The Importance of Family

"The family, though the smallest and seemingly most fragile of institutions (is) proving itself to be humankind's bedrock as well as it's fault lineà.(whose) strength lies inthe cohesion and loyalty of the parent-child unit around which larger worlds of household and kin, community and nation à. necessarily revolve". û Steven Ozement.

For all the talk about the breakdown of the American family and society, women choosing the workforce over full-time parenting, the effect of ethnicity as a segmenting factor and the emotionally fuzzy logic of a conservative definition of American Family Values and their contribution to the ongoing concept of a moral, ethical America, all anyone is really looking for is a place, an idea, a concept where they can rest their heart. In this place, people would be with those they love and nurture and those who love and nurture them in return. It would be a place to come to after being out in the world, a place to rest and recharge with people who are (because of choice or birth) are family û a place they can call 'home'. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of the family and the behavior of the family group on the welfare of the larger society as people are formed in that group to lead functional, or dysfunctional lives and the way it impacts social work. It will seek to answer the question of why social work values supporting a holistic view of individuals, family and communit

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cts and relationships create fragile relationships that can often be unreliable. Children end up receiving less nurturing and parenting than they did a few decades ago. Wallerstein, et al (2000) relate a story about seeing an episode on Sesame Street û a little bird was telling another character that she lived happily in her mother's nest sometimes and in her father's nest sometimes (pg. xxi). Wallerstein writes that the story is important because it shows how our culture is changing û if the scenario of a child going from father's house to mother's house on an arranged basis is a story on a popular children's show, then it must be a prevalent theme in the society. However, this blithe scenario is hardly the case û it is more probable that the parents themselves are having adjustment problems, feelings of anger and/or betrayal, and other emotions that lead to a lessening of their parenting abilities, as well as subtly (or not so subtly) conveying those emotions to the child (Amato, 2000). The emotional problems inherent in this situation do not stop when the child grows up. As an adult, the individual may experience negative events in his/her own life which would reinforce the 'anti-trust' social messages s/he had receiv
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Sesame Street, Erik Ericson, Bartol Bartol, Family Values, Cornerstone Care, Home Home, Professional Social, Steven Ozement, Developmental Psychology, Marriage Family, people love, inner city, social workers, journal marriage family, children receiving, parent-child relationship, love nurture, family values, family school, children observe, bartol 1998, inner city youth,
Approximate Word count = 2022
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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