Ethics of family relations

For centuries family was an emotional center of people’s lives, was transmitter of culture & raising children. Families gave us a sense of tradition, strength & purpose. The things we need most deeply in our lives – love, communication, respect & good relationships – always had their beginnings in the family. Friendly family includes many aspects, such as tact, responsibility, respect, tolerance, support and many others. It goes without saying that in a good family both partners help each other and try to overcome difficulties together. So they are always ready to support and to give a good piece of advice. They share housework as well as sorrow and joy. Peace in any case better than war.

Unfortunately, the family is in trouble nowadays. To our regret we can observe changes in family structure. We can see that family lost its traditional functions & purposes. The decline of the traditional family can not be denied. Divorce, cohabitation, single-parenting & birth outside marriage have all risen sharply & recently. Today people think that it’s not very important that parents should be married rather than live together; half of parents believe that a single parent can bring up children as well as a couple; the degree of conflicts between spouses has risen greatly! Another shocking thing that juvenile crime has increased enormously because of the lack of parental discipline, combined with violence on TV & easy access to drugs. If today parents can’t provide conditions in which children can be born & brought up, if parents can’t teach their children values as well as daily skills, if they also can’t teach them common practices & customs, such as respect for elders & celebrating holidays, if they can’t give emotional support & security what will be next?

I think that nobody has an answer to this difficult question. People are trying to find the solution but this process is a difficult one. People should put a lot of effort to restore the traditional family.

The traditional structure of the family - mother, father and children - continues to prevail for the most part as a new century unfolds. Yet, over the past several decades, the society has witnessed an evolution in family structure. Single parenthood, adoptive households, step-parenting, stay-at-home fathers, grandparents raising children are but a few of the newer tiles in the mosaic.

The decline in marriage comes from three main sources. First, people are delaying marriage. Second, divorces have increased. Third, people are slower to remarry than previously. Fourth cohabitation has become the norm for both men and women both as their first form of union and after divorces. The norm of the stable, two-parent family was close to becoming the exception for children rather than the rule.

Relations within a family are different now. Parents treat their children more as equals than they used to, and children have more freedom to make their own decisions.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 1070