Family Values is an inheritance of cultural heritage which may differ from society to society. Significant cultural changes across the globe in reaction to economic, political and social developments has marked an evolving family values from generations to generations. Richard Rodriguez has commented much about the family values in the ninth edition of the McGraw Hill Reader. A Mexican American boy born in San Francisco and brought up around Sacramento is by far one of the brilliant scholar. He has always been a keen observer of life at home and in schools. His personal experience of difference in culture has led to many debates and doubts for cultural inheritance. He is a contributing editor for Harper’s magazine.
Like Richard Rodriguez many off springs manage to differentiate between the native speaking world of their parents at home with the English speaking world of school. This has more or less drawn barriers in the mind frames of children as inheriting the dual life of both the cultures, one which is private world of their family and culture and the other as the public life of education and society. Typically speaking family values is a term used across the globe to describe a set of moral beliefs and cultural heritage pertaining to each society and their religions.
There have been always some social and religious conservative communities which often use the term “family values” to promote conservative ideology that supports traditional morality or values. By advocating beliefs of conducting prayers in school or displaying Ten Commandments would enhance and endorse Christian morality in generations to come. These morals and cultural values are when followed more discretely portrays a circle of conservativeness. However, nowadays generations across the globe are more vigilant and choose the easy ways out and have developed their own significant contemporary style of following cultures.
The American Family Association populates to motivate and educate citizens to change the culture to reflect Biblical truth and traditional family values. The good thing about these groups is that they variously oppose abortion, pornography, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, some aspects of feminism, cohabitation, and depictions of sexuality, in the media. These are also some of the main concern areas which forces our older generations whether socially active or not take a stand to stop the overruling of cultural heritage. It is largely believed that if the younger generations are not passed down with decent family values they will perhaps render into situations much like these which will cause an embarrassment to the family and society. Hence, it has become a reason to worry and a reason for questioning contemporary families if they are passing down their family traditions in the right stride or not.
In contrast to the view of family values held by the Christian right, liberals have used the phrase to support such values as family planning, affordable child care, and maternity leave. For example, groups such as People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays have taken a stand to narrate the concept in a way that promotes the normalization of single-parent families, the acceptance of same-sex monogamous relationships and marriage. In such cases again this understanding of
family values does not help promote conservative morality, rather it advocates focusing on encouraging and supporting alternative family structures, access to contraception, abortion, increasing the minimum wage, sex education, childcare, and parent-friendly employment laws, which provide for maternity leave and leave for medical emergencies involving children.
Family values has not only retained with social activists but has also initiated the politicians to stem the term in various broader aspects. It became widespread after a 1992 speech by Vice President Dan Quayle that attributed the Los Angeles riots to a breakdown of family values. Quayle had specifically blamed the violence in Los Angeles as a major root cause from a decay of moral values and family structure in American society. The American society is perhaps a blend of various settlements of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Scandinavian Lands, which has largely submerged each of their native cultural habits and attitudes. In the American society when children go to the outer world from their private worlds of home, they are bounced with such varied cultural diaspora. Our children then adapt some values from outer existing world and blend it with their understandings and adaptations from their own family inherited values.
Similarly the term family values is also used largely by the media to refer to Christian values, but in a New York Times survey, “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.” While family values was a recurrent theme in the conservative government of John Major. Anyone from the government having an affair was considered as an embarrassing act.
In the contemporary society of many Americans believe that readable access to health care and to education, and freedom from violence, are important family values. The whole concept of passing down their aged old remedies, customary acts has by far forgotten. Then also the criteria of extensive liberty to lifestyle choice has widely affected the new generations. Keeping in mind the attitudes of difference between the migrant dominance with the natives never really matched. This has been one of the driving forces for the republicans to stress family values and other conservative social issues. Society passes principles and values to future generations through Customs, Traditions and Rituals that mold this view through which we foresee our lives and shape our opinions. Throughout history, cultures have passed their Family Values to future generations by these means. Americans have many Customs and Traditions rooted in the cultures of our forefathers who were either Native Americans or who settled this great land after journeying long distances from other nations in search of “The American Dream”. It is noticed that very often the display of an object or symbol that is meaningful to a family or to society can become a Custom, Tradition or Ritual. Family Values are mere reflections of the customs and traditions practiced, whether it is an aged old recipe of grandma’s homemade cake or just fervor to carry forward some chinaware from generations to generations.
However, it is now believed that it has become vitally important that our families and our religious institutions pick up the excerpts and re-establish basic objective moral principles amongst the newer generations. Since, the world is ever evolving with the radical changes of cultural attitudes which in turn reflect the family values indoors for children. It has become important for the associations to translate more recent issues into formations of loosing or adapting family values indeed.
We constantly teach our children the principles and values and their rights to liberty of free individuals in a rapidly growing free and bold society. Although at times we may fail, we work tirelessly to be men and women of Integrity, Self-discipline, Humility and Empathy. We constantly believe in adhering to the concept and principle of human rights to freedom and ensure that our children are not affected by any calamities of the outer world but are restricted to their happy freedom world and space to build a free society.
We believe in the Principle of Universal Harmony so we allow appropriate adaptation in our families by living in the same streams and abreast of the changing earth and our universe. As our children grow within our families they formulate their principles, values and expectations of life from whatever they have witnessed at home and outside, both from us and from their different oriental friends. We constantly teach our children in their early teens about the morals of good and bad deeds, about becoming responsible citizens. However, we perhaps do not initiate enough interest for them to understand family values means much more than cultural inheritance. A family is a place, a sole space in the wide world that nests all woes and worries with compassion and care. Our children should be able to relate to such comfort levels and should be able to build around them a strong bond of family values. As a matter of fact, there are some family values which can be catered to with advice and speech while some require a sensitive understanding on its own.
Richard Rodriguez has stated that: Mothers and Fathers who are members of religious communities that fiercely emphasize the bond of family tell him that their church’s teaching on the importance of family ultimately makes it impossible for them to reject their own sons and daughters. America already sees gay children within some of our most prominent political families, right and left, regardless of what parents comment about the party, gays or gay marriage.
Now these are another round of concerns, where children are much hyped about late night parties, being with their bunch of friends which may also include homosexuals. From here on, there are teenagers who are rapidly getting infected by sexually transmitted diseases, and there are teenager girls who have experience unwanted pregnancies and abortions. The entire lifestyle chosen by many of our coming generations is even though on the walking terms taught by us on liberties and free society, but has somehow slipped from the tracker view record we had in our minds than theirs.
Since 1980, the Republican Party has largely advocated the concern for family values in order to attract socially active conservative voters. In order to pertain to the principles around family values they have shown remarkable support for traditional education with parental involvement in the same, for policies that encourage adoption over abortion, for moral and traditional awareness in the form of respect, discipline and religious commitment.
As honest citizens of America we teach our children to be good fellow Americans by sharing our traditions of citizenship. There is a taboo about taboo about constant competition, to which we ensure that our children win over with positive attitude. The schools and institutes play a major role in educating our children about the American Holiday Celebration. About how our natives and generations back used to learn and earn their livelihood on the basis of craftsmanship, entrepreneurship, and appropriate knowledge base.
America has adapted up influences from all other cultures of many migrants settlements and across different states but has created something distinctly American which by far is very apparent through out the length and breadth of United States. One of the significant value which also is a part of parents and teachers preaching is the stand for unity.
The tradition of immigration continues until today, where there are many people migrating to the United States in search of better lifestyle. America as called as the land of opportunities and dreams come true as evolved each time new American communities are built in small numbers. The blending of these traditions gives the United States its great strength as a nation to stand true and united in times of happiness and sorrow. However, as evident as is the same blend of cultures across has become a taboo for our upcoming generations. It has become their big responsibility to understand and adapt apt cultural inheritance without neglecting their own. Apparently it is a greater challenge for our generation’s parents and preachers to educate them in an absolute balanced equilibrium of family values with cultural values.
Family values is by far a palette of behavioral patterns, customs practiced, traditional inheritance of actions or methods, and series of customary acts all passed down from generations to generations by word of mouth or as following customary. Therefore, “family values” vary from household to household, from country to country, and from generation to generation.
