Family values have vastly changed over time in America due to the development of a more liberal and fast-paced culture. Recent generations have altered traditional family values in an attempt to be more tolerant of others. The acceptance of homosexuals, interracial marriages, and independent-minded children are all prime examples of standards that have experienced a vast change over the last 50 years. The rapid change of these family values instantaneously has created tension between older and younger generations. I have first hand experience with a depressing conflict of this nature involving fights and heated arguments between my father and grandfather.

Swift changes of American culture caused by the civil rights and gay rights movements towards a more open and liberal society has prompted a transformation in people’s perspective of family values. With A 51% divorce rate, many citizens are becoming very accepting of the practice. More shockingly, 5% of marriages are interracial, seemingly only a century after such a marriage would be bitter blasphemy. The growing number of students attending college instead of going to work has also changed the development of a traditional family. Women are now accepted as an important part of the workforce, leaving the household to be taken care of by maids and other adults. The capability for a woman to have individual financial stability allows once bounded women to divorce their husbands without the worry of impending financial liabilities.

The recent changes in family values have amplified the likelihood of having a so-called “dysfunctional” family. Very few families in the United States still fit the traditional “doll-house model” of “Dad, Mom, Sis, and Junior” explained by Barbara Kingsolver in “Stone Soup”(Barbara Kingsolver) . With divorce, homosexuals, death, abandonment, and abortion disheartening every American family, it is hard to believe that these dysfunctional families are uncommon in modern society. These changes in the American household are not necessarily good but as Barbara Kingsolver eloquently elaborates in Stone Soup, “We are also more likely to plan and space our children, and to rate our marriages as “happy.” We are less likely to suffer abuse without recourse or to stare out at our lives through a glaze of prescription tranquilizers (Kingsolver).” Instead of eternal grief and hopelessness, these downfalls have given contemporary families a second chance at happiness; unlike our older generations, who were forced to suffer through unpleasant family relationships.

My firsthand experience with the changes in traditional family values involved my father and grandfather who, still to this day, are on non-speaking terms. My father was a very ambitious man who yearned to pursue a college degree at a private university that was distant from his small farm town where his family had resided for many generations. No one in my father’s family had ever gone to college before, and as the first born male his father felt he was obligated to take over the farm when the time was right. My father’s emotions about the circumstance relate equally to Nnaemeka feelings in “Marriage is a Private Affair”, who “ was deeply affected by his father’s grief. But he kept hoping that it would pass away (Chinua Achebe 208).” My father was morally pressured and compelled to stay and keep alive his family’s long tradition that had extended for many generations. Disobeying his father at such an extreme level would cause intolerable pain for both parties. But my father’s internal suffering could not match his desire for a higher education as he forcefully moved away to college.