A family is said to be the first school of a child. It is from here you start to learn how to speak, walk and interact with the world. Until now I can still remember what my first-grade teacher taught me that family is the main block of the society. So it means that for a society to be successful it should start with an ideal family. Throughout the years, the definition of ideal family changed in many ways. Traditional families are becoming more conservative, while modern families are well-adapted and equipped with new technology. Although modern families are equipped with technological devices; the negative effects of its modern devices dramatically reshaped the relationship between family members, and intervened in the “quality time” together with significant others.
The intervention of technology to modern families, neglected family’s basic concepts of being ideal. I believed that traditional family values is still the perfect ingredients for a model family because they are the glue that holds a family together. Being faithful with marriage, loyalty, duty, respect and perseverance to contribute for a sense of safety and comfort, both between the spouses and with the children. Traditional family values of love, play and having more time with your loved ones are important because if the family is undermined, then society will simultaneously be undermined with it.
The traditional idea of “vision of family togetherness,” is fantasized as enjoying dinner together with family, while listening to an ease music, without disruption of blue-lights devices. For the past 20 years, blue-light devices such as phones, laptops, and iPad disconnect the family’s social interaction from each other. With the programs on television that were frequently streamed for almost a day, families can ignore each other and literally sit for an hour watching their favorite shows without speaking to each other. I used to work in Rady’s Children’s Hospital and one of my patients in Intensive Care Unit was comatose because of drug overdose and his parents were in the house the entire time watching their favorite shows without noticing that their son was overdose in his room. In Alex Williams’s essay, “Quality Time, Redefined” he explained, “One family. One room. Four screen. Four realities.”Opposite from traditional family’s ideology of spending their undivided attention to strengthen their relationship with their loved ones. Technology separates families and placed them into each individual zone .
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Even with the amount of technological device surrounding these day’s families, traditional families have lived more independent than a modern family. In traditional families, marriage is more stable and organized. Married couple from traditional families moved out from their parent’s house to their new home after getting married. In Stephanie Coontz’s essay, “What We Really Miss About the 1950s,” she argued that, “The result was that family life and gender roles became much more predictable and few young people spend any extended period of time in a nonfamily settling: They moved from their parent’s family into their own family.” (Coontz,1997).
On the other hand, unemployed children and divorced mothers on modern families, stayed at their parent’s chamber known as a “The Accordion Family.”Parents provided “private safety nets” to their children. Because of private nets given by their mother’s parents, these modern children would not be able to become real adults. In Katherine S.Newman’s essay, The Accordion family; Boomerang Kids used statistic, “As the recession of 2008-2009 continued to deepen, this trend became more entrenched. Kids who cannot find jobs after finishing college, divorce mothers who can’t provide and all of these people are beating a path back to their parents. Traditional parents are able to separate the balance between work and home duties, while modern families cannot.
Parents from traditional families are more financially and emotionally stable than modern families with wealth and watching their children’s growth (Newman, 1992).Men have a decent job and work vigorously outside, while women stayed at home duties cooking, taking care of children, and cleaning the house.The advantage of a mother staying home is not having to pay for a nanny or daycare. Exact opposite, from modern families, whereas both men and women have jobs and earn money together. Modern families equally share and divide responsibilities such as paying bills for their children. Because the circumstances of both parents working together, modern parents miss their children’s growth progression . Children have to stay home with their babysitter. I remember, when I was in the Philippines, my father has to work in the United States, to support us financially and for us to have a better future.
Growing up away from my father is hard. My mother has to take care of her five boys alone and wasn’t really on her right mindset because of continuously thinking about my father.My mother was an elementary school teacher so most of the time she was busy too.During election in the Philippines, teachers are the one who will count the votes “manually”. I hate election days because it means my mother will not go home for a week. She will get an extra pay for doing that but still it’s not enough.It’s impossible to be a great parent and a great employee at the same time. Something has to give.But in our case , we don’t have a choice but to sacrifice the “quality time” or the “family time” which is very important for a child’s development. Spending more time with your child makes you closely aware of your child’s unique needs.
There are three ingredients by which children learn character and morality which are forming emotional attachments, being taught prosocial behavior, and learning respect for authority and compliance with rules. All teaching of right and wrong begins with attachment which is the warm, emotional tie that children have with their parents. Children learn from and are influenced most by those persons who are most meaningful to them, and the most meaningful adults are those to whom the child is emotionally attached (Popenoe,1996).
Traditional family values is the ideal family that we need today, due to the fact that traditional families lived a more simple and happy life than modern families. Families today are under siege and children are being hurt. More and more children are growing up with weak attachments, little empathy, and a weakened respect for law and order and being civil. More than from anyone else children learn values from their parents and not having enough time to communicate with each other because of the different hindrances is not helping at all for their progress. Technology can cause a disturbance among family members. Although there have been changes with families over the years, traditional families valued the aspect of family bonding. To have a successful society we need to have a successful child and for that to happen they need a continuing physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual presence of parents in their lives, after all our children are our future.
