As Our Families, Our Values turns upside-down the widely accepted notion that only heterosexual people are entitled to get married, have sex, and rear children, you gain insight into personal struggles and affirmations that testify to the spirituality, procreativity, and wholesomeness of the diverse relationships of the Lavender community. You will also learn about various ongoing efforts to give religious pride to the various configurations of gay relationships, families, and values and the disruption of popular interpretations of the Scriptures that have been used to justify the oppression of sexual minorities. This book will both inform you and delight you as it reminds you that same-sex unions bring much cause for celebration and that religion and homosexuality are not mutually exclusive.
One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is a strong sense of personal values. Helping your children develop values such as honesty, self-reliance, and dependability is as important a part of their education as teaching them to read or how to cross the street safely. The values you teach your children are their best protection from the influences of peer pressure and the temptations of consumer culture. With their own values clearly defined, your children can make their own decisions -- rather than imitate their friends or the latest fashions. In Teaching Your Children Values Linda and Richard Eyre present a practical, proven, month-by-month program of games, family ctivities, and value-building ecercises for kids of all ages.
Our Families, Our Values challenges both the gay community and American society to examine carefully the meaning of family values and the nature of social institutions such as marriage and the family. It asks you provoking, even disturbing, questions such as: “Is it prudent for members of the Lavender community to mimic heterosexual marriage or define personal relations networks as families, when these institutions are rapidly collapsing?” “Are we attempting to mainstream American society into accepting different views of marriage and families?” “Are we subscribing to notions of sexual property that are inherent to the marriage ceremony and the institution of marriage, when we choose to be married?” Despite the complexities of this issue, marriage constitutes a privileged position in western society, and, as this book shows you, without the legal recognition of same-sex marriages, there are many fundamental rights, as well as privileges, denied to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons.As Our Families, Our Values turns upside-down the widely accepted notion that only heterosexual people are entitled to get married, have sex, and rear children, you gain insight into personal struggles and affirmations that testify to the spirituality, procreativity, and wholesomeness of the diverse relationships of the Lavender community. You will also learn about various ongoing efforts to give religious pride to the various configurations of gay relationships, families, and values and the disruption of popular interpretations of the Scriptures that have been used to justify the oppression of sexual minorities. This book will intrigue you over and over again, as you read about: value systems transphobia equal marriage rights Buddhism’s rejection of “traditional family values” Brazil’s sex-positive culture differences between gay male social formations and families choosing a language and terms that empower sexual minorities and the essence of the liberation movement sex as communion relationships based on nurture, not transactionDesigned for academics and students of religion, pastors, priests, rabbis, and lay readers alike, Our Families, Our Values is a multifaceted view of the gay community’s response to the public controversy over gay marriage, adoption, and foster care rights. Ideal as a textbook for courses in sexuality, theology, sociology, women’s studies, and gay and lesbian studies, this book will both inform you and delight you as it reminds you that same-sex unions bring much cause for celebration and that religion and homosexuality are not mutually exclusive.
This rerelease of the popular original edition continues to speak to parents in a society where "family values" no longer seem to exist. If anything, today's community standards threaten the family. Airwaves and movie theaters are drenched with obscenities; perversion is glorified; divorce is cheap and easy; "safe sex" is promoted instead of abstinence; parental authority is undermined; sex roles are confused. For children, such cultural chaos is crippling. But in Real Family Values, parents will learn how to sort through today's moral confusion, remove it from their homes, and change the world by zeroing in on the part they love most: their families.
Values are the basis for every decision a parent makes. How parents decide to respond to a child's behaviour directly influences what the child learns to value. This book helps parents determine what they value, and helps them apply these values to their family life. Entertaining and enlightening examples illustrate the importance of maintaining a standard of behaviour that is consistent, and passing along those values to children to help them grow into responsible adults.
The values we live and raise our families by are grounded, first, in love. Contrary to many of today's so-called family values, our values go beyond one or two loaded social issues to a wholehearted lifestyle of practicing compassion, hospitality, justice, peace, and belonging. More than Words articulates ten values that forward-thinking, openhearted people want to embody in their lives and pass on to their children. With practical ideas and thought-provoking questions, this book inspires families to live more intentionally, engage their communities, and make a difference in the world.
For readers who long for strong families that know how to truly enjoy life together, there is much to learn from the Amish. Values like community, forgiveness, simple living, obedience, and more can be your family legacy--without selling your car, changing your wardrobe, or moving out to farm country. In Amish Values for Your Family, bestselling author Suzanne Woods Fisher shows how you can adopt the wisdom of the Amish when it comes to family matters. In this inspiring and practical book readers will find charming true stories interlaced with solid, biblical advice about parenting, marriage, and all aspects of family life. As readers get an intimate glimpse into the everyday lives of real Amish families, they will learn to prioritize what's truly important, simplify decision-making, slow down as a family, safeguard time together, and let go when the time comes.
Why was the discourse of family values so pivotal to the conservative and free-market revolution of the 1980s and why has it continued to exert such a profound influence on American political life? Why have free-market neoliberals so often made common cause with social conservatives on the question of family, despite their differences on all other issues? In this book, Melinda Cooper challenges the idea that neoliberalism privileges atomized individualism over familial solidarities, and contractual freedom over inherited status. Delving into the history of the American poor laws, she shows how the liberal ethos of personal responsibility was always undergirded by a wider imperative of family responsibility and how this investment in kinship obligations recurrently facilitated the working relationship between free-market liberals and social conservatives. Neoliberalism, she argues, must be understood as an effort to revive and extend the poor law tradition in the contemporary idiom of household debt. As neoliberal policymakers imposed cuts to health, education, and welfare budgets, they simultaneously identified the family as a wholesale alternative to the twentieth-century welfare state. And as the responsibility for deficit spending shifted from the state to the household, the private debt obligations of family were defined as foundational to socio-economic order. Despite their differences, neoliberals and social conservatives were in agreement that the bonds of family needed to be encouraged — and at the limit enforced — as a necessary counterpart to market freedom. In a series of case studies ranging from Clinton’s welfare reform to the AIDS epidemic, and from same-sex marriage to the student loan crisis, Cooper explores the key policy contributions made by neoliberal economists and legal theorists. Only by restoring the question of family to its central place in the neoliberal project, she argues, can we make sense of the defining political alliance of our times, that between free-market economics and social conservatism.
Discusses ritual events we regard as family traditions and how they must be open to perpetual revision so we can satisfy our human needs and changing circumstances.
The stars of the reality television show "Little People, Big World" share personal experiences and offer advice for building strong family values based on love, respect, and mutual support.
