Changes & Family Values in the U.S.

A number of people claim that family values are on the decline in the United States. The argument over family values in American society begins with the meaning of the term itself, and those who speak of a decline in family values do so as if this were a long-accepted term and as if everyone knew we had family values once and now we are losing them. Actually, the issue is not that clear-cut, and the precise meaning of family values differs from commentator to commentator. A number of changes taking place in society have been cited as evidence that these values are declining, however, and Lillian B. Rubin considers some of this evidence and what it says about the changes taking place in society and in the structure of the family.

Some see the issue of family values as being one of political ideology more than reality. Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh, for instance, find an interesting anomaly in the way conservatives promote the idea of individualism in terms of self-help, self-sufficiency, and self-support while in fact seeing the unit of self-support not as the individual but as the family. We can see this in our own time with conservatives constantly harping on "family values" and the importance of the family:

Conservatives think that husbands should support their wives and children and that disabled or old people should be able to turn to their kin for help before they seek help from charity or from the state (Barrett and McIntosh 47).

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than was the case in the past. --Economic roles within the family have shifted significantly since World War II. Whether children are present or not, wives today are more likely to work outside the home than to work solely as homemakers (Wetzel 4-5). To a great degree, Rubin shows that many of the concerns raised today are not new and that the supposed rosy picture of the family in the past is a false image. She does find that we have a different and more expanded view of what constitutes a family and that we have this image by necessity: Twenty years ago I could write that I'd interviewed 162 families and let the statement stand without explanation. Today that's no longer possible, since what constitutes a family is a matter of public debate (Rubin 19). Rubin thus finds not only that the family as not as stable in the past as it is remembered and that the nature of what constitutes a family today really is changing, though she is not making a value judgment on that change but only noting that it is real. Many who feel family values are being lost are indeed making a value judgment on the new notion of the family. They see the traditional nuclear family as "the" family and any variation on that as a challenge to family

Category: Psychology - C