more rewards than costs in the relationship, they will be more satisfied and significantly more committed to the relationship (Lennon et al., 2013 ). As a result, the inclusion of power dynamics in the analysis of family issues becomes quintessential.

For the theory of dyadic power, power in its basic sense includes dominance, control, and influence over others, as well as a means to meet survival needs. When power is integrated into dyadic intimate relationships, it generates asymmetries in terms of interdependence between partners due to the quality of alternatives provided by individual characteristics such as socioeconomic status and cultural characteristics such as gender roles. This virtually gives more power to men than women. Power refers to “the feeling derived from the ability to dominate, or control, the behavior, affect, and cognitions of another person[;] in consequence, this concept within the interparental relationship is enacted when one partner who controls resources and limiting the behavioral options of the other partner” (Lennon et al., 2013 , p. 97). Ergo, this theory examines power in terms of interdependence between members of the relationship: the partner who is more dependent on the other has less power in the relationship, which, of course, directly impact parenting decisions.

As a case in point, Worley and Samp ( 2016 ) examined the balance of decision-making power in the relationship, complaint avoidance, and complaint-related appraisals in 175 heterosexual couples. Findings suggest that decision-making power has a curvilinear association, in which individuals engaged in the least complaint avoidance when they were relatively equal to their partners in terms of power. In other words, perceptions of one another’s power potentially encourage communication efficacy in the interparental couple.

The analysis of power in intimate relationships, and, to be specific, between parents is crucial because it not only relates to marital satisfaction and commitment, but it also it affects parents’ dyadic coping for children. In fact, Zemp, Bodenmann, Backes, Sutter-Stickel, and Revenson ( 2016 ) investigated parents’ dyadic coping as a predictor of children’s internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and prosocial behavior in three independent studies. When there is a positive relationship among all three factors, the results indicated that the strongest correlation was the first one. Again, the quality of the marital and parental relationships has the strongest influence on children’s coping skills and future well-being.

From the overview of the two previous theories on family, it is worth addressing two important aspects. First, parenting requires an intensive great deal of hands-on physical care, attention to safety (Mooney-Doyle, Deatrick, & Horowitz, 2014 ), and interpretation of cues, and this is why parenting, from conception to when children enter adulthood, is a tremendous social, cultural, and legally prescribed role directed toward caregiving and endlessly attending to individuals’ social, physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive development (Johnson et al., 2013 ). And while parents are making decisions about what they consider is best for all family members, power dynamics play a crucial role in marital satisfaction, commitment, parental modeling, and overall interparental communication efficacy in the case of postdivorce families. Therefore, the likelihood of conflict is latent within familial interactions while making decisions; indeed, situations in which family members agree on norms as a consensus is rare (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990 ).

In addition to the interparental and marital power dynamics that delineates family communication patterns, the familial interaction is distinctive from other types of social relationships in the unequaled role of emotions and communication of affection while family members interact and make decisions for the sake of all members. For example, Ritchie and Fitzpatrick ( 1990 ) provided evidence that fathers tended to perceive that all other family members agree with his decisions or ideas. Even when mothers confronted and disagreed with the fathers about the fathers’ decisions or ideas, the men were more likely to believe that their children agreed with him. When the children were interviewed without their parents, however, the majority of children agreed with the mothers rather than the fathers (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990 ). Subsequently, conflict is highly present in families; however, in general, the presence of conflict is not problematic per se. Rather, it is the ability to manage and recover from it and that could be problematic (Floyd, 2014 ).

One of the reasons for the role of emotions in interpersonal conflicts is explained by the Emotion-in-Relationships Model (ERM). This model states that feelings of bliss, satisfaction, and relaxation often go unnoticed due to the nature of the emotions, whereas “hot” emotions, such as anger and contempt, come to the forefront when directed at a member of an interpersonal relationship (Fletcher & Clark, 2002 ). This type of psychophysical response usually happens perhaps due to the different biophysical reactive response of the body compared to its reaction to positive ones (Floyd, 2014 ). There are two dimensions that define conflict. Conflict leads to the elicitation of emotions, but sometimes the opposite occurs: emotions lead to conflict. The misunderstanding or misinterpretation of emotions among members of a family can be a source of conflict, as well as a number of other issues, including personality differences, past history, substance abuse, mental or physical health problems, monetary issues, children, intimate partner violence, domestic rape, or maybe just general frustration due to recent events (Sabourin, Infante, & Rudd, 1990 ). In order to have a common understanding of this concept for the familial context in particular, conflict refers to as “any incompatibility that can be expressed by people related through biological, legal, or equivalent ties” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 6). Thus, the concept of conflict goes hand in hand with coparenting.

There is a myriad of everyday family activities in which parents need to decide the best way to do them: sometimes they are minor, such as eating, watching TV, or sleeping schedules; others are more complicated, such as schooling. Certainly, while socializing and making these decisions, parents may agree or not, and these everyday situations may lead to conflict. Whether or not parents live together, it has been shown that “the extent to which children experience their parents as partners or opponents in parenting is related to children’s adjustment and well-being” (Gable & Sharp, 2016 , p. 1), because the ontology of parenting is materialized through socialization of values about every aspect and duty among all family members, especially children, to perpetuate a given society.

As the findings provided in this article show, the study of family communication issues is pivotal because the way in which those issues are solved within families will be copied by children as their values. Values are abstract ideas that delineate behavior toward the evaluation of people and events and vary in terms of importance across individuals, but also among cultures. In other words, their future parenting (i.e., parenting modeling) of children will replicate those same strategies for conflict solving for good or bad, depending on whether parents were supportive between each other. Thus, socialization defines the size and scope of coparenting.

The familial socialization of values encompasses the distinction between parents’ personal execution of those social appraisals and the values that parents want their children to adopt, and both are different things; nonetheless, familial socialization does not take place in only one direction, from parents to children. Benish-Weisman, Levy, and Knafo ( 2013 ) investigated the differentiation process—or, in other words, the distinction between parents’ own personal values and their socialization values and the contribution of children’s values to their parents’ socialization values. In this study, in which 603 Israeli adolescents and their parents participated, the findings suggest that parents differentiate between their personal values and their socialization values, and adolescents’ values have a specific contribution to their parents’ socialization values. As a result, socialization is not a unidirectional process affected by parents alone, it is an outcome of the reciprocal interaction between parents and their adolescent children, and the given importance of a given value is mediated by parents and their culture individually (Johnson et al., 2013 ). However, taking power dynamics into account does not mean that adolescents share the same level of decision-making power in the family; thus, socialization take place in both directions, but mostly from parents to children. Finally, it is worth noticing that the socialization of values in coparenting falls under the cultural umbrella. The next section pays a special attention to the role of culture in family communication.

The Role of Culture in Parenting Socialization of Values

There are many individual perceived realities and behaviors in the familial setting that may lead to conflict among members, but all of them achieve a common interpretation through culture; indeed, “all family conflict processes by broad cultural factors” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 46). Subsequently, the goal of this section is to provide an overview of the perceived realities and behaviors that exist in family relationships with different cultural backgrounds. How should one approach the array of cultural values influencing parental communication patterns?

An interesting way of immersing on the role of culture in family communication patterns and its further socialization of values is explored by Schwartz ( 1992 ). The author developed a value system composed of 10 values operationalized as motivational goals for modern society: (a) self-direction (independence of thought and action); (b) stimulation (excitement, challenge, and novelty); (c) hedonism (pleasure or sensuous gratification); (d) achievement (personal success according to social standards); (e) power (social status, dominance over people and resources); (f) conformity (restraint of actions that may harm others or violate social expectations); (g) tradition (respect and commitment to cultural or religious customs and ideas); (h) benevolence (preserving and enhancing the welfare of people to whom one is close); (i) universalism (understanding, tolerance, and concern for the welfare of all people and nature); and (j) security (safety and stability of society, relationships, and self).

Later, Schwartz and Rubel ( 2005 ) applied this value structure, finding it to be commonly shared among over 65 countries. Nevertheless, these values are enacted in different ways by societies and genders about the extent to which men attribute more relevance to values of power, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, and self-direction, and the opposite was found for benevolence and universalism and less consistently for security. Also, it was found that all sex differences were culturally moderated, suggesting that cultural background needs to be considered in the analysis of coparental communication when socializing those values.

Even though Schwartz’s work was more focused on individuals and societies, it is a powerful model for the analysis of the role of culture on family communication and parenting scholarships. Indeed, Schwartz et al. ( 2013 ) conducted a longitudinal study with a sample of 266 Hispanic adolescents (14 years old) and their parents that looked at measures of acculturation, family functioning, and adolescent conduct problems, substance use, and sexual behavior at five time points. Results suggest that higher levels of acculturation in adolescents were linked to poorer family functioning; however, overall assimilation negatively predicted adolescent cigarette smoking, sexual activity, and unprotected sex. The authors emphasize the role of culture, and acculturation patterns in particular, in understanding the mediating role of family functioning and culture.

Ergo, it is crucial to address the ways in which culture affects family functioning. On top of this idea, Johnson et al. ( 2013 ) observed that Western cultures such as in the United States and European countries are oriented toward autonomy, favoring individual achievement, self-reliance, and self-assertiveness. Thus, coparenting in more autonomous countries will socialize to children the idea that achievement in life is an outcome of independence, resulting in coparenting communication behaviors that favor verbal praise and feedback over physical contact. As opposed to autonomy-oriented cultures, other societies, such as Asian, African, and Latin American countries, emphasize interdependence over autonomy; thus, parenting in these cultures promotes collective achievement, sharing, and collaboration as the core values.

These cultural orientations can be observed in parents’ definitions of school readiness and educational success; for Western parents, examples include skills such as counting, recognizing letters, or independently completing tasks such as coloring pictures, whereas for more interdependent cultures, the development of obedience, respect for authority, and appropriate social skills are the skills that parents are expecting their children to develop to evaluate school readiness. As a matter of fact, Callaghan et al. ( 2011 ) conducted a series of eight studies to evaluate the impact of culture on the social-cognitive skills of one- to three-year-old children in three diverse cultural settings such as Canada, Peru, and India. The results showed that children’s acquisition of specific cognitive skills is moderated by specific learning experiences in a specific context: while Canadian children were understanding the performance of both pretense and pictorial symbols skillfully between 2.5 and 3.0 years of age, on average, Peruvian and Indian children mastered those skills more than a year later. Notwithstanding, this finding does not suggest any kind of cultural superiority; language barriers and limitations derived from translation itself may influence meanings, affecting the results (Sotomayor-Peterson, De Baca, Figueredo, & Smith-Castro, 2013 ). Therefore, in line with the findings of Schutz ( 1970 ), Geertz ( 1973 ), Grusec ( 2002 ), Sotomayor-Peterson et al. ( 2013 ), and Johnson et al. ( 2013 ), cultural values provide important leverage for understanding family functioning in terms of parental decision-making and conflict, which also has a substantial impact on children’s cognitive development.

Subsequently, cultural sensitivity to the analysis of the familial system in this country needs to be specially included because cultural differences are part of the array of familial conflicts that may arise, and children experience real consequences from the quality of these interactions. Therefore, parenting, which is already arduous in itself, and overall family functioning significantly become troublesome when parents with different cultural backgrounds aim to socialize values and perform parenting tasks. The following section provides an account of these cross-cultural families.

Intercultural Families: Adding Cultural Differences to Interparental Communication

For a country such as the United States, with 102 million people from many different cultural backgrounds, the presence of cross-cultural families is on the rise, as is the likelihood of intermarriage between immigrants and natives. With this cultural diversity, the two most prominent groups are Hispanics and Asians, particular cases of which will be discussed next. Besides the fact that parenting itself is a very complex and difficult task, certainly the biggest conflict consists of making decisions about the best way to raise children in terms of their values with regard to which ethnic identity better enacts the values that parents believe their children should embrace. As a result, interracial couples might confront many conflicts and challenges due to cultural differences affecting marital satisfaction and coparenting.

Assimilation , the degree to which a person from a different cultural background has adapted to the culture of the hostage society, is an important phenomenon in intermarriage. Assimilationists observe that children from families in which one of the parents is from the majority group and the other one from the minority do not automatically follow the parent from the majority group (Cohen, 1988 ). Indeed, they follow their mothers more, whichever group she belongs to, because of mothers are more prevalent among people with higher socioeconomic status (Gordon, 1964 ; Portes, 1984 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ).

In an interracial marriage, the structural and interpersonal barriers inhibiting the interaction between two parents will be reduced significantly if parents develop a noncompeting way to communicate and solve conflicts, which means that both of them might give up part of their culture or ethnic identity to reach consensus. Otherwise, the ethnic identity of children who come from interracial marriages will become more and more obscure (Saenz, Hwang, Aguirre, & Anderson, 1995 ). Surely, parents’ noncompeting cultural communication patterns are fundamental for children’s development of ethnic identity. Biracial children develop feelings of being outsiders, and then parenting becomes crucial to developing their strong self-esteem (Ward, 2006 ). Indeed, Gordon ( 1964 ) found that children from cross-racial or cross-ethnic marriages are at risk of developing psychological problems. In another example, Jognson and Nagoshi ( 1986 ) studied children who come from mixed marriages in Hawaii and found that the problems of cultural identification, conflicting demands in the family, and of being marginal in either culture still exist (Mann & Waldron, 1977 ). It is hard for those mixed-racial children to completely develop the ethnic identity of either the majority group or the minority group.

The question of how children could maintain their minority ethnic identity is essential to the development of ethnic identity as a whole. For children from interracial marriage, the challenge to maintain their minority ethnic identity will be greater than for the majority ethnic identity (Waters, 1990 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ) because the minority-group spouse is more likely to have greater ethnic consciousness than the majority-group spouse (Ellman, 1987 ). Usually, the majority group is more influential than the minority group on a child’s ethnic identity, but if the minority parent’s ethnicity does not significantly decline, the child’s ethnic identity could still reflect some characteristics of the minority parent. If parents want their children to maintain the minority group’s identity, letting the children learn the language of the minority group might be a good way to achieve this. By learning the language, children form a better understanding of that culture and perhaps are more likely to accept the ethnic identity that the language represents (Xin & Sandel, 2015 ).

In addition to language socialization as a way to contribute to children’s identity in biracial families, Jane and Bochner ( 2009 ) indicated that family rituals and stories could be important in performing and transforming identity. Families create and re-create their identities through various kinds of narrative, in which family stories and rituals are significant. Festivals and rituals are different from culture to culture, and each culture has its own. Therefore, exposing children to the language, rituals, and festivals of another culture also could be helpful to form their ethnic identity, in order to counter problems of self-esteem derived from the feeling of being an outsider.

To conclude this section, the parenting dilemma in intercultural marriages consists of deciding which culture they want their children to be exposed to and what kind of heritage they want to pass to children. The following section will provide two examples of intercultural marriages in the context of American society without implying that there are no other insightful cultures that deserve analysis, but the focus on Asian-American and Hispanics families reflects the available literature (Canary & Canary, 2013 ) and its demographic representativeness in this particular context. In addition, in order to acknowledge that minorities within this larger cultural background deserve more attention due to overemphasis on larger cultures in scholarship, such as Chinese or Japanese cultures, the Thai family will provide insights into understanding the role of culture in parenting and its impact on the remaining familial interaction, putting all theories already discussed in context. Moreover, the Hispanic family will also be taken in account because of its internal pan-ethnicity variety.

An Example of Intercultural Parenting: The Thai Family

The Thai family, also known as Krob Krua, may consist of parents, children, paternal and maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, grandchildren, in-laws, and any others who share the same home. Thai marriages usually are traditional, in which the male is the authority figure and breadwinner and the wife is in charge of domestic items and the homemaker. It has been noted that Thai mothers tend to be the major caregivers and caretakers in the family rather than fathers (Tulananda, Young, & Roopnarine, 1994 ). On the other hand, it has been shown that Thai mothers also tend to spoil their children with such things as food and comfort; Tulananda et al. ( 1994 ) studied the differences between American and Thai fathers’ involvement with their preschool children and found that American fathers reported being significantly more involved with their children than Thai fathers. Specifically, the fathers differed in the amount of socialization and childcare; Thai fathers reported that they obtained more external support from other family members than American fathers; also, Thai fathers were more likely to obtain support for assisting with daughters than sons.

Furthermore, with regard to the family context, Tulananda and Roopnarine ( 2001 ) noted that over the years, some attention has been focused on the cultural differences among parent-child behaviors and interactions; hereafter, the authors believed that it is important to look at cultural parent-child interactions because that can help others understand children’s capacity to socialize and deal with life’s challenges. As a matter of fact, the authors also noted that Thai families tend to raise their children in accordance with Buddhist beliefs. It is customary for young Thai married couples to live with either the wife’s parents (uxorilocal) or the husband’s parents (virilocal) before living on their own (Tulananda & Roopnarine, 2001 ). The process of developing ethnicity could be complicated. Many factors might influence the process, such as which parent is from the minority culture and the cultural community, as explained in the previous section of this article.

This suggests that there is a difference in the way that Thai and American fathers communicate with their daughters. As a case in point, Punyanunt-Carter ( 2016 ) examined the relationship maintenance behaviors within father-daughter relationships in Thailand and the United States. Participants included 134 American father-daughter dyads and 154 Thai father-daughter dyads. The findings suggest that when quality of communication was included in this relationship, both types of families benefit from this family communication pattern, resulting in better conflict management and advice relationship maintenance behaviors. However, differences were found: American fathers are more likely than American daughters to employ relationship maintenance behaviors; in addition, American fathers are more likely than Thai fathers to use relationship maintenance strategies.

As a consequence, knowing the process of ethnic identity development could provide parents with different ways to form children’s ethnic identity. More specifically, McCann, Ota, Giles, and Caraker ( 2003 ), and Canary and Canary ( 2013 ) noted that Southeast Asian cultures have been overlooked in communication studies research; these countries differ in their religious, political, and philosophical thoughts, with a variety of collectivistic views and religious ideals (e.g., Buddhism, Taoism, Islam), whereas the United States is mainly Christian and consists of individualistic values.

The Case of Hispanic/Latino Families in the United States

There is a need for including Hispanic/Latino families in the United States because of the demographic representativeness and trends of the ethnicity: in 2016 , Hispanics represent nearly 17% of the total U.S. population, becoming the largest minority group. There are more than 53 million Hispanics and Latinos in the United States; in addition, over 93% of young Hispanics and Latinos under the age of 18 hold U.S. citizenship, and more than 73,000 of these people turn 18 every month (Barreto & Segura, 2014 ). Furthermore, the current Hispanic and Latino population is spread evenly between foreign-born and U.S.-born individuals, but the foreign-born population is now growing faster than the number of Hispanic children born in the country (Arias & Hellmueller, 2016 ). This demographic trend is projected to reach one-third of the U.S. total population by 2060 ; therefore, with the growth of other minority populations in the country, the phenomenon of multiracial marriage and biracial children is increasing as well.

Therefore, family communication scholarship has an increasing necessity to include cultural particularities in the analysis of the familial system; in addition to the cultural aspects already explained in this article, this section addresses the influence of familism in Hispanic and Latino familial interactions, as well as how immigration status moderates the internal interactions, reflected in levels of acculturation, that affect these families negatively.

With the higher marriage and birth rates among Hispanics and Latinos living in the United States compared to non-Latino Whites and African American populations, the Hispanic familial system is perhaps the most stereotyped as being familistic (Glick & Van Hook, 2008 ). This family trait consists of the fact that Hispanics place a very high value on marriage and childbearing, on the basis of a profound commitment to give support to members of the extended family as well. This can be evinced in the prevalence of extended-kind shared households in Hispanic and Latino families, and Hispanic children are more likely to live in extended-family households than non-Latino Whites or blacks (Glick & Van Hook, 2008 ). Living in extended-family households, most likely with grandparents, may have positive influences on Hispanic and Latino children, such as greater attention and interaction with loving through consistent caregiving; grandparents may help by engaging with children in academic-oriented activities, which then affects positively cognitive educational outcomes.

However, familism is not the panacea for all familial issues for several reasons. First, living in an extended-family household requires living arrangements that consider adults’ needs more than children’s. Second, the configuration of Hispanic and Latino households is moderated by any immigration issues with all members of the extended family, and this may cause problems for children (Menjívar, 2000 ). The immigration status of each individual member may produce a constant state of flux, whereas circumstances change to adjust to economic opportunities, which in turn are limited by immigration laws, and it gets even worse when one of the parents isn’t even present in the children’s home, but rather live in their home country (Van Hook & Glick, 2006 ). Although Hispanic and Latino children are more likely to live with married parents and extended relatives, familism is highly affected by the immigration status of each member.

On the other hand, there has been research to address the paramount role of communication disregarding the mediating factor of cultural diversity. For example, Sotomayor-Peterson et al. ( 2013 ) performed a cross-cultural comparison of the association between coparenting or shared parental effort and family climate among families from Mexico, the United States, and Costa Rica. The overall findings suggest what was explained earlier in this article: more shared parenting predicts better marital interaction and family climate overall.

In addition, parenting quality has been found to have a positive relationship with children’s developmental outcomes. In fact, Sotomayor-Peterson, Figueredo, Christensen, and Taylor ( 2012 ) conducted a study with 61 low-income Mexican American couples, with at least one child between three and four years of age, recruited from a home-based Head Start program. The main goal of this study was to observe the extent that shared parenting incorporates cultural values and income predicts family climate. The findings suggest that the role of cultural values such as familism, in which family solidarity and avoidance of confrontation are paramount, delineate shared parenting by Mexican American couples.

Cultural adaptation also has a substantial impact on marital satisfaction and children’s cognitive stimulation. Indeed, Sotomayor-Peterson, Wilhelm, and Card ( 2011 ) investigated the relationship between marital relationship quality and subsequent cognitive stimulation practices toward their infants in terms of the actor and partner effects of White and Hispanic parents. The results indicate an interesting relationship between the level of acculturation and marital relationship quality and a positive cognitive stimulation of infants; specifically, marital happiness is associated with increased cognitive stimulation by White and high-acculturated Hispanic fathers. Nevertheless, a major limitation of Hispanic acculturation literature has been seen, reflecting a reliance on cross-sectional studies where acculturation was scholarly operationalized more as an individual difference variable than as a longitudinal adaptation over time (Schwartz et al., 2013 ).

Culture and Family Communication: the “so what?” Question

This article has presented an entangled overview of family communication patterns, dyadic power, family systems, and conflict theories to establish that coparenting quality plays a paramount role. The main commonality among those theories pays special attention to interparental interaction quality, regardless of the type of family (i.e., intact, postdivorce, same-sex, etc.) and cultural background. After reviewing these theories, it was observed that the interparental relationship is the core interaction in the familial context because it affects children from their earlier cognitive development to subsequent parental modeling in terms of gender roles. Thus, in keeping with Canary and Canary ( 2013 ), no matter what approach may be taken to the analysis of family communication issues, the hypothesis that a positive emotional climate within the family is fostered only when couples practice a sufficient level of shared parenting and quality of communication is supported.

Nevertheless, this argument does not suggest that the role of culture in the familial interactions should be undersold. While including the main goal of parenting, which is the socialization of values, in the second section of this article, the text also provides specific values of different countries that are enacted and socialized differently across cultural contexts to address the role of acculturation in the familial atmosphere, the quality of interactions, and individual outcomes. As a case in point, Johnson et al. ( 2013 ) provided an interesting way of seeing how cultures differ in their ways of enacting parenting, clarifying that the role of culture in parenting is not a superficial or relativistic element.

In addition, by acknowledging the perhaps excessive attention to larger Asian cultural backgrounds (such as Chinese or Japanese cultures) by other scholars (i.e., Canary & Canary, 2013 ), an insightful analysis of the Thai American family within the father-daughter relationship was provided to exemplify, through the work of Punyanunt-Carter ( 2016 ), how specific family communication patterns, such as maintenance relationship communication behaviors, affect the quality of familial relationships. Moreover, a second, special focus was put on Hispanic families because of the demographic trends of the United States, and it was found that familism constitutes a distinctive aspect of these families.

In other words, the third section of this article provided these two examples of intercultural families to observe specific ways that culture mediates the familial system. Because one of the main goals of the present article was to demonstrate the mediating role of culture as an important consideration for family communication issues in the United States, the assimilationist approach was taken into account; thus, the two intercultural family examples discussed here correspond to an assimilationist nature rather than using an intergroup approach.

This decision was made without intending to diminish the value of other cultures or ethnic groups in the country, but an extensive revision of all types of intercultural families is beyond the scope of this article. Second, the assimilationist approach forces one to consider cultures that are in the process of adapting to a new hosting culture, and the Thai and Hispanic families in the United States comply with this theoretical requisite. For example, Whites recognize African Americans as being as American as Whites (i.e., Dovidio, Gluszek, John, Ditlmann, & Lagunes, 2010 ), whereas they associate Hispanics and Latinos with illegal immigration in the United States (Stewart et al., 2011 ), which has been enhanced by the U.S. media repeatedly since 1994 (Valentino et al., 2013 ), and it is still happening (Dixon, 2015 ). In this scenario, “ask yourself what would happen to your own personality if you heard it said over and over again that you were lazy, a simple child of nature, expected to steal, and had inferior blood? . . . One’s reputation, whether false or true, cannot be hammered, hammered, hammered, into one’s head without doing something to one’s character” (Allport, 1979 , p. 142, cited in Arias & Hellmueller, 2016 ).

As a consequence, on this cultural canvas, it should not be surprising that Lichter, Carmalt, and Qian ( 2011 ) found that second-generation Hispanics are increasingly likely to marry foreign-born Hispanics and less likely to marry third-generation or later coethnics or Whites. In addition, this study suggests that third-generation Hispanics and later were more likely than in the past to marry non-Hispanic Whites; thus, the authors concluded that there has been a new retreat from intermarriage among the largest immigrant groups in the United States—Hispanics and Asians—in the last 20 years.

If we subscribe to the idea that cultural assimilation goes in only one direction—from the hegemonic culture to the minority culture—then the results of Lichter, Carmalt, and Qian ( 2011 ) should not be of scholarly concern; however, if we believe that cultural assimilation happens in both directions and intercultural families can benefit both the host and immigrant cultures (for a review, see Schwartz et al., 2013 ), then this is important to address in a country that just elected a president, Donald Trump, who featured statements racially lambasting and segregating minorities, denigrating women, and criticizing immigration as some of the main tenets of his campaign. Therefore, we hope that it is clear why special attention was given to the Thai and Hispanic families in this article, considering the impact of culture on the familial system, marital satisfaction, parental communication, and children’s well-being. Even though individuals with Hispanic ancentry were in the United States even before it became a nation, Hispanic and Latino families are still trying to convince Americans of their right to be accepted in American culture and society.

With regard to the “So what?” question, assimilation is important to consider while analyzing the role of culture in family communication patterns, power dynamics, conflict, or the functioning of the overall family system in the context of the United States. This is because this country is among the most popular in the world in terms of immigration requests, and its demographics show that one out of three citizens comes from an ethnic background other than the hegemonic White culture. In sum, cultural awareness has become pivotal in the analysis of family communication issues in the United States. Furthermore, the present overview of family, communication, and culture ends up supporting the idea of positive associations being derived from the pivotal role of marriage relationship quality, such that coparenting and communication practices vary substantially within intercultural marriages moderated by gender roles.

Culture is a pivotal moderator of these associations, but this analysis needs to be tethered to societal structural level, in which cultural differences, family members’ immigration status, media content, and level of acculturation must be included in family research. This is because in intercultural marriages, in addition to the tremendous parenting role, they have to deal with cultural assimilation and discrimination, and this becomes important if we care about children’s cognitive development and the overall well-being of those who are not considered White. As this article shows, the quality of familial interactions has direct consequences on children’s developmental outcomes (for a review, see Callaghan et al., 2011 ).

Therefore, the structure and functioning of family has an important impact on public health at both physiological and psychological levels (Gage, Everett, & Bullock, 2006 ). At the physiological level, the familial interaction instigates expression and reception of strong feelings affecting tremendously on individuals’ physical health because it activates neuroendocrine responses that aid stress regulation, acting as a stress buffer and accelerating physiological recovery from elevated stress (Floyd & Afifi, 2012 ; Floyd, 2014 ). Robles, Shaffer, Malarkey, and Kiecolt-Glaser ( 2006 ) found that a combination of supportive communication, humor, and problem-solving behavior in husbands predicts their wives’ cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)—both physiological factors are considered as stress markers (see 2006 ). On the other hand, the psychology of individuals, the quality of family relationships has major repercussions on cognitive development, as reflected in educational attainment (Sohr-Preston et al., 2013 ), and highly mediated by cultural assimilation (Schwartz et al., 2013 ), which affects individuals through parenting modeling and socialization of values (Mooney-Doyle, Deatrick, & Horowitz, 2014 ).

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The given prompt: Beyond blood relations, how has the concept of family evolved in contemporary culture?

In traditional terms, a family often conjured images of a group connected by the intricate web of blood relations: parents, siblings, and extended kin. However, as the hands of time have ticked forward, the idea of family has undergone a significant evolution, particularly in contemporary culture.

In today’s world, the essence of family is not restricted solely to genetic ties. Instead, it blossoms in the spaces of shared experiences, mutual care, love, and most importantly, genuine connection. The idea that “blood is thicker than water” has been both challenged and redefined as people create familial bonds with those they aren’t biologically related to.

With the rise in diverse living situations, it’s common to find families where members aren’t linked by DNA. Adoptive families are a testament to the idea that the foundations of family go beyond genes. Here, connections are forged with love, understanding, and a mutual commitment to each other’s well-being. Similarly, stepfamilies and blended families break the mold of the traditional family unit, proving that genuine relationships can flourish in spaces beyond blood ties.

Moreover, the concept of “chosen families” has gained prominence, especially within communities that value deep-rooted friendships and bonds. In many instances, individuals, due to various reasons, may become estranged from their biological families. In the void that this creates, they often find solace, support, and a sense of belonging with friends or mentors, essentially building a family by choice, not by birth.

Another dimension of the evolving family concept is the recognition and acceptance of families with same-sex parents. As societies grow more inclusive, the narrative around family has expanded to honor and celebrate diverse family structures. In these families, just as in any other, love, care, and shared responsibilities define the bond.

Cultural exchanges, travel, and global communication have also played a role in reshaping the family’s notion. In an interconnected world, individuals from different corners of the globe meet, bond, and form families, blending cultures, traditions, and values. These intercultural families are beautiful tapestries of shared stories and united dreams.

However, with this expanded understanding of family, contemporary culture also brings challenges. The acceptance of diverse family structures isn’t universal, and many face societal judgment. It underscores the importance of broadening perspectives and understanding that at the core of every family, irrespective of its structure, lie the universal values of love, support, and commitment.

In essence, the definition of family in today’s world is fluid, reflecting the cultural, societal, and individual shifts of our times. While blood relations will always hold significance, the boundaries of family have extended, warmly embracing all forms of genuine connection and mutual care.

As we navigate the complexities of modern life, these evolved family structures offer comfort, reminding us that family is less about who we share our genes with and more about who we share our lives with. In the heartbeats of these diverse families, we find the timeless rhythms of love, care, and belonging.

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Essay Samples on Family Values

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As I grew up, my father would dependably disclose to me thing in a format that was, “ This is the most essential thing in the world…”and proceed to state what it was. I always need to blame him about how he said that in...

Concept of a Family: Values and Priorities

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Namesake By Jhumpa Lahiri: The Importance Of Family

Whether we like it or not, we are stuck with our families. No family is perfect. All families fight, they disagree, they drift apart, but in the end, they will always be there for each other no matter what. I know this is cheesy, but...

• The Namesake

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Family Values

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Race, feminism, and public policy

Because the role of black mothers is central to any discussion of public policy and the black family, this article also analyzes the intersection of racism and sexism in the current rhetoric.

I. Introduction

In recent years, the term "family values" has become a rallying cry against the increase in nontraditional families in this country. Much of the recent public discourse about women who bear children outside of marriage seems to reflect an underlying assumption that appropriate values are something these women simply do not have. An alleged decline in values, often represented in the media by families headed by single mothers, and especially black single mothers, has been blamed for a myriad of social problems, including unemployment, poor health, school drop-out rates and an increase in juvenile crime. 2 Since the blame for these problems has been placed on "the breakdown of the traditional family," it is not surprising that many people have concluded that the logical solution to the problem is the reunification of the traditional family structure. 3 It is assumed that this will return the country to an earlier era, the "good old days," in which values were presumably different and better. Consistent with such thinking, recent years have seen an increase in governmental programs and policy proposals at both the local and national levels aimed at bolstering the traditional family structure, or otherwise encouraging what are presumed to be "family values." 4

As part of this symposium on "Ethics, Public Policy and the Future of the Family," this article will explore the role of race in the current family values rhetoric. The premise of this article is that attitudes toward the structure, value and function of families do not exist in a vacuum but are a reflection of context, perspective, and power. Race plays a role in each of these factors. Because the role of black mothers is central to any discussion of public policy and the black family, this article also analyzes the intersection of racism and sexism in the current rhetoric.

This article begins with an exploration of the way in which values about family as well as the value of families themselves have often, in this country, been affected by the factor of race. 5 Then, the discussion goes behind the rhetoric of "family values" to expose some of the specific ways in which this discourse is influenced by both racism and sexism. 6 The next part of this article, comprised of three sections, provides a specific critique of the family values rhetoric. The first section explores some of the problems with focusing on private family values as a solution to public problems. 7 The second section illustrates the subjective nature of the values touted in the family values rhetoric by showing how one of the prime issues in that rhetoric -- the value of work -- is constructed in accordance with racial and gender hierarchies. 8 The last section of this part discusses the way in which blacks as a subordinate group must often use independent judgment about majoritarian values, and create and pass on to their children values that are alternatives to, or even in opposition to, those of the larger society. 9

In building on the themes of family, race, gender and values, the final part of this article discusses some of the challenges for feminists who seek a larger role for women in shaping public policy towards the family. 10 These challenges include clarifying the relationship between family and patriarchy, deciding what values about family structure they wish to pass on to the next generation, and thinking more about the intersection of patriarchy, class and race.

The discussion in this article offers neither a specific theory nor a blueprint for a solution to the challenges of public policy this country must confront as the demographics of family life undergo rapid change. The goal is a more limited one -- to expose some of the hypocrisy behind the current family values rhetoric and to stimulate thinking about ways to reconstruct our attitude toward family structure.

II. Public Policy, Black Families and Family Structures

Although traditional formal marriage and the ideal of the nuclear family is promoted in the rhetoric of family values, historically, the extent to which this society has valued formal marriage has not been governed by some consistent standard that has equally supported the nuclear family structure throughout society. In the history of this country, formal public policies and institutionalized racism have acted in tandem to force many black families to develop alternatives to the traditional nuclear family structure.

During slavery, the government condoned and/or promoted a system in which marriage and family among slaves had no legal status. 11 Slave parents had no recognized authority over the children to whom they gave birth; slave children were subject to sale by their owners. 12 Indeed, as Professor Orlando Patterson has noted, all slavery involves what he calls "natal alienation," the deprivation of rights or claims of birth, of claims on or obligations to parents, and of connection to living blood relations, ancestors or descendants. 13

As one judge in North Carolina in 1853 described the legal status of marriage between slaves:

[O]ur law requires no solemnity or form in regard to the marriage of slaves, and whether they "take up" with each other by express permission of their owners, or from a mere impulse of nature, in obedience to the command "multiply and replenish the earth" cannot, in the contemplation of the law, make any sort of difference. . . . 14

During slavery, the idea of what constitutes a family was manipulated through race to serve the slavemasters' economic interests. Thus, the legal principle was developed that the status of a slave child followed that of the mother. By such a rule, slaveowners owned as slaves their own children whom they had conceived through black slavewomen. 15

The choice of whether to accord any respect to a slave marriage was a matter of individual discretion for the slaveowner. Ironically, some slaveowners did encourage marriage among their slaves and chose to respect the integrity of those marriages. However, when this was done it was often not a question of morality, but one of practicality. Respecting the marriages of slaves by not separating husbands from wives or parents from children often functioned effectively as a method of social control. The threat of sale of a spouse or children could be used to discourage a slave from running away or engaging in other rebellious behavior. 16

The institution of slavery had a profound effect on the structure of black families. One consequence was the development of the single mother family. 17 The origin of such families was in white male sexual exploitation of female slaves, and the breakup of slave families by the sale of the husband and father. 18 During the decades after slavery, single mother families continued to be formed as a result of a variety of factors, including hard economic times, husbands who died or were killed, and men and women moving from place to place in search of work. 19 Between 1880 and 1915, between twenty-five and thirty percent of urban black families were headed by females. 20

Specific government policies during different periods encouraged the breakup of black families. For example, until the late 1960's, "man-in-the-house" welfare rules denied aid to a mother who was associating with a man, especially if the man lived in her home. 21 Although today black families have the same formal status under the law as other families, the persistence of racism often leaves black families subject to many of the same pressures they were forced to cope with in slavery. Race-based economic injustice, as well as changes in the marketplace and technological developments, have had a widespread effect on employment opportunities and a disproportionate effect on black men 22 , preventing many of them from being able to earn a living sufficient to support a family. 23 Sociological research has demonstrated the relationship between male employment and family formation. 24 The bleak employment situation of black males has been compounded by a higher number of women than men in every age group over fifteen, and the fact that the number of black men that would have otherwise been available for marriage has been decimated by drugs, violent crime, and incarceration. 25 The result has been a decline in the rate of marriage between black men and women.

Thus, black families are continuing to adapt through the structure of female-headed families. 26 Through the years, in the eyes of the larger society, this adaptation has often been construed as a failure of values and morality. Thus, the black family has been described as a "tangle of pathology" 27 and black women have been described as matriarchs 28 , a term generally not used to describe white single mothers or white wives who earn more than their husbands.

Rather than the country considering it an ethical and moral imperative to develop public policies to address the systemic societal conditions responsible for the circumstances of black families, black families have been blamed for their own condition and have been made the scapegoat for problems plaguing the black community. Indeed, programs which have the potential to increase black economic empowerment, such as affirmative action, and programs providing educational opportunity or job training are being slashed rather than enhanced. In light of current economic and political realities, the possibility that the black family will return in large number to the traditional structure seems increasingly remote.

III. Racism and Sexism in the Family Values Controversy

One of the main reasons for the current attack on single mother families is the belief that these families are responsible for dramatic increases in the costs of welfare, and in particular, the costs of the AFDC Program. 29 There also seems to be a growing belief that when people resort to AFDC it is not a temporary status, but instead leads to generations of welfare dependency, crime, and low academic achievement. 30 In other words, there is a view currently in vogue that families on AFDC, by their very structure, are a drain on society and are incapable of passing on good family values.

Some of these perceptions can be addressed briefly because they are based on clear factual misconceptions. Contrary to a common perception, the AFDC program represents only a tiny percentage of the federal budget. 31 Similarly, the link of AFDC to nonmarital mothers is overstated. Divorced mothers constitute nearly half of those on welfare. 32 Most mothers receiving welfare are not teenagers, and the average family on welfare has two children or fewer. 33 Also ignored in the attack on mothers on welfare are the extensive governmental subsidies given to middle-class families such as tax benefits, mortgage interest deductions, and educational loan assistance programs. 34

The alleged loss of family values, of which the single mother family has become a symbol, is posed as an issue of ethics and to some extent, economics. However, it is clear that the current rhetoric also has strong roots in two major structures of subordination in this society -- racism and sexism.

Racism is implicated in a number of ways in the family values debate. Although the phrase "family values" is often used to decry an alleged loss of values in society generally, the phrase also has a lurking racial subtext. The term "family values," linked as it often is with welfare and single motherhood, easily becomes a code word for race just as "welfare dependency," "inner city," and "the urban underclass," have. 35 There is an implication that black families, especially those headed by single mothers, do not share the values of the rest of society and do not pass on to their children the kinds of values that most Americans believe are important.

Racism is implicated in the family values rhetoric in other ways. One frequent phenomenon in American society is that a situation is often redefined as a problem or given more attention as a problem when it affects white people. This has been true in areas ranging from drug abuse to the problems faced by working mothers. One of the reasons for the recent intense focus on black people on welfare is that it is becoming clear that many of the consequences of poverty often associated with single mother families can no longer be internalized within the black community.

Although welfare is clearly a necessity for some people in order to ensure their very survival, it is clearly a system upon which most people, including those who are on it, would prefer not to be dependent. Welfare provides subsistence, but it does not empower people to maximize and be rewarded for their potential. When fewer persons were on welfare, there was little concern in the larger society that these clearly disempowered individuals were not fulfilling their potential, and were not participating in many of the opportunities and benefits society has to offer.

But the issue of welfare has now taken center stage. Although there has been long-standing resentment against black women dependent upon public assistance, 36 the hostility has clearly reached a new level. Many in society now fear for their pocketbooks, not in the usual sense of fear that they may be snatched in the street, but in the sense of fear that their hard-earned tax dollars will be snatched by the Government in order to support welfare recipients. 37 The factor of race adds another dimension and intensity to this perception. There is concern about an increasing birth rate among blacks, with children being born who are not likely to become well-educated members of society. Some proponents of family values rhetoric may see the potential for a situation they would deem entirely unacceptable: working every day, at jobs that are increasingly stressful and insecure, to support a black "underclass" of able-bodied people who do not work. This is a very bizarre and ironic twist in a nation with a history of black slavery. 38

There is also increased concern about welfare and single mothers because the phenomenon of single motherhood has spread beyond the black community. More and more white women are now engaging in a behavior that this society typically associates with black women. The well-known conservative Charles Murray is explicit about the concern that so many white women are now having children outside of marriage. He said, "[T]he brutal truth is that American society as a whole could survive when illegitimacy became epidemic within a comparatively small ethnic minority. It cannot survive the same epidemic among whites." 39

There are other aspects of the "family values" rhetoric that implicate both gender and race. The formation of single mother families challenges the notion of the centrality of men to the family. The male has historically been considered the head of the family, a status which was, until recently, affirmed in the law through a whole host of legal rules. 40 Moreover, the idea of the male as the head of the family is not simply a function of the law -- it is also deeply ingrained in our culture. It is a part of the pervasive nature of patriarchy that both men and women have been socialized to think of men as indispensable to the definition of family.

In challenging the centrality of men to the family, single motherhood challenges a fundamental and long-standing social pattern: the control of men over women. This challenge is presented across the class spectrum. A single mother on welfare may not have a great deal of power over her life, but in a sense she has more power than a woman who has no access to any money other than through a husband. Thus, one consequence of the availability of public assistance is that poor women can obtain at least a small measure of economic independence from men. This can enable them to decide to have children without husbands or to leave husbands who are physically or emotionally abusive.?

The Murphy Brown controversy provides an illustration of the issues of centrality and control at the middle and upper-middle class level. 41 Murphy, a fictional television sitcom character who was obviously well-educated, professional and economically self-sufficient, decided to bear a child outside of marriage. Obviously, she was unlikely to become an AFDC recipient. Why did her decision become the subject of national attention and the focus of remarks by the Vice President of the United States?

The answer seems clear. Murphy Brown's decision to have a child outside of marriage represented a threat to remove middle-class men from centrality and control in the family. Murphy Brown was essentially saying, "I can support a child financially, and I can nurture a child without dependence on a man." She became a dangerous symbol because she posed the possibility that an attractive, affluent woman could choose to reject a powerful societal norm, decide to have a child without a man, and suffer no apparent adverse consequences.

The specific concern about the displacement of men from the center of the family implicit in the family values cry has implications for all men, but also has a specific racial dimension. The black single mother family has a long history in this country. 42 While out-of-wedlock births have been traditionally associated with blacks, the fact today is that the fastest growing group of single mothers is among white women. 43 As a result, a different group of men is now being affected by the growth in the number of single mothers. While black female-headed families have long been condemned as matriarchies, little was done to address the structures that prevented black men from playing the traditional role of breadwinner. The possible psychological impact on black men of the inability to play the traditional role was obviously not considered a problem. However, now that it is white men who are threatened with displacement from their expected roles in the family, there is a different level of concern. This is another illustration of the way in which the family values rhetoric is both racist and hypocritical. It also illustrates once again the way in which issues are redefined or given a different priority when they are no longer limited to the black community.

IV. The Fallacies in Family Values

A. Problems With the Focus on Private Values

In part, the family values rhetoric represents feelings of frustration about the many problems that exist in this society. It reflects a conclusion that these problems can only be solved through acts of individual will: if you change the way people think, you will change the way they act, and thereby change society. But focusing on private values as a solution to public concerns is extremely problematic.

The family values rallying cry rests on a number of assumptions about the idea of values. First, there is an assumption that there is some consensus as to what the family values are that are deemed to be threatened. The reality is that we live in an era of change and controversy with respect to many kinds of values, including values about family life. Many people, for example, would probably agree that the values of honesty, hard work and respect for others are desirable, but there would likely be strong disagreement about issues such as the appropriate role of religion in childrearing, or the effectiveness or morality of corporal punishment of children. The very assumption that marriage is a prerequisite to bearing children has been challenged. Adoption, surrogate motherhood and the increase in stepfamilies have challenged assumptions about biology and the nuclear family. Moreover, there is no obvious consensus in this country as to whether the proper role of the state is to maintain norms that are commonly shared or whether it is to protect the right of individuals to choose their own values about family. 44

Clearly the Dan Quayle-Murphy Brown flap suggests that at least for some people, the term "family values" is a euphemism for the two-parent family. 45 This view may be combined with a belief that children are more likely to learn certain values such as honesty and good citizenship in that context. The notion that the two-parent family is a prerequisite to passing on good values, as well as the assumption that there is a consensus with respect to which values are important, was a central focus in the 1992 Republican Party Platform. Recent research, however, casts doubt on whether most Americans agree with this formulation. In a recent survey, only two percent of the women and one percent of the men questioned defined family values as being about the traditional nuclear family. Five percent of the women and one percent of the men defined family values as being connected to religion or the Bible. Nine out of ten women defined family values as loving, taking care of and supporting each other, knowing right from wrong and having good values, and nine out of ten said that society should value all kinds of families. 46

Even assuming that there are some values that most people in the society agree are desirable, there is no clear evidence that these values cannot be effectively transmitted in a family that is headed by a woman. Although research purports to show that it is children raised without fathers who are disproportionately represented in statistics concerning failure in school, involvement with the criminal justice system and other problems, 47 there has been no proof that it is the presence of fathers that makes the difference between a child's success or failure. A distinction must be drawn between a correlation and causation. Critical variables such as the impact of poverty and family disruption (where that is a factor) have not been fully accounted for in empirical studies. Finally, there is a growing body of research that challenges the assumption that children in one-parent households inevitably suffer. 48

Also often overlooked in the family values rhetoric is the obvious fact that the traditional family can also be a site in which negative values can be transmitted. In the current rush to enshrine the nuclear family, it can be forgotten that traditional nuclear families have also been the place where children have seen, learned about, and been the victims of behavior such as domestic violence, sexual abuse and incest. One would think from the focus in the rhetoric and the media on crack addicted single mothers that alcoholism and drug abuse simply do not occur in traditional families.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the assumption that the solution to the problems confronting society today are to be found in the private rather than the public realm is not only unrealistic, it is dangerous. It is an approach to societal problems that lets the government off of the hook, permitting it to escape responsibility for developing policies to protect and improve the lives of its most vulnerable citizens. An approach that focuses on the family rather than the society as the source of responsibility to address social issues can also have the effect of sanctioning or even promoting racism by encouraging people to feel little compassion or commitment toward those who can be easily regarded as "the other." As Stephanie Coontz has noted:

The language of private relationships and family values . . . leads not only to a contraction but also to a deformation of the public realm. Where family relations become "our only model for defining what emotionally real relationships are like," we can empathize and interact only with the people whom we can imagine as potential lovers or family members. The choice becomes either a personal relationship or none, a familial intimacy or complete alienation. . . . Using family as a model for public life produces an unrealistic, even destructive definition of community. 49

B. Family Values and the Value of Work

It would appear, at least from the recent obsession with forcing welfare mothers to work, that one value assumed to be passed on to children in the traditional family but not in a single mother family is the work ethic. 50

However, the family values rhetoric on the issue of work is flawed in many ways. First of all, that rhetoric assumes that those who do not have jobs are unemployed because they simply lack the desire to work. The reality is that there are simply not enough jobs for all of the people who want to work. This of course is not accidental -- many scholars have noted that the stability of our capitalist society requires the existence of a certain amount of unemployment. 51 Because of racism, the pool of the unemployed remains disproportionately black.

Many marginalized people in this society work at the only kinds of jobs that are available to them: jobs that are temporary, low-paying, off-the-books or illegal. Regina Austin has described the strength and persistence of the work ethic among some of the most dispossessed members of the society:

Consider the youngsters employed in the urban crack trade. They are hardly shiftless and lazy leisure seekers. Many of them are as much Ronald Reagan's children, as much "yuppies," as the young urban professionals with whom the term is usually associated. Their commitment to the work ethic is incredible; they endure miserable working conditions, including long hours, exposure to the elements, beatings and shootings, mandatory abstinence from drugs and low pay relative to their superiors. . . "They spurn the injunctions of parents, police, teachers and other authorities, but they embrace the entrepreneurial and consumption cultures of mainstream America." 52

Because of child care responsibilities, many single mothers on AFDC do not work. However, many do, earning unreported income in a variety of marginal jobs, often in the underground economy. They and their children survive by their ability to find ways to supplement the minimal money they receive from welfare. 53 However, the society sees these women not as plucky, resourceful survivors of adversity, but rather as welfare cheats.

It must not be forgotten that the value we attribute to work is not, in any sense, an absolute. It is, instead, like the question of what constitutes a family, a value that is contingent upon perspective or standpoint. Work is valued in accordance with who does it and who it is done for. In a patriarchal system, the value of work is construed in accordance with what is valued under patriarchy. Thus, we have the obvious fact that in this society, market work is valued more highly than domestic labor in the home; a fact that becomes very clear when married couples divorce and women who have played the traditional role of homemaker often find themselves newly impoverished. 54

The question of hierarchies with respect to the value of work is more complex than a mere comparison between market and domestic labor. Attitudes toward what domestic women do in their homes are also profoundly affected by both sexism and racism. Let us take the example of two women, neither of whom has held a job in her adult life. 55 The first woman was married right out of college to a young man with a promising career. The other woman never married but ended up having three children and being on public assistance. Both women have been out of the workforce caring for their children for the past several years. In one case, the husband has now decided to leave the marriage. In the other case, the government has decided to take severe measures against women on public assistance to force them into workfare programs. 56

It is likely that people would be sympathetic to the privileged woman. They would see it as a noble thing for an educated middle-class woman to forego career opportunities in order to stay home and care for her children. They would be concerned about the likely precipitous decline in her economic circumstances, about her loss of status, and about possible resulting psychological harm. They would feel that she should be retrained for a job that has long term potential for financial and personal growth. On the other hand, many people would feel that the mother on public assistance is lazy and should take any job. 57 Because we live in a patriarchal society, it is considered acceptable for women to be economically dependent, as long as that dependency is on a man.

Race also impacts upon the way in which we choose to value or not to value work. I have argued elsewhere that the work of parenting by black mothers is devalued in the controversy over transracial adoption. In that context, the complexity of the childrearing work performed by black parents is underappreciated. Indeed, there is frequently an underlying assumption that black parents are inadequate to raise black children, while whites are assumed competent to parent both white and black children. 58 Dorothy Roberts has described the relationship between the devaluation of the work black mothers perform in their own homes for their own children and the national obsession with forcing welfare mothers to work, observing that "[u]nderlying the consensus that welfare mothers should work is often the conviction that their children are socially worthless, lacking any potential to contribute to society. . . ." 59 Also, unfortunately, even feminists often fail to see the link between patriarchy and racism in thinking about the value of women's domestic labor. It continues to be troubling that all too often upper-middle-class feminists devote substantial effort to developing the argument that housework should be highly valued in the context of the divorce of an upper-middle-class woman, without addressing the troubling fact that successful professional women often pay low wages to the women, often women of color, who perform similar domestic labor for them in their homes. 60

C. Black Families, Black Mothers and Oppositional Values

As discussed earlier, the family values rhetoric conveniently ignores the fact that the family can also be the site for learning negative values. One negative value that can be learned in a family, whether there is one parent there or two, is racism. 61 Racism complicates the work of black parents in teaching values to their children.

While most black parents in this country would probably agree that it is important that families teach children values such as honesty, hard work, and respect for others, black parents also understand that black children must learn much more than the values of the white majority. In raising their children, black parents generally employ and pass on a "double consciousness," 62 in which the values that seem to be promoted in the larger society must be evaluated at two levels -- first a general level, and then a second level which takes into account the reality of racism and minority status. An uncritical and unreflective acceptance of traditional values can affect black families differently than white families: because of racism, blacks have less of an opportunity to live their lives in accordance with the mainstream ideal. Historian Elizabeth Pleck has argued, for example, that in northern cities in the nineteenth century, the adoption of mainstream values by blacks often promoted marital dissolution because racial discrimination against black men made traditional values, such as the male as the economically powerful breadwinner, unrealistic guides to family life. 63 This continues to be true. A recent study indicated that the black men most likely to leave their families when faced with unemployment were those who subscribed most firmly to the idea of the male as breadwinner 64 .

During slavery, when black people created families that were neither acknowledged nor protected by the law, 65 black families had to create their own family values. 66 In a world in which they and their children were treated as subhumans, these families had to create lives with independent moral meaning. 67 In socializing their children, they had to create values that were both consistent with and in opposition to those of the larger society. Perhaps most importantly, they had to teach their children to value themselves in a society whose message was that they were not valued and had no values. 68

The acceptance of single motherhood is one example of the ways in which black families and communities sometimes created independent moral meaning. Thus, while the nonmarital mother has long been the object of intense stigma in the larger society, many scholars have noted that black unwed mothers have never suffered the same outcast status in black communities as white women have in white communities. 69 Sociologist Joyce Ladner described the acceptance of single motherhood as reflecting a belief that a child born outside of marriage was a child who had a right to be cared for and reared in the community of his parents without stigmatization. 70 Through the years, many blacks have understood that society's judgment that the nuclear family is the only moral context in which to have a child was premised on a system that often did not reflect the realities and limitations that shape black people's lives.

The challenge of life in a racist society still requires that black people create and pass on to their children oppositional values. Angela Harris and Patricia Hill Collins have written eloquently of the way in which black women have to create a positive self in the midst of a white world in which they are consistently devalued. 71 Although some have minimized the relevance of race in the work of parenting, 72 many blacks agree that preparation of a black child for life in a racist society is a major task in parenting black children and often requires teaching values that are different from those of the larger society. 73 Thus, while the family values rhetoric demonizes black mothers, it ignores the challenges these mothers meet on a daily basis to instill values of pride and self-esteem that are as important to their children's survival as any other values assumed to enjoy widespread acceptance.

A powerful example of the challenge confronting black parents can be found in Suzanne Carothers' study of the transmission of values between mothers and daughters in a southern black community. One woman in the study thus describes her political socialization in a racially segregated society:

My sister and I were somewhat awed of white people because when we were growing up, we did not have to deal with them in our little environment. I mean you just didn't have to because we went to an all-black school, an all-black church, and lived in an all-black neighborhood. We just didn't deal with them. If you did, it was a clerk in a store. Grandmother was dealing with them. And little by little she showed us how. First, [she taught us that] you do not fear them. I'll always remember that. Just because their color may be different and they may think differently, they are just people. The way she did it was by taking us back and forth downtown with her. Here she is, a lady who cleans up peoples' kitchens. She comes into a store to spend her money. She could cause complete havoc if she felt she wasn't being treated properly. She'd say things like, "If you don't have it in the store, order it." It was like she had $500,000 to spend. We'd just be standing there and watching. But what she was trying to say [to us] was, they will ignore you if you let them. If you walk in there to spend your 15 cents, and you're not getting proper service, raise hell, carry on, call the manager, but don't let them ignore you. 74

Although this excerpt deals with the simple, everyday family experience of shopping, it provides a powerful example of the way in which black women teach their children a crucial value -- to values themselves. It is also significant that this lesson is being taught by a person of little formal education or financial means, demonstrating that affluence and education are not prerequisites for good parenting -- lessons about values and about life can be taught in many ways. Finally, in this example, the person teaching the lesson is the grandmother -- a woman. This serves to remind us that the values that need to be taught can be taught regardless of the gender of the teacher, or of the learner.

V. Family Values, Feminism and Public Policy

The discussion in the preceding section argues that with respect to some issues, black mothers have to socialize their children to have values that are in opposition to those of the larger society. Black mothers understand, for example, that the enemy is racism and that their children have to be taught to struggle against it. Similarly, with respect to issues of public policy, most blacks clearly define the problem as racism. However, when feminists consider what kind of influence they would like to have in the arena of family policy, it is not always clear what it is they perceive to be the subordinating factor against which they must struggle.

It is not difficult to observe that in most of the public discussion about family values, the voices are male and not female. Obviously, this can be partly attributed to the fact that those who are in power have the power to decide which voices and perspectives they will include, and which they will ignore. But attention must also be paid to the role of feminists in this silence. To what extent have feminists sought to be heard in this debate? Do most middle- and upper-middle-class feminists really oppose the current efforts to curtail public assistance for poor women? 75 Even if there is agreement that the immediate task is to prevent the dismantling of AFDC, questions concerning the relationship between middle-class feminists and women on welfare demands consideration of larger issues. For example, in terms of women's economic well-being over the long run, to what extent is it appropriate for women to rely on the family (their husbands), the market (their jobs), the state, or some combination of these?

Clearly, if feminists wish to make permanent long-term changes with respect to the position of women in this society they face the challenge of creating new values with respect to gender and passing these values on to their children -- both male and female. But it is not so clear what the values are that feminists would wish to pass on to their children. An easy answer would be to say general ideas of gender equality. But the deeper we probe, the more complex this issue becomes. What are the specific values that feminists wish to pass on to their children about the structure of the family? Are feminists willing to say that the enemy is patriarchy? And if so, what exactly does this mean, both as a theoretical and a practical matter?

A. The Question of Patriarchy

Martha Fineman has noted the reluctance of feminist legal theorists to explore and truly critique the role of patriarchy in family law. 76 Although most feminists would probably agree that the cry of "family values" is at least in part a response to a perceived threat to patriarchy, feminist theory seems to be reluctant to confront the issue of patriarchy head on. 77 One question is, why is this so? It may be that at a subliminal level, many women accept the idea that male dominance is prevalent in nature and so it is natural for men to be dominant in the family. It may be that some scholars fear that challenges to patriarchy may focus attention on their own lives and they may be thought of as lonely, unhappy women who denounce patriarchy only because they lack satisfying male companionship. Clearly, some women have an affirmative personal stake in the continuation of patriarchy. This will continue to be true as long as men are economically dominant in the society, and attachment to affluent men provides women with a route to economic privilege. 78 For the woman who is the beneficiary of male privilege, yet wishes to critique patriarchy, there is a troubling dilemma of dual loyalty.

A reluctance to challenge patriarchy in the family is an issue that has consequences in the family values controversy. For example, feminists may argue that families headed by single mothers should not be stigmatized, but we should question whether single mothers will ever be on the same plane as married mothers in a patriarchal society. As long as women are validated by their attachments to men, 79 and women accept the resulting hierarchies, single mothers are unlikely to be accorded the same respect as mothers who are married. Are feminists really ready to put single mother families on the same plane as traditional families? 80 Also, what does it mean, in a practical sense, to be anti-patriarchy? This question seems more easily answered with respect to relationships outside of the home, such as employment relationships. But relationships inside of the home pose more difficult questions. Obviously, opposing patriarchy within the family must mean more than a less gendered division of domestic responsibilities. 81

Developing an analysis of patriarchy in the family is a challenge not only for those women who have benefited from it, but also for those women who have not. Thus, patriarchy is a complex issue for black feminists. Black women are painfully aware that, for many blacks, the nuclear family with its patriarchal pattern has never been an option because of the racism that has limited the economic opportunities of black men. Challenging the desirability of patriarchy in the family can be difficult for black women because it may be hard to give up what the larger society seems to value, especially if you have never been permitted to have it.

It is not surprising that much of the discourse about the black family by notable black male scholars, such as William Julius Wilson, supports the notion of shoring up the black family as a patriarchal institution. 82 Improving economic conditions for black men would presumably permit them to better play the traditional male role in the family. But, as numerous feminists scholars have already argued, the solution to the problems confronting black families is not simply to "put black men in charge." 83 Clearly, black men must be afforded better economic opportunities, but those same opportunities must also be available to black women. The task of simultaneously addressing racism and patriarchy is undoubtedly complex, 84 but the work must begin by accepting new forms of family for families of all races.

B. Race, Class and Single Motherhood

Statistics clearly have shown that many people no longer live in the traditional nuclear family and the number of births to unmarried women has risen among all races. 85 Despite these statistics, the fact remains that in the minds of much of white America, the face of single motherhood and of mothers on welfare, like the face of crime, is black. It is the image of the "lazy welfare mother who breeds children at the expense of the taxpayers in order to increase the amount of her welfare check" 86 that is used to sell programs to the public that will adversely affect women. 87 The message is that black women are immoral, unfeminine and undesirable and that white women should not be like them. Indeed, as Patricia Hill Collins has noted, the way society treats black women serves as a warning to white women. She points out that the negative stereotype of the black matriarch is "a powerful symbol of what can go wrong if the white patriarchal power is challenged. Aggressive, assertive women are penalized; they are abandoned by their men, and end up impoverished and stigmatized as being unfeminine." 88 The negative image of black single mothers, especially nonmarital mothers, poses a dilemma for middle- and upper-middle-class white women who, in increasing numbers, are choosing to have children outside of marriage.

In their desire to defend the choices of upper-middle-class women to become single mothers, some feminists have argued, and indeed are seeking to demonstrate empirically, that well-educated, mature, middle-class women are successfully raising children without men. Although a challenge to the stereotype of single women as inadequate parental role models is crucial, a challenge limited to asserting the adequacy of upper-middle-class women poses a danger that these women will distance themselves from the circumstances of younger, poorer, less educated single mothers. Should this occur, it would have troubling symbolic and practical implications. It would suggest that these women are seeking to distance themselves from the negative images associated with black single mothers, and perhaps the negative images associated with black women in general. Second, it would have troubling implications for the role feminists might play, and the positions they might take regarding issues of critical importance to a wider range of single mothers such as welfare and other social programs that benefit the children of the poor.

It is important that those middle-class women whose voices are more likely to be heard in the debate over redefinition of the family not create a new hegemonic narrative of motherhood in which there are good nonmarital mothers who are middle-class, white and well-educated, and bad nonmarital mothers, who are poor, black, uneducated and possibly drug addicted or HIV-positive. Such divisions along lines of class and race would be disastrous. What must happen instead is that women must seek commonalties that will support the development of coalitions between women of different races and classes.

The question of whether middle-class women would be willing to work in support of the interests of poor women and their children raises the question of how middle- and upper-middle-class women really feel about poor women having children outside of marriage.

The extent that the law supports the right of women to bear children outside of marriage is not yet clear, 89 but middle-class feminists need to think about how they feel about this issue as a matter of policy. Feminist scholars have explored the question of choice in the context of decisions women make regarding whether to give priority to their families or to their careers. 90 There has been less analysis of the choices women make about bearing children outside of marriage, 91 especially the choices of poor women.

The reasons women might choose to have children outside of marriage vary. It may be in part, as Martha Fineman suggests, a resistance to patriarchal ideology. 92 For women who see themselves as facing limited prospects in terms of education and employment, motherhood may be viewed as the sole way to gain status. Single motherhood may be chosen where there are few potential marriage partners. 93 It has been noted that some women may remain unmarried not because of a shortage of available or willing men, but rather as a response to the sexism of marriage. 94 As a number of scholars have noted, it is still not clear, especially in the case of poor women, whether becoming a single mother is a matter of liberation, desperation, or carelessness. 95

What are the implications for feminist theory of the issue of choice? Certainly one question it raises is whether women in a position to shape feminist thinking believe that all women have an equal right to choose to become mothers regardless of their economic circumstances. Certainly women have chosen to become mothers with the knowledge that their children might have a handicapping physical condition. Their decisions have generally been regarded as a matter of personal choice. Are feminists willing to take the same position with respect to women whose children are likely to be severely economically disadvantaged? Some middle- or upper-middle-class women probably feel that they make decisions about how many children they will bear in part as a response to their financial circumstances, and poor women should be expected to do the same. However, for upper-middle-class women, the choice with respect to the number of children they will bear is often dependent upon the presence and amount of a husband's income. Once again, this raises the issue of patriarchy and the need for further analysis of the implications of that institution for the family and for relationships between women.

The need for middle-class women to become active with respect to issues that appear to disproportionately affect poor women is not simply an ethical issue -- it is an issue of practical importance. The assault on economic support provided to poor women raising children alone presages an assault on middle-class financial entitlements such as social security and educational loans. Similarly, the attack on the reproductive decisions of poor women cannot be separated from the current assault on the reproductive decisions of women at all levels in the society. 96

VI. Conclusion

The government needs to abandon its quest to restore the primacy of the traditional family in the hope that it will restore the "good old days." The "good old days" were not so good for some groups in society, including black people and women. For many blacks the majoritarian values of earlier days meant lynchings, riding in the back of the bus and being subject to any number of other acts of violence and indignity. For women it meant being subject to domestic violence and the denial of educational and employment opportunities. The world is clearly better now for blacks and women, but the world is also becoming increasingly complex. Effective public policy must be developed in order to meet the challenges of changing demographics and values. These policies must address the problems of racism, poverty, and patriarchy.

Certainly the immediate goal must be to improve the conditions that confront children growing up in the poorest of families. This means, of course, preventing so-called "welfare reform" from taking away from poor families the economic means that ensures their day-to-day survival. In addition to providing some guaranteed income, policies must be developed and implemented to improve the health and education of poor children. In seeking to address racism, there must be vigorous enforcement of anti-discrimination laws as well as a reinvigoration of affirmative action. Women must be afforded opportunities to make choices about employment, about children, and about other aspects of their lives.

Rather than longing for the "good old days," romanticizing the idea of family, and seeking to impose one set of values on everyone, the focus of the government should be on trying to develop policies that will create a just society where people can make their own choices about the most personal aspects of their lives.

1 Associate Professor of Law, Rutgers University School of Law --Newark; J.D. 1976, New York University; M.S. 1973, Columbia University; B.A. 1970, Mount Holyoke College. Another version of this paper was presented at a Conference on the Future of the Family sponsored by the Sixth International Congress of the Professors World Peace Academy in Seoul, Korea, on August 24, 1995. An abbreviated and different version will be published in a book of the proceedings of that conference. Back

2 See, e.g., Joan Beck, Nation Must Stem the Tide of Births Out of Wedlock, Times Picayune, Mar. 6, 1993, at B7 (blaming childbearing by unmarried women for crime, poor health and poor educational achievement among children); Andrew Rosenthal, After the Riots, Quayle Says Riots Sprang from a Lack of Family Values, N.Y. Times, May 20, 1992, at A1; Charles Murray, No Point Fiddling with Welfare at the Margin, Sunday Times (London), July 11, 1993, ¤ 1, at 13 (citing an argument that blames births to single mothers for a rise in crime and unemployment, and a decline in the "overall civility of social interaction"). Back

3 See, e.g., Martha L. Fineman, Images of Mothers in Poverty Discourses, 1991 Duke L.J. 274, 289-93 (1991) [hereinafter Images of Mothers] (discussing poverty discourses as centering around the image of the missing male). Back

4 See, e.g., H.R. 4605, 103d Cong., 2d Sess ¤ 104 (1994) (amending Title IV-A of the Social Security Act, the Work Responsibility Act would place a 24 month limit on AFDC benefits to some households). The New Jersey legislature recently eliminated the increase in AFDC benefits as a result of the birth of additional children. N.J. Stat. Ann. ¤ 44:10-3.5 (West 1994). In addition to this kind of family cap provision, a number of states have proposed or enacted "bridefare" provisions, and/or incentives for women on welfare to use Norplant. See generally, Lucy Williams, The Ideology of Division: Behavior Modification Welfare Reform Proposals, 102 Yale L.J. 719 (1992) (discussing learnfare, bridefare and family cap provisions). Under the Federal Personal Responsibility Act, states would be forbidden by the Federal Government from providing welfare payments to any child born to an unmarried woman under eighteen-years-old. The preamble to the Act states that the purpose of the Act is to "restore the American family, reduce illegitimacy, control welfare spending and reduce welfare dependence." Personal Responsibility Act, H.R. 4, 104th Cong., 1st Sess. ¤ 105 (1994). Back

5 See infra part II. Back

6 See infra part III. Back

7 See infra part IV.A. Back

8 See infra part IV.B. Back

9 See infra part IV.C. Back

10 See infra part V. Back

11 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death 189-90 (1982); Anita Allen, Surrogacy, Slavery and the Ownership of Life, 13 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 139, 140-44 (1990). Back

12 Allen, supra note 10, at 5. Back

13 Id. Back

14 Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom 52 (1976). Back

15 See A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. & Barbara K. Kopytoff, Racial Purity and Interracial Sex in the Law of Colonial and Antebellum Virginia, 77 Geo. L.J. 1967, 1971 (1989). Back

16 See, e.g., John Blassingame, The Slave Community 170-77 (1979); Barra Omolade, The Unbroken Circle: A Historical and Contemporary Study of Black Single Mothers and Their Families, 3 Wisc. Women's L.J. 239, 247 (1987). Back

17 See generally Andrew Billingsley, Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Enduring Legacy of African American Families 101-11 (1992) (discussing the interaction of slavery and African tradition in the development of the role of the mother in black families); Omolade, supra note 15. Back

18 See generally Omolade, supra note 15, at 247, 250. Back

19 Id. at 250-54. Back

20 Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present 113 (1985). Back

21 Frances F. Piven & Richard A. Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare 127 (1971). Back

22 William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (1987); James H. Johnson & Melvin L. Oliver, Economic Restructuring and Black Male Joblessness in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 12 Urb. Geography 542, 542, 559 (1991) (discussing impact of the restructuring of the U.S economy on black male unemployment). Back

23 Rates of black male unemployment consistently exceed those of white males. When black men are employed they earn much less money than white men. For example, in 1990, the median income for white men was $21,170 per year, while for black men it was only $12,868. U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Dep't of Commerce, Current Population Rep., The Black Population of the United States 453 (1992). See generally Young, Black and Male in America: An Endangered Species (Jewelle Taylor Gibbs ed., 1988) (examining the social, historical and economic conditions that contribute to the employment, educational, health status, and involvement with the criminal justice system of young black males); Dionne J. Jones & George Harrison, Fast Facts: Comparative Views of African-American Status and Progress, in The National Urban League: The State of Black America 213 (1994) (comparing white and black males with respect to levels of education, participation in the labor force, income, poverty and rates of death). Back

24 See, e.g., Mark Testa & Marilyn Krogh, The Effect of Employment on Marriage Among Black Males in Inner City Chicago, in The Decline in Marriage Among African-Americans: Causes, Consequences and Policy Implications 59 (M. Belinda Tucker & Claudia Mitchel-Kernan eds., 1995) (demonstrating that black male employment is positively related to marriage rates and black males with stable employment are twice as likely to marry as black men who are not in school, in the military, or otherwise employed.) William Julius Wilson has observed that "[p]erhaps the most important factor in the rise of black female headed families [is] the extraordinary rise in black male joblessness. . . . [B]lack women nationally, especially young black women, are facing a shrinking pool of 'marriageable' (i.e. employed) black men." Wilson, supra note 21, at 104-05. Back

25 William A. Darity, Jr. & Samuel L. Myers, Jr., Family Structure and the Marginalization of Black Men: Policy Implications, in The Decline in Marriage Among African-Americans: Causes, Consequences and Policy Implications 263, 263, 265 (M. Belinda Tucker & Claudia Mitchel-Kernan eds., 1995). Back

26 See, e.g., Omolade, supra note 15, at 239 (tracing the history of black woman headed families from slavery through the present); See also Billingsley, supra note 16. Back

27 Daniel P. Moynihan, Office of Pol'y Planning & Research, U.S. Dep't of Labor, the Negro Family: The Case for National Action 29 (1965). Back

28 Id. at 29-31. Back

29 For statistics detailing the costs of AFDC between 1970 and 1990, see Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 103d Cong., 2d. Sess., Overview of Entitlement Programs 325 (Comm. Print 1994). Back

30 Statistics have shown that after the time of first enrollment, 30% of the individuals on AFDC are on it for less than three years, and 20% are on it for three to four years. See David E. Rosenbaum, Welfare: Who Gets It? How Much Does It Cost?, N.Y. Times, March 23, 1995, at A23. Some conservatives have begun to argue that there is a genetic component to the likelihood of certain people becoming welfare recipients. See Richard J. Herrnstein & Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in Family Life (1994) (arguing that higher fertility rates of groups with lower average intelligence helps to perpetuate welfare dependency). Back

31 The federal share of the costs of the AFDC program is only about 1% of the federal budget. Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., Overview of Entitlement Programs 679, 1749 (Comm. Print 1993). Back

32 Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 103d Congress, 1st Sess., Overview of Entitlement Programs 725 (Comm. Print 1993).Joel Handler, Two Years and You're Out, 26 Conn. L. Rev. 857, 861 (1994). Back

33 Joel Handler, Two Years and You're Out, 26 Conn. L. Rev. 857, 861 (1994). Back

34 See Martha A. Fineman, The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies 191 (1995) [hereinafter The Neutered Mother]. See generally Robert E. Goodin & Julia Le Grand, Not Only the Poor: The Middle Classes and the Welfare State (1987) (describing the ways in which the middle class has benefitted from the welfare state). Back

35 See generally Wahneema Lubiano, Black Ladies, Welfare Queens and State Minstrels: Ideological War by Narrative Means, in Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality, at 332, 330 (Toni Morrison ed., 1992) (arguing that references to women on welfare imply a whole range of words and concepts that imply racial degeneracy). Back

36 See generally Rickie Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie 187-204 (1992) (discussing taxpayer resentment toward welfare mothers since the post-war years and the restrictive, punitive programs that resulted). Back

37 See Lee Anne Fennell, Interdependence and Choice in Distributive Justice: The Welfare Conundrum, 1994 Wis. L. Rev. 235, 295 (discussing public perceptions of unfairness in confiscating money earned through work for the purpose of providing support to able-bodied individuals who do not work). Back

38 Contrary to what may be a common perception, the majority of recipients of AFDC are not black. According to 1994 statistics, 38.9% of recipients were white, 37.2% were black. It is true that recipients of AFDC are disproportionately black. Rosenbaum, supra note 29, at A23. Back

39 Charles Murray, The Coming White Underclass, Wall St. J., October 29, 1993, at A14. See also Daniel P. Moynihan, Defining Deviancy Down, 62 Am. Scholar 17 (1993) (expressing the concern that the birth patterns of white Americans are starting to approximate those of black families thirty years ago). Back

40 See, e.g., Kirschberg v. Feenstra, 450 U.S. 455 (1981) (striking down as violative of equal protection the right of husbands to control and manage community property); Warren v. State, 336 S.E.2d 221 (Ga. 1985) (abolishing the marital rape exemption). Back

41 See, e.g., John E. Yang & Ann Devroy, Quayle: 'Hollywood Doesn't Get It,' Administration Struggles to Explain Attack on TV's Murphy Brown, Wash. Post, May 21, 1992, at A1. Back

42 See generally Omolade, supra note 15. Back

43 See, e.g., Murray, supra note 38, at A14. Back

44 Peggy Cooper Davis, Contested Images of Family Values: The Role of the State, 107 Harv. L. Rev. 1348 (1994). Back

45 Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Dan Quayle Was Right, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1993, at 47 ("The social arrangement that has proven most successful in ensuring the physical survival and promoting the social development of the child is the family unit of the biological mother and father."). Back

46 Tamar Lewin, Women Are Becoming Equal Providers, N.Y. Times, May 11, 1995, at A27. Back

47 See Nancy E. Dowd, Stigmatizing Single Parents, 18 Harv. Women's L.J. 19, 35-42 (1995) (discussing and critiquing research purporting to demonstrate that children inevitably suffer in one-parent families). Back

48 See, e.g., Ronald Angel & Jacqueline Angel, Painful Inheritance: Healthand the New Generation of Fatherless Families (1993) (stating that studies of children of divorce do not tell much about the consequences for children who never had a father in the home). See also, Barbara Bilge & Gladis Kaufman, Children of Divorce and One Parent Families: Cross Cultural Perspectives, 32 Fam. Rel. 59, 68-69 (1983) (stating that "no single family form produces an optimal environment for a growing child"). Back

49 Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap 113, 115 (1992). Back

50 See Mickey Kaus, The Work Ethic State: The Only Way to Break the Culture of Poverty, New Republic, July 7, 1986, at 26. "If we could rely on volunteers to end the culture of poverty by working themselves out of it, we probably wouldn't have a culture of poverty in the first place. The point is to enforce the work ethic." Id. at 33. Another writer put it differently, stating that "[t]he link between female headship and welfare dependency in the urban underclass is also well established, leading to legitimate concerns about the intergenerational transfer of poverty. At the root of this concern is the paucity of employment among welfare mothers and how this affects attitudes of their children toward work." John D. Kasarda, Urban Industrial Transition and the Underclass, 501 Annals 26, 44 (1989). Back

51 Christopher Jencks, Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty and the Underclass 128 (1992). Back

52 Regina Austin, "The Black Community," Its Lawbreakers, and a Politics of Identification, 65 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1769, 1786 (1992) (footnotes omitted) (quoting Jefferson Morley, Contradictions of Cocaine Capitalism, Nation, Oct. 2, 1989, at 341, 344). Back

53 See Jencks, supra note 50, at 204-21. Back

54 See generally Twila L. Perry, No-Fault Divorce and Liability Without Fault, 52 Ohio St. L.J. 55 (1991); Joan Williams, Is Coverture Dead? Beyond a New Theory of Alimony, 82 Geo. L.J. 2227 (1994). Back

55 I explore this hypothetical in a recent article. See Twila L. Perry, Alimony: Race, Privilege and Dependency in the Search for Theory, 83 Geo. L.J. 2481, 2500-03 (1994) [hereinafter Alimony]. Back

56 Id. Back

57 Id. Back

58 See Twila L. Perry, The Transracial Adoption Controversy: An Analysis of Discourse and Subordination, 21 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 33 (1993-1994) [hereinafter Transracial Adoption] (arguing that positions in favor of transracial adoption are often premised on the assumption that whites provide superior parenting skills). Back

59 Dorothy E. Roberts, The Value of Black Mothers' Work, 26 Conn. L. Rev. 871, 876 (1994). Back

60 See Alimony, supra note 54. See generally Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class 96-97 (criticizing middle class feminists for failing to put the exploitation of domestic workers on their agenda). Back

61 See generally Barry Troyna & Richard Hatcher, Racism in Children's Lives: A Study of Mainly White Primary Schools 131-46 (1992) (discussing the role of family, school, community and television as sources of white children's ideas about race). See also Frances Aboud, Children and Prejudice 88-92 (1988) (discussing actions and attitudes of parents that are associated with racial prejudice in children). Back

62 This phenomenon of "double consciousness" was long ago described by W.E.B. DuBois. W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk 6 (1903). Back

63 Elizabeth Pleck, Black Migration and Poverty: Boston, 1865-1900 198, 200 (1979), cited in Coontz, supra note 48, at 250. Back

64 Coontz, supra note 48, at 250. Back

65 Davis, supra note 59, at 1364. Back

66 See Omolade, supra note 15, at 240 ("Black resistence to social death took the form of creating viable families, whether patriarchal or female-headed, and of developing extended kinship networks along with political and protest strategies."). Back

67 Patterson, supra note 10, at 6. Back

68 See Blassingame, supra note 15, at 181-91 (describing ways in which slave parents attempted to inculcate self-esteem in their children). Back

69 Solinger, supra note 35, at 199-203 (describing, in the era before Roe v. Wade, the decisions of black women to keep their nonmarital children rather than to place them for adoption and the support this decision had from families and the community); Regina Austin, Sapphire Bound!, 1989 Wis. L. Rev. 558, 558-61 (1989) (arguing that blacks and whites view teenage pregnancy differently because of cultural differences); Billingsley, supra note 16, at 111 (describing how even children without identifiable fathers were accepted into slave communities); Omolade, supra note 15, at 255 (noting that if black single mothers worked hard to provide for their families, they were generally accepted into working-class communities, although there was less acceptance in middle-class communities). Back

70 Joyce Ladner, Tomorrow's Tomorrow: The Black Woman 2, 8 (1971). Back

71 See Angela Harris, Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory, 42 Stan. L. Rev. 581, 595-601(1990) (discussing the effect of white standards of beauty on black women). See also Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment 91-113 (1991) (describing the importance of self-definition for black women). Back

72 This debate often occurs in the context of the controversy surrounding transracial adoption, where advocates of the practice dispute the argument that black parents are in the best position to teach black children the skills to survive in a racist society. See, e.g., Elizabeth Bartholet, Where Do Black Children Belong? The Politics of Race Matching in Transracial Adoption, 139 U. Pa L. Rev. 1163, 1219-21 (1991) (arguing that the survival skills argument has little merit). Contra Transracial Adoption, supra note 57, at 61-65 (supporting the survival skills argument). Back

73 Transracial Adoption, supra note 57, at 61-65; James S. Bowen, Cultural Convergence and Divergences: The Nexus Between Putative Afro-American Family Values and the Best Interests of the Child, 26 J. Fam. L. 487, 510 (1988). Back

74 Suzanne C. Carothers, Catching Sense: Learning from Our Mothers to be Black and Female, in Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture 232, 339-340 (Faye Ginsburg & Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing eds., 1990). Back

75 See generally Lucie E. White, On the Consensus to End Welfare: Where Are the Women's Voices?, 26 Conn. L. Rev. 843-844 (1994) (noting the absence of women's voices in the welfare reform debate and that "[p]ublic conversation about ending welfare has reported a growing silent resentment among middle-class women toward poor single mother who reputedly 'live off the dole.'"). Back

76 The Neutered Mother, supra note 33, at 26-28, 31-33. "[N]otably what is left out tends to be a discussion of the family as a foundational patriarchal structure . . . . Some feminists accept traditional configurations of family but criticize historic role divisions." Id. at 27. Back

77 There have been some discussions of alternatives to the traditional nuclear family. See generally Mary P. Trenthart, Adopting a More Realistic Definition of Family, 26 Gonzaga L. Rev. 91, 97 (1991) (arguing that the average person has a broader definition of family than does the courts or the legislature); Note, A Family Like Any Other Family: Alternative Methods of Defining Family Law, 18 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 1027, 1062-64 (1991) (arguing that the legal definition of the family should reflect the social realities of different kinds of families); Note, Looking for a Family Resemblance: The Limits of the Functional Approach to the Legal Definition of Family, 104 Harv. L. Rev. 1640, 1640 (1991) (arguing that "[t]he traditional nuclear family is rapidly becoming an American anachronism"). Back

78 Alimony, supra note 54. Back

79 Images of Mothers, supra note 2, at 275-89 (discussing hierarchies of mothers based on the nature of their attachments to men); Alimony, supra note 54, at 2500-03 (discussing hierarchies among women based on the wealth of the men they are or have been attached to). Back

80 See The Neutered Mother, supra note 33 (arguing for the abolition of marriage as a legal status and for the recentering of family policy around dependency and caregiving rather than the sexual tie between men and women). Back

81 The Neutered Mother, supra note 33, at 27; Alimony, supra note 54, at 2507. Back

82 Wilson, supra note 21. Back

83 See, e.g., Austin, supra note 51 (arguing that stressing the need to improve only the economic status of black males perpetuates patriarchy); Maxine Baca Zinn, Family Race and Poverty in the Eighties, 14 Signs 856, 868-69 (1989) (criticizing Wilson's implied advocacy of black patriarchy). Back

84 Dorothy E. Roberts, Racism and Patriarchy in the Meaning of Motherhood, 1 Am. U. J. Gender & L. 25 (1993). Back

85 Steven A. Holmes, Out-of-Wedlock Births Up Since 1983, Report Indicates, N.Y. Times, July 20, 1994, at A1. Back

86 Roberts, supra note 83, at 25. Back

87 See Collins, supra note 70, at 77 (discussing stereotypes of the black welfare mother); see generally Gwendolyn Mink, Welfare Reform in Historical Perspective, 26 Conn. L. Rev. 879, 891-92 (1994). Back

88 Collins, supra note 70, at 78. Back

89 There are cases from which it can be argued that this right is implied. In Carey v. Population Services, 431 U.S. 678 (1977), the Court noted that the decision to bear children is "at the heart" of constitutionally protected choices. Id. at 685. The Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), and Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), held that the state cannot prohibit married or unmarried couples from using contraceptives based on the right of marital privacy and the equal protection clause. The Court's holdings in the above cases seems to support the argument that the right not to have children and the right to have children is protected. However, it would probably be going too far to argue that these cases place the right to decide to procreate as a single person on the same status as the right to decide not to procreate as a single person. Scholars have noted the limitations of both the privacy doctrine and the Free Exercise Clause in this context. See Martha Fineman, Intimacy Outside the Natural Family: The Limits of Privacy, 23 Conn. L. Rev. 955, 958 (1991); Martha Minow, The Free Exercise of Families, 1991 U. Ill. L. Rev. 925, 943 (1991). Back

90 See, e.g., Kathryn Abrams, Ideology and Women's Choices, 24 Ga. L. Rev. 761 (1990); Joan Williams, Gender Wars: Selfless Women in the Republic of Choice, 66 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1559 (1991). See generally, Kathleen Gerson, Hard Choices: How Women Decide About Work, Career and Motherhood (1985). Back

91 Lynn Smith, Births to Unmarried Women are Increasing So Much and the Stigmas Falling So Fast that Sociologists Don't Yet Know the Consequences, L.A. Times, July 22, 1993, at E1. Back

92 The Neutered Mother, supra note 33, at 125. Back

93 This may be true not only for poor women of color, but also for professional or middle-class women. A recent article in the New York Times reported that according to statistics of the U.S. Department of Education, there were more female than male undergraduates in American universities in the academic year 1992-1993. However, among black students there were 785,000 women and only 495,000 men enrolled that year. These disparities persist at the most elite levels. At Yale University, for example, among the undergraduates during the academic year 1994-1995, there were 250 black women and 186 black men. Emily Wilson, Dreading Another Saturday Night, N.Y. Times, April 2, 1995, at 4A, 24. Back

94 See, e.g., Omolade, supra note 15, at 273 (noting that some black women remain unmarried because of sexism in marriage). Back

95 Collins, supra note 70, at 116 (discussing young men encouraging their teenage girlfriends to bear children); Roberts, supra note 83, at 28-29; Austin, supra note 51, at 555 (arguing to "consider the possibility that young, black, sexually active, fertile, nurturing, black women are being viewed ominously because they have the temerity to break out of the rigid economic, social and political categories that a racist, sexist, and class stratified society would impose upon them"). Back

96 See, e.g., David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America 233 (1995) (arguing that the law should prohibit sperm banks from providing sperm to single women for the purpose of artificial insemination).

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Embracing Family Values

  The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) is the oldest nonprofit, nonpartisan, multidisciplinary professional association focused solely on family research, practice, and education.

NCFR represents scholars, professionals, and students in the discipline of Family Science , the scientific study of families and close interpersonal relationships.

CFLE Network , a newsletter for professionals who hold NCFR's Certified Family Life Educator credential, is a resource filled with information about Family Life Education , one of the primary practice professions of Family Science.  

Discipline. Money. Time. Relationships. These are just a few of the aspects of family life affected by family values. Family values are a thread that easily ties family education and spirituality together. Very early in my work with families, it became clear to me that I needed to learn more about the importance, role, and transcendence of values for families in all stages of the life cycle as well as find ways to help families both identify and pass on their values.

Importance and Role of Values

Values and morals were ranked by Curran as the seventh of 56 possible characteristics of the healthy family. Positive values including caring, equality and justice, integrity, honesty, responsibility, and restraint were listed as 26-31 of 40 developmental assets for youth by Benson, Galbraith, and Espeland. Having similar values can also aid spouses in a happier relationship and helps individuals feel fulfilled when living closely in line with their values.

Family values are different for each family; however, values give families an outlook on life, a way to view the world and their situations as well as an identity by helping family members better understand their background. Part of the reason values are so important to families is they can provide a sense of hope and meaning or significance to family members, especially when facing challenges and crisis situations. Individuals can even feel a sense of despair when they aren't living closely in line with their values.

Values are important also because they provide a foundation as a source of protection, guidance, affection, and support. Instilling family values can protect and guide children against making hurtful decisions in the future as they teach a sense of right and wrong. They can add to relationships and influence judgments, behaviors, and parenting styles. Much of what we do and how we react to various situations and topics is a result of our values. Values give families an outlook on life, a way to view the world and their situations as well as an identity by helping family members better understand their background.

Transcendence

Through their recent project, Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith? Marquardt, Stokes, & Ziettlow recognized that "parents have become more important than ever in determining the quality of a child's life." Intentional parenting is necessary for instilling values in children through rituals, taking advantage of teaching moments, and through the generativity of parents and grandparents. Values will be passed down from one generation to the next, therefore, parents need to be aware of the values they display in their day-to-day life—as they pass their values down to their children. Identifying core values and intentionally displaying them through words and actions gives the parent power over the fear of opposing influences. As opposed to avoiding outside interactions, parents can embrace these moments as times to help their children weigh decisions and struggles. Knowing why values are important and how to instill them in their children, parents can equip, support, and protect their children so that they are prepared to confront issues presented from experiences outside of the home.

Through working with families, I have learned that it is important for families to identify values and a plan that is unique to them as opposed to creating a template for all families to follow (as families have different values). Asking parents what is most important to them: "What values do you hope your child will hold as an adult?" or "What traits make a [fill in the last name of the family]?" Are your values honesty, faith, hard-working, kindness, compassion, etc?

Identifying values will allow families to become more focused on what is important to them—helping them better budget their time and other resources. Living by core values will also help filter conflicts and discipline—asking "does this violate one of our core values?" when deciding on how to handle a conflict and discipline measures. Families are better able to identify themselves based on their core values and create lives that reflect these values so that they feel fulfilled and connected to one another. It is also important to keep in mind that values may change as families travel through the different stages of the family life cycle or as they are confronted with various situations outside of their control.

Application

Parents can do a variety of things to pass along their family values to their children. Foremost, they need to be intentional and sensitive (not forcing values on children). They can create meaningful family rituals that help children live out their values. They can also find learning moments in every day opportunities—such as watching television together and discussing what they're watching. This gives parents the opportunity to address actions and attitudes from the television that conflict with their values. Instead of "cocooning" their child, parents can gradually expose their child to the different situations found in society and help them learn how to respond to conflicting values within the safety of their own home.

There are many beneficial resources for parents and educators that help parents create caring conversations with their children. A few examples include:

• Faith Inkubator's "Faith 5" provides a five step format for families to use each day at mealtimes or whenever works best in their schedule as an opportunity to discuss their values and practice their faith in the home. Find more information at www.faithink.org
• Fed up with Frenzy by Susan Sachs Lipman provides ideas to slow down and spend time together as a family during everyday activities, games, crafts, celebrating seasons, and much more.
• The Intentional Family by Dr. William Doherty offers a guide to opening communication between family members through a wide variety of everyday family rituals.
• What Kids Need to Succeed (Revised and Updated Third Edition) by Peter Benson, Judy Galbraith, and Pamela Espeland uses the research gathered from 89,000 young people in 26 states to create a list of 40 developmental assets. Their research found that young people who have more assets are much less likely to get involved in problem/high-risk behaviors.

In conclusion, values are important for a variety of reasons. Values give families an outlook on life, a way to view the world and their situation as well as an identity. Values can also add to relationships and influence judgments, behaviors, and parenting styles. Family values serve as the core of what family members do the opinions they have. Instilling family values can also protect children against making hurtful decisions in the future.

As Family Life Educators, we can help families learn the role and importance of values, work with them to identify their values and then find ways to embrace and teach those values through everyday rituals and activities. Faith communities have a wonderful opportunity to help families with this task through their worship, classes, gatherings, and celebrations—as a safe place for families as they travel through the family life cycle.

Benson, P., Galbraith, J., & Espeland, P. (2012). What Kids Need to Succeed, 3rd ed. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Publishing, Inc.

Curran, D. (1984). Traits of a Healthy Family . New York: Ballantine Books.

Doherty, W. (1997). The Intentional Family . New York: Addison-Wesley Company, Inc.

Marquardt, E., Stokes, C., & Ziettlow, A. (2013). Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith? Institute for American Values , 44. Retrieved from www.centerformarriageandfamilies.org/shape-of-families on February 20, 2013.  

At the time of publication, Brittany Gronewold, M.A., CFLE, worked with churches in the St. Louis, Missouri, area teaching classes on marriage enrichment, rituals, child development, and parent education.

Family Science is a vibrant and growing discipline. Visit Family.Science to learn more and see how Family Scientists make a difference.

NCFR is a nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose members support all families through research, teaching, practice, and advocacy.

Get the latest updates on NCFR & Family Science in our weekly email newsletter:

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What is the Family? Definition Essay

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Introduction

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In the human perspective, a family is a group of persons connected by kinship, compassion, or sharing of residence. In a number of societies, the family is the basic unit for the socialization of children. A basic family unit is made up of a father, mother, and children, and is known as a nuclear family, however, this unit can be extended to include other relations to be known as an extended family.

The concept of the family has undergone a transformation and in today’s society, many people define the family structure as an arbitrary cultural set-up, a statement could be partially true. In ancient times, the family was a closely-knit, patriarchal clan consisting of a man, his wife or wives, and several children!

This has changed to include a monogamous parent taking care of the children. Besides, certain concepts of the family have broken with tradition within specific communities while some have been implanted through migration to thrive or else disappear in the new communities and societies.

Current debates and interest concerning the family have forced individuals to reassess themselves in a society driven by change and uncertainty. Because of its intricate nature, sociologists have not succeeded in coming with a universal definition of what family is and how is constructed. Rather, the definition is subject to individual interpretation and depends on the value a person attaches to being a member of a communal social group.

The aim of the paper is to give a concise definition of family, and the context of family structures such as the traditional family; single parent family, blended family and cohabiting relationship families. The paper also examines the influences that have progressively shaped the concept of family from the past to the present day.

A family is generally defined as a group of individuals who are linked by kinship or adoption, and who have a common residence. (Germov and Poole, 2011, 132). Kinship ties are connections or associations that link individuals through genealogy lines or marriage.

However, a few writers disagree with this concept. For instance, George Murdock, an American anthropologist, defines family as a social group that lives together, support each other economically, and raise children (Germov and Poole, 2011, 128).

In the mid 20 th century, sociologists defined family as a man living together with his wife and children, joined by blood, marriage or adoption. The couple had sex, procreated, and cared for the children jointly, besides bringing resources such as money and food together. The family members also guarded and supported each other.

Again, some writers have given a different perspective. Some asserted that previous definitions of the concept of the family should be altered as they are founded on ‘monolithic’ models that exhibit partiality towards a specific kind of family typified by gender discrimination and legal attachment, instead of gender fairness and patterns of care or emotional response.

Besides, modern reproductive methods have changed family associations and the definition of terms such as ‘mother’ and ‘father’ gas considerably changed. For instance, women past their menopausal age can now have children through surrogate mothers. Consequently, an increasing number of studies are focusing on what really defines a family. This perspective overlooks the gender inclination of the couple and the legitimacy of the relationship, and centers rather on the patterns of caring and affection.

The concept of the family has been conventionally related to the traditional family setup, which can be defined as a relationship in the children live with both the biological parents with the father often at work while the mother stays at home (Germov & Poole, 2011, 128). Today less than ten percent of families satisfies this principle.

The second approach is that of single parent setup in which the child resides with one of the parents, and may result from death, divorce, separation, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, or a nonunion pregnancy. Milstead and Perkins (2010, para. 8) recognized that teenage mothers were less likely to enter marriage and preferred to care for the child without paternal help leading to certain social and economic deficits for both the mother and child including lack of proper education, poorly paying occupations, reliance on welfare, and bad health for both of them.

The third approach is that of a blended family, in which the child lives with one of the biological parents, and that parent’s partner. This type of family may also include children born to the new couple. This family setup is made up of children, one of the biological parents, and a stepparent (Kinnear, 2010, 8). Even though the availability of another adult may lead to more material and financial resources, studies indicate that such children may be more disadvantaged than those living in stable single-parent families. In fact, children living in blended families have a higher likelihood of suffering emotionally and/or psychologically than those in single parent families.

The fourth perspective is that of a cohabiting relationship, in which a child lives with one of the biological parents, and that parent’s significant other, however, in contrast to blended families, the adults are not married. This type of family has been on the rise and a possible explanation could be that couples take it as a good practice before marriage. In contrast, Joltes (2007, para. 2) notes that those who have cohabited are more likely to divorce than those who have not. Cohabiting families regularly create less defined family roles, lower levels of parental support, supervision and involvement, and more conflicts (Kinnear, 2010, 8).

In contrast from the family setups described above, the traditional family is characterized by a unit comprising of a married couple with two or more children. In this setup, the male adult is the head of the house and the breadwinner too, while the female adult performs household tasks and cares for children and her husband.

Back then, the gender roles were clear. Most (preferably all) members of the family attended a church service weekly. Children were obedient, respectful and responsible. Families resided in the same town, or at least close to each other. Instances of divorce were an abomination and were very rare. Unmarried couples were uncommon too, and the act was thought of as shameful (Briggs, 2002, 5).

The number of unmarried adults was very low. The 1950s was a period when everybody worked together towards a common goal; society was stable or improving, and disagreements extremely rare. Women were satisfied with their housekeeping roles and respected their husbands as the house heads. Similarly, it was generally accepted that homosexuality, divorce, sex before marriage, abortion, and illegitimate birth did not exist, or occurred only to ‘bad’ families. Indeed, such issues were never conversed in an open forum.

For instance, women living in Australia in the 1950s had their lives centred on family and housekeeping tasks. Women who held wartime jobs were supposed to quit their jobs to create opportunities for men who had previously been in war. Consequently, women quit their jobs and returned to their housekeeping tasks. However, a few women challenged these norms and retained their jobs, but were paid less than men for similar jobs and were often given lowly paying jobs.

The practices in the traditional family have transformed significantly, and it is unlikely that we will ever switch back to the conventional nuclear family as the only ideal type of family. For the near future, the new family setup is here to stay. The ‘cereal packet’ image of the family comprising of the father, mother, and the children joyously having breakfast together is a bad reminder of how single-parent, blended, extended, same-sex, or childless families have considerably dented the idea of a perfect family.

Add this to the effects of the multiplicity of ethnic and cultural origins, aboriginal Australians and post-war migrations, and all Australians will finally encounter family forms quite dissimilar from their own. In Australia, as in many societies, the nuclear family setup is no longer conventional.

Towards the end of the 20th century, major demographic changes had affected even the family setup. Societies were aging while the number of children and youths was diminishing. These anomalies led to a shift in roles that today challenge the traditional family setup.

Today, families may comprise of couples who may be married or cohabiting, and have a child who is either a co-resident. A new form of family setup emerged in the 21st century, as mentioned by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck. The two sociologists write that from the mid 70s onwards, significant changes occurred in family life and relationships; marriage rates were failing, divorce was on the increase, and fertility rates dropping. According to Saggers and Sims (2004, 34), these changes marked the end of the family.

While often referred to as a ‘haven in a heartless world’, the fact is that families cannot be insulated from the world of which we are a component. In fact, change in the family stricture has always been inherently linked to wider social changes. As society undergoes swift, turbulent and far-reaching changes in economic, cultural and political aspects, family keeps pace with the changes (Saggers and Sims, 2004, 32).

The family, as we once knew it, has undergone rapid transformations and is today a shadow of its former self. Previously unacceptable behaviors such as homosexuality and same-sex families are now welcomed in the family. Consequently, these unnatural acts have further deteriorated the family by causing same-sex families, which raises important sociological questions about the actual meaning of the term ‘family’.

Secondly, the rising number of women in the workforce has altered the basic roles of members of the family. Divorce and separation, once abhorred, is now a normal affair. Indeed, parental divorce disrupts the lives of almost one in five Australian children. Cohabiting has also found its way into the modern family, and this has resulted into a popular and often quoted belief that the Australian family is disintegrating.

While the social construct of the family has evolved to cater for the social pressures of modern life, the values attached to it are perhaps more enduring. While the concept of the family is multifaceted, perhaps it comes down to the individuals belonging to any particular family group, who seek the similar values of belonging and compassion that offer a true definition of what a family is.

Briggs, Freda. 2002. The changing family, from Children and Families : Australian Perspectives , Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Joltes, Richard. 2007. Critical Enquiry: Family Values . Web.

Kinnear, Pamela. 2002. New families for changing times . Discussion Paper No 47. Web.

Milstead, Kayla & Perkins, Gerra. 2010. Family structure Characteristics and academic success: Supporting the work of school counsellors. Academic Leadership, Vol 8, issue 4. Web.

Poole, Marylin & Germov John. 2011. Public Sociology, An introduction to Australian Society , 2nd edition, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Saggers, Sherry and Sims, Margaret. 2004. Diversity: Beyond the nuclear family , Edited by Marilyn Poole, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

• Familiy Changes
• The Definition of Marriage
• Cohabitation: Family Environment and Life
• Sociological View of Family
• Marriage and Alternative Family Arrangements
• Family Formations, Breakdowns and Re-formations
• The Discussion on the Institute of Family
• Critical Theories of Bodies, Genders, Sexualities and Identities
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• Chicago (N-B)

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Family Values — The Value of Family and Its Role in a Person’s Life

The Value of Family and Its Role in a Person’s Life

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7 Values for Strong Families

Strong family values are the foundation of a happy and loving household. These shared ideals shape a family’s morals, priorities, structures, and traditions. Many parents instill good family values in their children to help them develop into kind, responsible citizens. 

When families’ values align, they typically have stronger bonds and more successful relationships. By contrast, a lack of family values can cause discord and dysfunction. What are family values, and how can you teach good values to your family?

What Are Family Values? 

Family values are beliefs, ethics, priorities, and worldviews shared by each family member. These behavior codes create structure in families and can define each member’s role. They also help families cope with difficult challenges and determine right from wrong in complex situations. 

These shared principles can impact many areas of a family’s life, including: 

• Daily activities 
• Disciplinary techniques for children
• Division of chores
• Parenting styles
• Relationships

Each family has unique core values based on the priorities and needs of individual members. These principles often transmit intergenerationally, traveling from grandparent to parent to child. For example, children generally learn norms and personality traits from their parents. Researchers still don’t fully understand this complex phenomenon, but studies suggest that culture, gender, and other factors may play a role in how family values travel between generations.

Cultural norms, societal values, and media can also shape common family values. During the 1980s, for instance, popular sitcoms promoted career women and modeled more equal divisions of labor. Today, sitcoms like Modern Family depict more diverse family structures while still teaching positive family values like kindness and teamwork.

Why Are Family Values Important? 

The phrase “family values” often brings to mind a heteronormative nuclear family: a husband, a wife, and their adopted or blood offspring. Today’s families take many forms due to economic pressures, growing acceptance of LGBTQ relationships, shifting demographics, and other causes. 

A few recent trends in family and household structures include: 

• Cohabitation without marriage: Many unmarried couples now live together. As of 2019, 59% of American adults aged 18 to 44 have lived with a partner without marriage. 
• Multigenerational households: Extended family members increasingly live together in one household. In 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that 18% of Americans lived in multigenerational households. Reasons for multigenerational cohabitation include cultural norms and financial security.  
• Rise of child-free adults: The birthrate in the United States has declined in recent years, and many people embrace child-free lifestyles. In a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 44% of American adults aged 18 to 49 reported that it’s “not too likely” or “not at all likely” that they will have children. 

No matter what shape your family takes, you can enjoy the benefits of family values with your household members. These ideals provide many significant advantages, including:

• Enriching bonds within your own family
• Giving kids guiding principles that they can use to make ethical and intelligent decisions 
• Helping children cope with outside influences 
• Nurturing respect among family members
• Promoting healthy lifestyles for children and adolescents 

Creating cohesive family values can help all household members adopt healthier lifestyles, develop positive relationships, and make ethical decisions.

What are good family values? The guiding principles that your family unit creates will depend on many factors, including culture, personality, race, and religion. Here are seven examples of family values that can promote healthy households: 

• Empathy: Treat animals, people, and other creatures with compassion and understanding. Within your family, you can practice kindness by considering the emotions of other members and seeking to understand their points of view. You can help children develop empathy by encouraging them to talk about their feelings, modeling sharing with others, and participating in volunteer activities. 
• Family time: Shared activities help family members bond over common interests. Prioritize spending time with immediate and extended family members whenever possible. Quality family time includes cooking, exploring a new city, hiking, inviting extended family members to share their memories, and watching a television show.  
• Honesty: Telling the truth is not always easy, but it’s essential to maintaining trust between family members. You can teach children honesty by giving consequences for lies, modeling ethical behavior, and not punishing them for telling the truth. 
• Love: Deep affection and attachment keep families together. Simple ways to demonstrate your love for your family include giving them small but thoughtful gifts, providing physical affection, and verbally expressing your feelings. 
• Loyalty: Families should support each other in difficult times and not intentionally harm each other. You can foster family loyalty by encouraging members to share their feelings, not shaming them for mistakes, and making caring for the family a priority. 
• Perseverance: Your family will face many complex challenges over the years. You can develop resilience by creating shared goals, practicing self-care, and working together to overcome obstacles. 
• Respect: Treat your family members and other people with care and politeness. You can help children learn respect by discouraging disrespectful behavior, setting boundaries, and teaching polite manners. 

These seven family values can serve as a helpful starting point for developing your own common beliefs and morals.

How Can You Teach Family Values?

Transmitting family values to children and other household members will require dedication and time. Here are a few strategies that you can use to teach family values: 

• Acknowledge and apologize when you make mistakes.
• Be a positive role model. 
• Create a family values list together and display it in a prominent location. 
• Discuss why your values are important to you and other family members.
• Empower your children to make their own decisions. 
• Point out examples of family values in media. 
• Praise your child when they demonstrate a family value, like empathy or respect.
• Show affection for family members through your actions and words.
• Talk about difficult situations in the news and ask your children to consider how they would respond based on your family values. 
• Volunteer as a family. 

You can build a great foundation for your household by creating and teaching strong family values. A shared set of principles will allow your children, partner, and other family members to work as a team and cope with stressful obstacles. Together, you can help each family member experience personal growth and have more fulfilling relationships.

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family values

plural noun

Definition of family values, examples of family values in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'family values.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1912, in the meaning defined above

Dictionary Entries Near family values

family-tree theory

family wage

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“Family values.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/family%20values. Accessed 8 Jun. 2024.

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• Family Values - What We See, We Think and We Become

An Introduction

“Mom, I'm hungry. Please give me some food.” Or, “Dad, I'm getting late. Please come fast.” Have you listened to these phrases? What? What are you saying?

You are saying that you have used them, all of them. Oh, that is great. What do you think your parents offered when you asked them the same? Probably you are thinking about some food or dropping at the right time. Isn’t it?

Your mother is not just offering you food, she nourishes you with her unconditional love. Your father is not just dropping you off at the right time to your school, even becoming a person in your life to whom you can call in any difficult situation and seek help. This is Family.

Values we learn from family

What are Family Values?

Family values have a wider definition. Before getting into it, we must know a few terms. Let's get started with them.

What is Family? 

Family is a group of people where one or more parents live together with their children as a unit. Sometimes a pet also becomes a member of the family. Families are of two types, nuclear family and joint family. Both offer different family values; however many of them are similar.

Nowadays, in the modern world, the concept of the nuclear family is trending, especially in urban areas. In nuclear families, parents live with their children, and as they grow they make a separate family. Whereas in the joint family, parents live with their children and grandchildren, brothers and sisters. Joint families could be seen in rural areas usually, and very less in urban areas.

Family values are something that we get from our parents in the form of love, care, trust, honesty, kindness, empathy, compassion, perseverance, and many more. They instil these values in us knowingly or unknowingly to make us good human beings.

Family values are sometimes called cultural or traditional values that show the beliefs, roles, attitudes and values of one's family.

Though nuclear families and joint families are very different in nature, being a family, parents try to instil the same core family values that they get from their parents.

Some of the core traditional family values are the following: 

1. Unconditional Love

Undoubtedly, this core value is built in each one of us by our loving and caring mother or grandmother.  This value you can only learn from family . They pour their love into food, which eventually makes us a little fat. Isn’t it?

This value teaches us to show love to all people, animals or nature. It not only makes us a kind-hearted person, but one who could feel the pain of others and take care of them. Unconditional love is the purest value that strengthens a person to stand alone on this planet. 

2. Spiritual and Religious Values

These values somehow instil self-awareness and belief in the power of nature or God. It also motivates us for charity or donation. In many religions, tithing is performed. Also, regular family worship unites us as a unit.

3. Character Values

Character values are those values that we receive from each of our family members in the form of honesty, positivity, courage, grit, kindness and integrity.

4. Social Values

Social values are the combination of our behaviour towards family, society, and environment. We all are social animals. We have to follow certain rules and regulations and cooperate with each other. Acceptance, empathy, respect, appropriate language are some of the key factors of social values. The main purpose of instiling social value in an individual is to foster them to serve society.

5. Work Values

Your mother cooks the best food and still manages her office work perfectly, whereas your father washes the dishes and follows his job routine strictly. Do you know what values you learn from this? You learn team spirit, cooperation, punctuality and always to do one's best. These are the work values that you need to adapt to flourish your life.

6. Civic Values

These are the most important principles to live a life with dignity and respect. In a family, we nurture with love but are never allowed to do something wrong or unjust. Civic value teaches us the fundamental rights of a person, which includes freedom of speech (without damaging the other people) and standing up for the rights of others.

7. Home Values

Home values include the value of the time we share with family. Sharing meals, going for a picnic or spending some special quality time with our loved ones maintains a freshness in relations. This value teaches us to cheer each moment of life and be together in any circumstances of life.

These are some of the values we all learn from our families. We believe each child gets the best parenting values while growing. These values are the lesson for life. It helps them to deal with society, its issues and to make the world a better place to live.

Sharing the values that you hold, is the best part of parenting. While parenting not only a child learns in each step, it also involves the parents. No one family is perfect, yet the healthy environment of a family makes a happy family. 

Tip for Parents

Character and social values come directly from our family, so we request all parents to behave well. Your child will grow up to be the person they see rather than the one you teach. We sincerely request each guardian to never disrespect each other, any family member or even the person who worked under you. Your gestures, actions or words will reflect in your kids. Remember, your good deeds result in a better society.

Thus, people say, “As you sow, so shall you reap”.

FAQs on Family Values - What We See, We Think and We Become

1. What are the core family values you learn from family?

There are seven fundamental core values that each child learns from their family. They include unconditional love, spiritual and religious values, character values, social values, work values, civic values and home values. These values make us good human beings.

2. What factors do character values include?

Character values are values that are used to enhance our character. They include various factors that are honesty, kindness, courage, grit, etc. They help us to become a person of good values.

Home / Essay Samples / Life / Values / Family Values and Conflict: Exploring the Connect of Concepts

Family Values and Conflict: Exploring the Connect of Concepts

• Category: Sociology , Life
• Topic: Cultural Diversity , Social Conflicts , Values

Pages: 3 (1478 words)

• Downloads: -->

Introduction

Methodology, data evidence, data analysis, data evaluation.

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