Introduction
Traditional Family Values, there is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot these days.It guaranteed that you will have it said at least once in any speech by someone whose fighting against changes in the social order. Whether issues about sexuality,schooling or even healty and welfare are even relevent does’t seem to matter.It’s an emotional catch all that can be used to pinpoint a speakers place on the political map.
Three words that actually mean very little at all but that say a lot. Through inference they imply that what is being spoken against will somehow harm you and your children. Without even having to define how or what the damage will be, an emotional trigger is pulled to make people rally round the flag and pull up the drawbridge.
Those who call for a return to Traditional family Value know today realities and are scared of them. The erosion of value they are talking about is their position of power in the world, They know that they can’t turn back the progress that has been made in the last decades, so all they can do is hope to repress it as much as possible. They may be able to change the way people think and feel.
Too many people out there have tasted freedom to let it be taken away on a more than temporary basis. The values that have been lost with the dissolving of the family unit are to blame for society ills. The values of intolerence,represion,ignorance and xenophobia are certainly ones that are sorely missed by people.
A great many of those people just want to return to a time when people put family first and self-gratification second. They miss the idea that a fimily functions as a mutually supportive unit working together towards common goals and a better life. That what family values are really about. I believe that the disintration of family values in malaysia society has had a direct impact on quality of our lives.We have come to measure that quality by the quantity of what we aquire: money,possesions and power. The richness of large families and the joys associated therein are lost to most families in malaysia today.
As society changes, however family dynamics changes. The fact the rightists refuse to embrace the concept of alternative families has led to division, hate crimes and intolerance. Alternative families have a place at the table of traditional family values. I think it’s important to promote the concept of the family. The raising and nurturing of children and returning something to society should be encouraged, applauded and recognized.
I think there is a definite and direct connection between the decline in traditional family values and the decline in personal responsibility and the decline in respecting the privacy of others those three basic values go together and seem to have been forgotten,muddied and misrepresented together. I have doing a project on this relevence of traditional family values, it si true that the expression is not used widely by the public but as we discuss issues of youth violence, rampant in crease in teenage pregnacy, black metal culture, drug addiction, AIDS etc.
We realize that society has taken a spiralling twist towards degradation perhaps due to a flow in the value system of society. When we attack society value system we find we have generalized greatly and we zoom in on the family as the basic unit in society responsible for socialization and blame it for these negetive events. Yes, something it terribly wrong in society. There has been much progress, but can we really cast blame on any one particular unit. Change is inevitable in society and traditional family values have evolved to meet the time. The value ramain, but the choice to adhere to them,as has always been, is determined by the individual, who is responsible for his actions of destruction or progression.
Traditional Family Values
Causes problems in the structure of the modern family. Passing over the changes which affected the family during the middle ages and still more striking changes which come through the reformation. We must now devote ourselves to study of the problems of the family as it existsat present. The religious theory of the family which prevailed during the middle ages, but which was more or less undermined by the reformation, give away entirely in those great social change which ushered in the nineteeth centory at the same time profound economic changes tended largely to individualize sciety.
The instablity of the modern family is indeed so great that many have thought that the family as an institution. There can be no doubt at any rate, that the whole problem of the modern family centers in the matter of it’s instablility. But the causes of the instability of the family so affect our whole social life and all of our institutions that they are well worth somewhat more detailed study.
As the first of these courses of the increase of problems in the modern family, we should put the decay of religion, particularly of the religious theory of marriage and family.as we have already seen, no stable family life has existed anywhere in history without a religious basis, but beliefs and ideals have become largely dissociated from marriage and the family and the result is thatmany people regord the institutions of marriage and the family as a matter of personal convenience. This decay of the religious view of the marriage bond has,however had other antecedent causes, partially in the moral and intellectual sprit of our civilization,partially in our industrial conditions.
As a second cause of the increase the problems in modern family is the growing spirit of individualism. By individualism we mean here the spririt of self assertion and self interest. Now this growing spirit ofindividuakism is undoubtedly more destructive of the scial life than anything else.it makes unstable all institution and especially the family because the family must upon very opposite characteristics, the development of our industry and our education have all been responsible to some extent for making the indidual take his own interests and wishes as his law.
The growth of modern industrialism must them be regorded as one of the fundamental factors which has brought the increase of probleam in modern family. By industrialism we mean manufactuctring industry. As we have already notice the growth of manufacturing industry has opened a large number of new economic calling to women and has rendered her largely economically independent of family relations. Moreover the labor of womwn in factories has tended to distrupt the home, particularly in the case of married women,as we have already seen. For the laboring classes it has tended to make the home only a lodging place,with little or no development of a true family life.
Again, such labor has set the sexes in competition with each other,has tended to reduce their sexual differences and stimulate immensely their individualism. Finally inasmuch as modern industrialism has tended to destroy the home, the result has been the production of unscocialized children and especially of those that had no tradition of a family life.
The growth of modern cities and as we have already seen, the crime is usually much more common in the cities than in the rural districts. A normal home can scarcely exist in the slums and in some of the tenement districts of our cities. Again in the city is perhaps more vice and other immorality less control of the individual by public opinion and more opportunity, on account of close living together and high standards of living, for friction, both within and without the domentic circle.
The higher standards of living and comfort which have come with the growth of our industrial civilization,especially of our cities must also be set down as a cause of increasing instablity of the family. Hight standards of living are of course, desirable if they can be realized that is if they a reasonable .but many elements of our population have standards of living and comfort which they find are practically impossible to realize with the income which they have. Many classes, in other words, are unable to meet the scial demends which they suppose they must meet in order to maintain a home. It is evident that higher standards of taste and higher standards of morality may also operate under certain circumstances to render the family life unstable in a similar way.
Our study of the family has accustomed us to the thought tthat the family is an institution which,like all other human institutions, undergoes constant changes. Now at periods og change in any institution,periods of transition from one type to another, there is apt to be a period of confusion. The old type of instution is nerver replaced at once by a new type of institution ready-made and adjusted to the social life, but only gradually does the new institution emerge from the elements of the old. In the meantime,however, there may be a considerable period of confusion and anarchy. This social principle, we may note, rests upon a deeper psychological principle, that old habits are usually not replaced by new habits without an intervening oeriod of confusion and uncertainty. In other words, in the transition from the old habit to the new habit there is much opportunity for disorganization and disintegration. It is exactly so in human society, because social institutions are but expressions of habit.
Conclusion
There is fours items in traditional values must be preserved and impressed upon each generation. The family is the foundation of society,therefore the state should generally encourage its formation and interfere in its function as little as posible. Family unity and inter-dependency is necessary foster and encourage culture,learning and long-term national stability.
Parents have serious rights and obligations in the upbring of their childrean, including their moral, intellectual and physical development. Government policies should encourage parental rights to direct the upbringing of their children, unless the health and safety of the child is risk because of bad parenting.
Marriage is intended to be a permanent relationship between one man and one woman and is a foudation for healthy and stable families.
Human life is of inestimable worth at all stages from coception to natural death. Protection for the unborn and elderly as well care and comassion for the sick and infirm, are essential elements of a culture of life and necessary for health of civil society.
The parents role, the parents should realize that all the children must be educated with good moral value,ecademic education,appropriately and match with the development progress based on humanistic values. All the parents have the responsibility to educte their children to be behave with good attitude and behavior, a great family institution has an ability to build up good attitude and good moral value in children life.
The decline of traditional family value can give bad effect which is can destroy man civilization and stop the society progress. The relevent outhorities must take action to overcome all the social probleams, we must try to imagine the profile of the next generation and new society.