Question

Summary about where and how should children learn values?

Answer 1

a recent poll of adult Americans conducted by The Wall Street Journal, "moral decline" was stated to be the biggest problem that America will face in the next twenty years. And when asked what the biggest change in American character has been since the 1950s, the leading answer was "less stable marriages and families."1 I agree with these popular assessments and believe that the two issues are closely related. The available empirical evidence indicates that deterioration of stable marriages and families has been a principal generator of moral decline. This is because children learn moral values mainly within their families, and mainly by relying on their parents as role models. When families are unstable, when parents are absent, emotionally distant, or preoccupied, or when parents themselves are immoral, the learning of moral values by children is greatly hindered. In this essay I will discuss why parents have been failing at modeling moral values for children, focusing on parenting time and other family conditions for childrearing.