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Essay about Real Family Values

Decent Essays

“Real” Family Values

What are some things that you could never live without? You might say food, water, shelter, or clothing. Other, less conventional, answers might include a cell phone, lip gloss, or Starbuck’s coffee. However, according to psychologist Abraham H. Maslow, all people need belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization. Carol Shields sustained that family values include qualities such as nurturing caring, and emotional support in her essay entitled Family Is One of the Few Certainties We Will Take with Us Far into the Future. I agree with Shields that these family values are important because they provide sources of belongingness, esteem and self-actualization that are basic needs for life. …show more content…

Examples of belonging are the comfort that children have for their caretakers and comfort that adults feel with their relationship with a partner or spouse.
In addition to belong, family values help individuals to feel recognition. This recognition helps to build a person’s esteem. Self-esteem involves the positive or negative image that a person holds about himself or herself and his or her accomplishments. A family will support its members and even, if difficult, will help its members to be successful. Examples of this value in a family situation are a single mother who encourages her only daughter to go away to college, even thought it is difficult for the single mother to live alone.
Finally, one of the most important values that can be fulfilled by family is for its individuals to have self-actualization, or to have a feeling that they can “be all that they can be.” This is a need that most often parents provide for their children, but it is not bound by age or experience. Having a family that endorses family values means that each individual has a support structure to use when he or she needs it. This helps the person to have the courage to accomplish all that is possible. Self-actualization will help an adult to is in the process of changing careers and help children to perform their best in school. In short, the courage to succeed,

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