Family Values

The term family values has been used with both positive and negative connotations. When used negatively to comment on the current state of society and individuals, it refers to a lack of family values, which is seen to contribute to the breakdown of not only the family itself, but ethical behavior in society more generally. This leads to a call for the return of family values. The term is also intended more positively as a political and social belief that hold the nuclear family—a father, mother, and their children living together—to be the essential, ethical, and moral unit of society.

This concept of the ideal family is promoted in legal, social, religious, and economic systems in that it is reflected in advertising, government, and housing and social policy. This in turn reinforces the view of this type of family form as normal, natural, and inevitable, and leads to discrimination against those who are not part of families who meet this ideal. Thus, assumptions are made concerning how a particular type of family best serves the interest of its individual members and of society in general. Although it is the responsibility of all family members to adhere to these ideals, the moral value of society is judged, in part, by the behavior of women.

There appears to be a bipartisan political consensus concerning the family, with political parties of all leanings across the world claiming to be the party of the family. But it is conservative politicians who have most often used the term family values[Page 389]in their critique on issues such as increased rates of teenage pregnancy, and in their call for the traditional (nuclear) family.