Family values are political and social beliefs that hold the nuclear family to be the essential unit of society. Familialism is the ideology that promotes the family and its values as an institution.
Although the phrase is vague and has shifting meanings, it is most often associated with social and religious conservatives. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the term has been frequently used in political debate, to claim that the world has seen a decline in family values since the end of the Second World War.
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or values:
“The law is equal before all of us; but we are not all equal before the law. Virtually there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for the cunning and another for the simple, one law for the forceful and another for the feeble, one law for the ignorant and another for the learned, one law for the brave and another for the timid, and within family limits one law for the parent and no law at all for the child.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.”
—Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974)