essay about influence of family

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Best Family Essay Examples

How my family influenced me.

663 words | 3 page(s)

My family has had a strong influence on shaping me into the person that I am now, and has taught me that love, kindness, respect, and honesty are all important qualities. However, education has also been a strong factor in shaping me, and helping me grow as an individual. School has strengthened my social skills, and built my base in academic skills.

My family was my first source of love, and has shaped me into who I am today. Growing up my father has regularly gone out of his way to make sure that I feel special and valued, which may seem simple or frivolous, but it is extremely important to me. He can be a strict disciplinarian, and teach myself and my siblings lessons through daily occurrences, or he can be understanding and almost philosophical, teaching us the ways of the broader universe, and making us understand that we are only a small part of this world.

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I have been inspired to treat others with friendly manners and to try to help everyone that I can through my daily actions. It seems that my father has had the most important role of my shaping, and through watching him my entire life I have grown an understanding that by helping other people and trying to have positive effect on everyone, leads to a happy life with no few enemies. One of the basic reasons I respect my father, is that he is happy, when he makes other people’s days just a little better.

What has helped build my character is my father’s Trust. Because he has shown me throughout my life how much he trusts me, he has managed to persuade me to always do what is right so that I do not lose his trust. He has prepared me for life. His is open mind has helped to form my own personality and intellect into a more open minded type. He has never told me what to do. He explains how he feels and then lets me make my own decisions.

The importance of an education has also been stressed all of my life. My schooling has revealed the importance of a sampling of societal behaviors and interactions. This has shaped me by showing me examples of appropriate behavior in interpersonal relationships, and strengthened how much I value some of my behaviors. I believe that social interactions show how others view myself as an individual, and allow me a look into another person’s behaviors and morals. These momentary glances into other’s beliefs creates and understanding of myself and my beliefs in relationship to the world that I live in. Every social interaction that I take part in whether it be buying a cup of coffee in the mall, or an in depth discussion with a close friend, has an impact on my character. My education has helped to mold me, but my home life built my foundation as an individual.

My parents have also always acknowledged the importance of my education in teaching me independence, and how to take responsibility for my actions. I have been allowed the room to make mistakes, and more importantly, the space to fix any mistakes that I may make. This is also true about my education. I have been allowed to thrive in classrooms, or if I chose to falter, but regardless, it is my responsibility to fix my mistakes. This faith in my own ability has allowed me to develop a high level of motivation for my studies, and healthy study habits.

While education is an endeavor that will better my life and contribute to my happiness, I want to be able to use my knowledge to help others, and contribute to the wellbeing of other people. I have my family to thank for my motivation to better the world through my life, and I have my education to thank for giving me the understanding and skills to make it happen.

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Essay about Family: What It Is and How to Nail It

Humans naturally seek belonging within families, finding comfort in knowing someone always cares. Yet, families can also stir up insecurities and mental health struggles.

Family dynamics continue to intrigue researchers across different fields. Every year, new studies explore how these relationships shape our minds and emotions.

In this article, our dissertation service will guide you through writing a family essay. You can also dive into our list of topics for inspiration and explore some standout examples to spark your creativity.

What is Family Essay

A family essay takes a close look at the bonds and experiences within families. It's a common academic assignment, especially in subjects like sociology, psychology, and literature.

So, what's involved exactly? Simply put, it's an exploration of what family signifies to you. You might reflect on cherished family memories or contemplate the portrayal of families in various media.

What sets a family essay apart is its personal touch. It allows you to express your own thoughts and experiences. Moreover, it's versatile – you can analyze family dynamics, reminisce about family customs, or explore other facets of familial life.

If you're feeling uncertain about how to write an essay about family, don't worry; you can explore different perspectives and select topics that resonate with various aspects of family life.

Tips For Writing An Essay On Family Topics

A family essay typically follows a free-form style, unless specified otherwise, and adheres to the classic 5-paragraph structure. As you jot down your thoughts, aim to infuse your essay with inspiration and the essence of creative writing, unless your family essay topics lean towards complexity or science.

Here are some easy-to-follow tips from our essay service experts:

• Focus on a Specific Aspect: Instead of a broad overview, delve into a specific angle that piques your interest, such as exploring how birth order influences sibling dynamics or examining the evolving role of grandparents in modern families.
• Share Personal Anecdotes: Start your family essay introduction with a personal touch by sharing stories from your own experiences. Whether it's about a favorite tradition, a special trip, or a tough time, these stories make your writing more interesting.
• Use Real-life Examples: Illustrate your points with concrete examples or anecdotes. Draw from sources like movies, books, historical events, or personal interviews to bring your ideas to life.
• Explore Cultural Diversity: Consider the diverse array of family structures across different cultures. Compare traditional values, extended family systems, or the unique hurdles faced by multicultural families.
• Take a Stance: Engage with contentious topics such as homeschooling, reproductive technologies, or governmental policies impacting families. Ensure your arguments are supported by solid evidence.
• Delve into Psychology: Explore the psychological underpinnings of family dynamics, touching on concepts like attachment theory, childhood trauma, or patterns of dysfunction within families.
• Emphasize Positivity: Share uplifting stories of families overcoming adversity or discuss strategies for nurturing strong, supportive family bonds.
• Offer Practical Solutions: Wrap up your essay by proposing actionable solutions to common family challenges, such as fostering better communication, achieving work-life balance, or advocating for family-friendly policies.

Family Essay Topics

When it comes to writing, essay topics about family are often considered easier because we're intimately familiar with our own families. The more you understand about your family dynamics, traditions, and experiences, the clearer your ideas become.

If you're feeling uninspired or unsure of where to start, don't worry! Below, we have compiled a list of good family essay topics to help get your creative juices flowing. Whether you're assigned this type of essay or simply want to explore the topic, these suggestions from our history essay writer are tailored to spark your imagination and prompt meaningful reflection on different aspects of family life.

So, take a moment to peruse the list. Choose the essay topics about family that resonate most with you. Then, dive in and start exploring your family's stories, traditions, and connections through your writing.

• Supporting Family Through Tough Times
• Staying Connected with Relatives
• Empathy and Compassion in Family Life
• Strengthening Bonds Through Family Gatherings
• Quality Time with Family: How Vital Is It?
• Navigating Family Relationships Across Generations
• Learning Kindness and Generosity in a Large Family
• Communication in Healthy Family Dynamics
• Forgiveness in Family Conflict Resolution
• Building Trust Among Extended Family
• Defining Family in Today's World
• Understanding Nuclear Family: Various Views and Cultural Differences
• Understanding Family Dynamics: Relationships Within the Family Unit
• What Defines a Family Member?
• Modernizing the Nuclear Family Concept
• Exploring Shared Beliefs Among Family Members
• Evolution of the Concept of Family Love Over Time
• Examining Family Expectations
• Modern Standards and the Idea of an Ideal Family
• Life Experiences and Perceptions of Family Life
• Genetics and Extended Family Connections
• Utilizing Family Trees for Ancestral Links
• The Role of Younger Siblings in Family Dynamics
• Tracing Family History Through Oral Tradition and Genealogy
• Tracing Family Values Through Your Family Tree
• Exploring Your Elder Sister's Legacy in the Family Tree
• Connecting Daily Habits to Family History
• Documenting and Preserving Your Family's Legacy
• Navigating Online Records and DNA Testing for Family History
• Tradition as a Tool for Family Resilience
• Involving Family in Daily Life to Maintain Traditions
• Creating New Traditions for a Small Family
• The Role of Traditions in Family Happiness
• Family Recipes and Bonding at House Parties
• Quality Time: The Secret Tradition for Family Happiness
• The Joy of Cousins Visiting for Christmas
• Including Family in Birthday Celebrations
• Balancing Traditions and Unconditional Love
• Building Family Bonds Through Traditions

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Family Essay Example

For a better grasp of the essay on family, our team of skilled writers has crafted a great example. It looks into the subject matter, allowing you to explore and understand the intricacies involved in creating compelling family essays. So, check out our meticulously crafted sample to discover how to craft essays that are not only well-written but also thought-provoking and impactful.

Final Outlook

In wrapping up, let's remember: a family essay gives students a chance to showcase their academic skills and creativity by sharing personal stories. However, it's important to stick to academic standards when writing about these topics. We hope our list of topics sparked your creativity and got you on your way to a reflective journey. And if you hit a rough patch, you can just ask us to ' do my essay for me ' for top-notch results!

Having Trouble with Your Essay on the Family?

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FAQs on Writing an Essay about Family

Family essays seem like something school children could be assigned at elementary schools, but family is no less important than climate change for our society today, and therefore it is one of the most central research themes.

Below you will find a list of frequently asked questions on family-related topics. Before you conduct research, scroll through them and find out how to write an essay about your family.

How to Write an Essay About Your Family History?

How to write an essay about a family member, how to write an essay about family and roots, how to write an essay about the importance of family, related articles.

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4: Influences of Family, Society, and Culture on Childhood

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• Page ID 64519

• Susan Eliason
• Bridgewater State University

Learning Objectives

This week you will:

• Describe and analyze the influences of family, society, and culture influence the lives of children.

Introduction

How are childhoods influenced by nature and nurture? This week we will consider how family society and culture influence the lives of children. You will explore how the natural sciences (biology) and social sciences (anthropology, psychology, social work, and sociology) study these influences on children. We will use an interdisciplinary approach to learn more about the topic of sexuality. I like to use Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory to illustrate how the influences of nurture impact childhood. Watch Urie Bronfenbrenner Ecological Theory explained on You Tube on Blackboard to learn more about this model . How might Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological theory help you study your research question or childhood in general ?

Terms and Definitions

Important concepts to look for in this chapter:

• Socialization: the process where children learn to meet the expectations of and how to fit into a society.
• self-chosen and self-directed
• an activity in which means are more valued than end
• structure, or rules determined by the players
• imaginative, non-literal, mentally removed in some way from “real” or “serious” life
• involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind. (Gray, 2008)
• Competence: The ability, capacity, or qualification to perform a task, fulfill a function, or meet the requirements of a role to an acceptable standard.
• Cultural Relativism : a person’s beliefs and activities should be understood based on that person’s own culture.
• Developmentalism : The behavior of children is shaped by physical, psychological, and emotional development. Maturity is determined by age and stage of development.
• Diversity : There are many different types of childhood.
• Ethnicity : The culture of people in a given geographic region, including their language, heritage, religion and customs. To be a member of an ethnic group is to conform to some or all of those practices. Race is associated with biology, whereas ethnicity is associated with culture.
• Familialization : the caring of children in individual households and homes by family members rather than in state institutions.
• Gender : The condition of being male, female, or neuter. In a human context, the distinction between gender and SEX reflects the usage of these terms: Sex usually refers to the biological aspects of maleness or femaleness, whereas gender implies the psychological, behavioral, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female (i.e., masculinity or femininity.) [American Psychological Association, 2015]
• Friendship : Children’s affective social relations with their peers and others.

American Psychological Association. (2015). APA dictionary of psychology (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Ecological Systems Theory – used often in Social Work

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) developed the ecological systems theory to explain how everything in a child and the child’s environment affects how a child grows and develops. The theory is illustrated in the figure below. This chapter will concentrate on the the Micro and Mesosystem levels. I find this model helpful in understanding the influences of nurture on childhood.

The microsystem is the small, immediate environment the child lives in. How these groups or organizations interact with the child will have an effect on how the child grows; the more encouraging and nurturing these relationships and places are, the better the child will be able to grow. Furthermore, how a child acts or reacts to these people in the microsystem will affect how they treat her in return. Each child’s special genetic and biologically influenced personality traits, what is known as temperament, end up affecting how others treat them.

The mesosystem , describes how the different parts of a child’s microsystem work together for the sake of the child. For example, if a child’s caregivers take an active role in a child’s school, such as going to parent-teacher conferences and watching their child’s soccer games, this will help ensure the child’s overall growth.

The exosystem includes the other people and places that the child herself may not interact with often herself but that still have a large effect on her, such as families workplaces, extended family members, the neighborhood,.

The macrosystem , which is the largest and most remote set of people and things to a child but which still has a great influence over the child. The macrosystem includes things such as the relative freedoms permitted by the national government, cultural values, the economy, wars, etc.

Chronosystem developmental processes vary according to the specific historical events that are occurring as the developing individuals are at one age or another. Moreover, cultures also are continually undergoing change.

As you read and explore the topics in the chapter, think about how the influences impact children.

Nature and Nurture Shape Childhood

Now, let’s use the concept of sexuality to see how nature and nurture are interconnected.

Nature and nurture, biology and culture, work together to shape human lives. Nature and nurture are intertwined, processes.

• Do you assume biology (nature) is destiny that may be minimally modified by culture (nurture, or environment) throughout childhood?
• Do you assume environment (nurture) is a more important factor in shaping individual psychology than biology (nature)?
• Specifically, what is the relationship between biology and culture with respect to sexuality ?

The biological features of sex and sexuality are determined by chromosomes and hormones such as testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. Biologically, there are more than 2 sexes – chromosomes which can be XX, XY, XXX, XXY, XO, XYY. XX is female and XY is male; usually if the Y exists the person is generally seen as male. O produces ambiguous sexual features. Hormones and sex are apparent at seven weeks in utero.

The difference between sex and gender is: sex is male or female and is biological . Gender is meaning given to biological sex by culture . We develop a gender identity which is how an individual identifies as masculine or feminine. Gender is a spectrum. We learn gender roles during childhood, such as, appropriate behaviors and work or division of labor

• Can a male can be a female?
• Is it only one or the other?
• Are gender and sexuality fluid over a lifespan?
• Can they change? Is sex a spectrum like gender?
• nadleehi (born male functions in women roles)
• Dilbaa (born female functions in male role)

I challenge you to reflect on gender and sexual diversity. Imagine you have a child who is born with an intersex anatomy [XXX, XXY, XO, XYY] You read up on diagnostic testing and the recommendations of the Intersex Society of North America , that suggest you give your child a binary gender assignment (girl or boy). Do you follow the advice of the ISNA? Why/why not? If not, what do you name your child? How do you dress your child? As your child acquires language, what pronouns do you use for your child? Would you use he, she, ze, or they? You inform yourself and read about current possibilities at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center’s article on Gender Pronouns What is ‘competency’?

Families should help children mature and become competent. The concept of competency is related to the concept of agency discussed in Chapter 2. Listening to children and respecting their opinions can contribute to their personal development. A supportive environment can lead to children to making better decisions, prepare them to participate in society and strengthen their accountability. Children’s competency or abilities may be recognized, ignored, encouraged or inhibited. The supporting adults’ willingness to respect children’s decisions will determine whether the children’s choices are honored Figure 1, described by Alderson (1992) and illustrated by Orr (1999), illustrate the internal and external variants that may influence a child’s competency. (van Rooyen, Water, Rasmussen, & Diesfeld, 2015)

When we consider competence, we should also think about cultural relativism, are there universal standards we can apply to childhood? Is the UNCRC a set of universal standards? Implementation of the UNCRC can be difficult when violations of the rights of children are justified on the basis of cultural practice. Think about the practice of female circumcision.

In 1996, a 17-year-old girl named Fauziya Kassindja arrived at Newark International Airport and asked for asylum. She had fled her native country of Togo, a small west African nation, to escape what people there call excision.

Excision is a permanently disfiguring procedure that is sometimes called “female circumcision,” although it bears little resemblance to the Jewish ritual. More commonly, at least in Western newspapers, it is referred to as “genital mutilation.” According to the World Health Organization, the practice is widespread in 26 African nations, and two million girls each year are “excised.” In some instances, excision is part of an elaborate tribal ritual, performed in small traditional villages, and girls look forward to it because it signals their acceptance into the adult world. In other instances, the practice is carried out by families living in cities on young women who desperately resist. For more information read the World Health Organization Fact sheet (2017) Female genital mutilation

Cultural relativism would accept the practice. Does the UNCRC allow the practice?

Role of families

As discussed during Week 1, we see the world through our cultural lens, we are cultural conditioned. Conditioning happens at different levels

• Societal [Macrosystem in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory]
• Institutional [Exosystem in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory]
• Group [Microsystem in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory]
• Individual [The center of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory]

The group level or microsystem in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory includes families. One of the major influences on childhood is families. The family is the principal institution responsible for childbearing and childrearing so society assumes a more passive role in facing the commitments and costs connected to childhood. The UNCRC gives all children the right to a family. The right to a family allows children to be connected to their history, and it offers a protective perimeter against violation of their rights. Children separated from their families can become victims of violence, exploitation, trafficking, discrimination and all other types of abuse. However, sometimes the family which should be protecting the child is in fact inflicting the abuse.

Families are the first to have the power to act on behalf of the child and ensure their rights are respected. Hopefully, their objectives are to protect the child and to secure the child an education, development, security, health and morality. To achieve these objectives, a family should provide supervision by controlling the child’s comings and goings, relationships, and communications. For example, they may forbid the child from maintaining relationships with certain persons that they believe are not in his or her best interest. Families make educational decisions including religious and sex education and decide on the health care to give their child. Families are responsible for the needs of the child, such as food, clothing, shelter, educational costs, vacations (if possible), and health coverage. What happens to children when families find it difficult to provide basic needs? Families often struggle with finding time, money and resources to effectively parent. In the US, families may have difficulty earning a living wage, finding social supports, securing affordable housing, high-quality child care and paid family leave. It can be difficult to provide a nurturing environment all children need and may result in neglectful or abusive environment.

Did you know that in 2016 the relative poverty rate for children 0-5 in the U.S. was more than 25%; for ages 0-18 years the rate was about 22%. In other words about 1 out of 4 young children in the United States live in poverty. What changes in the US might lower the child poverty rate? How can we create environments that enrich the lives of all young children and their families, allowing them the opportunity to realize their full human potential?

A former student shared: So I definitely think that the Department of Children and Families (DCF) needs to be more pro-active in checking in on families, especially families living under the poverty line, to ensure they are receiving assistance if needed and that the child is living in a stable home where he/she is healthy and can thrive. I agree with the student that all children deserve a safe and healthy environment and our society should support them. I wonder why income often is the only resource considered when giving families assistance. To help you think about interacting with diverse families, please read the following scenario:

You are a teacher in the 4-year-old room at Kids Place child care center.Daequan and Mathew are two children in your class. Both were born at 30 weeks’ gestation and had hospital stays of about 6 weeks. Both are in generally good health and are monitored for respiratory illnesses. For the most part, the boys are reaching their developmental milestones, with slight delays in language/emotional development.

At the present time, Daequan and his mother, Shania, are living in a homeless shelter. Their home burned down 2 weeks ago and they had nowhere else to go. Matthew is part of an intact family. Ralph and Sue are his parents, and he has an older brother, Nick. The family lives in an affluent community a mile from Kids Place.

• Which child would appear to be experiencing a greater number of risk factors that can affect his development?
• With which family would it appear to be easier to develop a partnership? Why?

Then you learn:

Daequan and his mother have a number of extended family members available for support and will be moving into an apartment within a month’s time. Shania has contacted a number of local agencies for assistance to rebuild her and her son’s lives.

Matthew’s father travels 3 weeks out of the month. Sue is on medication for depression and has recently started drinking around the boys during the evenings and weekends. She turns down offers of help from her friends and family and tells them everything is fine with her marriage and her ability to raise her sons.

What questions might you or others ask to find out “the whole story”? Ruby Payne (2009) describes the nine resources by which one negotiates their environment. Poverty is when you need too many of these resources, not just financial.

• Language (ability to speak formally)
• Support systems
• Relationships/role models
• Knowledge of middle class rules

How do you and other discover what resources are available to children and families? How do you build on a families strengths. Everything that improves the economic security, safety and peace of mind of families improves parenting—and increases children’s chances for growing into healthy, compassionate and responsible adults. These include living wages and reliable hours, secure housing, high-quality childcare, paid family leave, safe neighborhoods, flex time, desegregation and social inclusion. Which disciplinary perspectives might help you understand family influences on childhood?

Friendships

Besides family and other adults in the culture, peers can be an influence on childhood. Recent research shows the importance of friendship, and its impact on mental and physical health. Preschool friendships are helpful in developing social and emotional skills, increasing a sense of belonging and decreasing stress. (Yu, Ostrosky, & Fowler, 2011). People who feel lonely or socially isolated tend to be more depressed, have more health issues and may have a shorter lifespan. (Lewis, 2016). Having a support system can help us handle hardships.

Selman and colleagues identified five successive stages in how children view friendships. The chart below illustrates the theory. Why might it be helpful to understand the stages of friendship? How would it inform your possible work with children and families?

Play in one way in which families and peers interact with the child. Play is essential to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth and is one of the rights in the UNCRC. Article 31 of the UNCRC states:

1. Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.

2. Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.

It is through play that children engage and interact in the world around them at an early age. Play allows children to create and explore a world they can master, conquering their fears while practicing adult roles, developing new competencies that lead to enhanced confidence and the resiliency they will need to face future challenges.

Child-directed play allows children to practice decision-making skills, move at their own pace, discover their own areas of interest, and ultimately engage fully in the passions they wish to pursue. When play is controlled by adults, children follow adult rules and lose some of the benefits child-directed play offers them, such as developing creativity, leadership, and group skills. Play builds active, healthy bodies. Play is a simple joy that is a cherished part of childhood. However, play can be challenged by child labor and exploitation practices, war and neighborhood violence, living in poverty, over scheduling, and pressures on children to achieve. (Ginsburg, 2007)

A wonderful resource to learn more about play is available on the National Association for the Education of Young Children website . After reviewing the information on the website reflect on these questions:

How can we enhance the opportunities for balance in children’s lives that will create the optimal development to prepare them to be academically, socially, and emotionally equipped for future growth? How can we make sure we play enough?

Genes make us human, but our humanity is a result of the complex interplay of biological and cultural factors. This week you read about the of the influences of family, society, and culture as they bear on the lives of children. As you discuss, try to answer: How are interactions between children and adults shaped, modified and redefined by overlapping institutional and organizational forces such as the economy, family, education, politics, religion, and so on? What is the impact of experiences in childhood later in life?

After reading this chapter and completing the activities you should be able to

• Describe and analyze the influences of family, society, and culture influence the lives of children as seen the discussion and assumptions inventory

Reflection and Discussion

This week we explored the influences of family, society, and culture influence the lives of children. Reflect on your understanding of these ideas:

Now you are ready to type in Pages or in a Word document, a minimum of 3 paragraphs explaining your connections, extensions, and curiosities. Copy and paste your response in the Blackboard discussion or in class

Collaborative Research Project

So far during this course, you brainstormed a research question and should be using at least 2 disciplines to examine the question. Your work this week is to present your preliminary findings as a draft of the final project. Soon you will submit a video or some other oral report as well as written materials. You will likely use the same format as the Assumption Inventory. The report should

• Summarize your research question ( What ). Remember to relate the question to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)
• Present the research from different disciplines that help to answer or explain the question. ( So What )
• Apply criteria listed in the grading rubrics to create a persuasive presentation
• Discuss possible solutions. (This is the start of the Now What of the project)
• Complete a peer feedback questionnaire.

Ginsburg, K. R. (2007) The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds. Pediatrics, 119, (1). doi: 10.1542/peds.2006-2697 Available at http://pediatrics.aappublications.or...1/182.full.pdf

Lewis, T. (2016). This common characteristic may be as big a risk to your health as smoking. Business Insider Website available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-social-isolation-affects-your-health-2016-1

Selman, R. (1981). The child as a friendship philosopher. In S. A. Asher & J. M. Gottman (Eds.), Development of Children’s Friendships. (pp. 250-251). (Original work published 1978) Retrieved from http://books.google.com

van Rooyen, A., Water, T., Rasmussen, S., and Diesfeld, K. (2015). What makes a child a ‘competent’ child? The New Zealand Medical Journal, 128, (1426). Available at www.nzma.org.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/46110/van-Rooyen-1628FINAL1426.pdf

Yu, S. Y., Ostrosky, M. M. & Fowler, S. A. (2011). Children’s Friendship Development: A Comparative Study. Early Childhood Research and Practice, 13 , (1).

Family is One of the Most Powerful Influences on an Individual’s Development Essay

As an individual develops, there are many external forces which influence his or her life in a positively or negative way. One of the major influences is the family to which an individual is born in.

Families exist in different forms and the manner in which different people describe families is a major determinant of what we view as a normal family.

For example, while to some a nuclear family is the normal family, in some other cultures the family is considered whole only after inclusion of the extended family. How a family influences development of an individual is a matter of concern to many scholars (Schulz 16).

From a sociological point of view, a family influences the development of an individual in a functionalistic perspective whereby the individual develops through the functions or the activities which are performed within it.

Examples of such activities include socialization, protection, and reproduction. It is important to note that initially, an individual relates to these activities according to how their family does them though it does not necessarily mean they follow everything.

According to Whiston and Keller (518), the family into which an individual is born influences much on both career and occupational development of the person.

Since most of the individuals are likely to seek advice from their family members, it is important for counselors to seek ways in which they can advice families on how they such families can have a positive influence on their children. The family influences development of an individual through four levels which are: child level, adolescent, college and adult life.

However, though the family may positively or negatively influence the career development in which an individual can follow, it is important also to note that career development is influenced by many other factors such as race, gender and age of the individual (Whiston and Keller 518)

While studying credit constraints (school abilities and deficiencies) experts found that there was a relationship between the family and college attendance: it was found out that there is a relationship between college attendance and the family or the parental income.

It was found out that attendance to colleges increased as the returns to the family increased. This attendance dimension shows that income inequality among families and races will still continue to be a problem.

The study concluded that credit constraints facing families influences greatly the chances of the adolescent attending college due to the lack of resources and thus influence the individual development in the process. Another issue which could influence the development of an individual is the fact that long terms associated with life are associated to the family income.

A family with a strong income correlates with the individual life cycle. High income in the family ensures that the individual passes through the whole education system and thus he acquires both cognitive and non cognitive abilities in life enabling him or her develop wholly (Carneilo, Cunha and Heckman 14).

If one wanted to understand well how family influences development of an individual, he or she needs to view a family as a large convoy that surrounds and individual over life time. The quantity and quality of family relations whether these relationships are positive or negative, gender and the role occupied in the familiar unit influence an individual.

It however remains a challenge to many experts who despite their positive relationship between the family and the individual development, are unable to explain the differences which arise between two children of the same family (Schulz 415).

Works Cited

Carneiro, Pedro., Cunha, Flavio and Heckman James. Interpreting the Evidence of Family Influence on Child Development. 2007. Web.

Schulz Richard. The Encyclopedia of Aging: A-K. 4 th Edition. New York: Springer Publishers, 2006. Print.

Whiston, Susan and Keller, Briana. The Influences of the Family of Origin on Career Development. The Counseling Psychologist. 32. 4(2007): 493-568.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 25). Family is One of the Most Powerful Influences on an Individual's Development. https://ivypanda.com/essays/family-is-one-of-the-most-powerful-influences-on-an-individuals-development/

"Family is One of the Most Powerful Influences on an Individual's Development." IvyPanda , 25 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/family-is-one-of-the-most-powerful-influences-on-an-individuals-development/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Family is One of the Most Powerful Influences on an Individual's Development'. 25 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Family is One of the Most Powerful Influences on an Individual's Development." October 25, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/family-is-one-of-the-most-powerful-influences-on-an-individuals-development/.

1. IvyPanda . "Family is One of the Most Powerful Influences on an Individual's Development." October 25, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/family-is-one-of-the-most-powerful-influences-on-an-individuals-development/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Family is One of the Most Powerful Influences on an Individual's Development." October 25, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/family-is-one-of-the-most-powerful-influences-on-an-individuals-development/.

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Essay on Importance of Family for Students and Children

500 words essay on importance of family.

In today’s world when everything is losing its meaning, we need to realize the importance of family more than ever. While the world is becoming more modern and advanced, the meaning of family and what stands for remains the same.

A family is a group of people who are related by blood or heritage. These people are linked not only by blood but also by compassion, love, and support. A person’s character and personality are shaped by his or her family. There are various forms of families in today’s society. It is further subdivided into a tight and extended family (nuclear family, single parent, step-family, grandparent, cousins, etc.)

Family – A synonym for trust, comfort, love, care, happiness and belonging. Family is the relationship that we share from the moment we are born into this world. People that take care of us and help us grow are what we call family, and they become lifelines for us to live. Family members have an important role in deciding an individual’s success or failure in life since they provide a support system and source of encouragement.

It does not matter what kind of family one belongs to. It is all equal as long as there are caring and acceptance. You may be from a joint family, same-sex partner family, nuclear family, it is all the same. The relationships we have with our members make our family strong. We all have unique relations with each family member. In addition to other things, a family is the strongest unit in one’s life.

Things That Strengthens The Family

A family is made strong through a number of factors. The most important one is of course love. You instantly think of unconditional love when you think of family. It is the first source of love you receive in your life It teaches you the meaning of love which you carry on forever in your heart.

Secondly, we see that loyalty strengthens a family. When you have a family, you are devoted to them. You stick by them through the hard times and celebrate in their happy times. A family always supports and backs each other. They stand up for each other in front of a third party trying to harm them proving their loyalty.

Most importantly, the things one learns from their family brings them closer. For instance, we learn how to deal with the world through our family first. They are our first school and this teaching strengthens the bond. It gives us reason to stand by each other as we share the same values.

No matter what the situation arises, your family will never leave you alone. They will always stand alongside you to overcome the hardships in life. If anyone is dealing with any kind of trouble, even a small talk about it to the family will make ones’ mind lighter and will give them a sense of hope, an inner sense of strength to fight those problems.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Importance of Family

One cannot emphasize enough on the importance of family. They play a great role in our lives and make us better human beings. The one lucky enough to have a family often do not realize the value of a family.

However, those who do not have families know their worth. A family is our source of strength. It teaches us what relationships mean. They help us create meaningful relationships in the outside world. The love we inherit from our families, we pass on to our independent relationships.

Moreover, families teach us better communication . When we spend time with our families and love each other and communicate openly, we create a better future for ourselves. When we stay connected with our families, we learn to connect better with the world.

Similarly, families teach us patience. It gets tough sometimes to be patient with our family members. Yet we remain so out of love and respect. Thus, it teaches us patience to deal better with the world. Families boost our confidence and make us feel loved. They are the pillars of our strength who never fall instead keep us strong so we become better people.

We learn the values of love, respect, faith, hope, caring, cultures, ethics, traditions, and everything else that concerns us through our families. Being raised in a loving household provides a solid foundation for anyone.

People develop a value system inside their family structure in addition to life lessons. They learn what their family considers to be proper and wrong, as well as what the community considers to be significant.

Families are the epicentres of tradition. Many families keep on traditions by sharing stories from the past over the years. This allows you to reconnect with family relatives who are no longer alive. A child raised in this type of household feels as if they are a part of something bigger than themselves. They’ll be proud to be a part of a community that has had ups and downs. Communities thrive when families are strong. This, in turn, contributes to a robust society.

Q.1 What strengthens a family?

A.1 A family’s strength is made up of many factors. It is made of love that teaches us to love others unconditionally. Loyalty strengthens a family which makes the members be loyal to other people as well. Most importantly, acceptance and understanding strengthen a family.

Q.2 Why is family important?

A.2 Families are very important components of society and people’s lives. They teach us a lot about life and relationships. They love us and treat us valuably. They boost our self-confidence and make us feel valued. In addition, they teach us patience to deal with others in a graceful and accepting manner.

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20 Engaging Essays About Family You Can Easily Write

Discover 20 essays about family for your next essay writing project.

From defining the family to exploring problems within modern families, this personal topic lends itself well to essay writing. If you are preparing a personal essay or were assigned to write one on this topic, good news. You can easily draw on a wealth of sub-topics and themes about the family, as you develop your piece. But if you have trouble getting started, here are 20 ideas for essays about the family.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .

1. Why Siblings Should Be Your Best Friends

2. what is a family, 3. how family culture is established by a nuclear family, 4. the importance of family in child rearing, 5. how my family made me a better person, 6. why i love my family, 7. why my mom/dad/grandparent is my role model, 8. the effect of dysfunctional families on teenagers, 9. a sociological approach to defining family, 10. the influence of extended family on a child’s life experiences, 11. how popular culture portrays the happy family, 12. how my dysfunctional family defined my character, 13. how family has changed in american society, 14. is family changing or facing a state of decline, 15. the role family holds in everyday life, 16. comparing the family dynamics between two different cultures, 17. how my multi-cultural family gave me the best of both worlds, 18. unique challenges faced in single-parent families, 19. my most vivid family memory, 20. the challenges of being the youngest or oldest in the family.

A loving family is a beautiful gift, and with it often comes the gift of siblings. You could develop an essay on why siblings should be an individual’s best friends. When the relationship between them is loving and supportive, siblings are always around and able to help individuals through challenging life experiences.

This stands in stark contrast to the friends made in high school and even college. While some people will walk away with lifelong friends, life’s circumstances often pull friends apart. Family is forever, and people should work to develop those relationships. Looking for more? See these essays about brothers .

The dictionary defines a family as “a social group made up of parents and their children” or “a group of people who come from the same ancestor.” Yet this is a very narrow definition of family. Could you define it in another way? Are there people who you consider “family” who are not actually related to you by blood?

This essay idea gives you quite a bit of room for interpretation. Decide how you will define family, and then use the essay to support your choice. Then, discuss different ways family can look in society.

If you need some inspiration, check out our guide to the best parenting books .

The nuclear family is the most basic family structure: parents and their children. This family system is critical to developing a family culture and passing it down to the next generation. Do you find that you highly value having a family night on Fridays? It is likely because that is something your parents showed you in your own family when you were growing up.

Your essay can define family culture and show how family life helps establish that and pass it down to children. This family essay can discuss the nuclear family’s role in teaching children about cultural and religious values. Finally, the essay can establish why family culture and passing it along to children is so important.

For more help with this topic, read our guide explaining what is persuasive writing ?

Can children grow into reasonable and ethical grown-ups without a family? While it is possible, the reality is the most stable adults typically come from loving and supportive families. One of the primary roles of the family is the development and rearing of children.

The family is the child’s primary social group . Through the family, they develop socially, emotionally, physically, and intellectually. In some ways, the family is the first school that teaches them the most important principles of life for young children. In your essay, establish the fact that family is the foundation for strong adults because of its role in child-rearing and child development.

If you need to write a personal essay, you can look at your family’s role in making you who you are. Your family played a vital role in your upbringing, from teaching you your core values to supporting you as you developed into the adult you are today.

Remember that you don’t have to have a happy family to write this essay. Even if your family circumstances were challenging, you can find ways that your family of origin helped you improve yourself and become a better person.

This is another personal essay topic. On the surface, it seems easy, but if you are going to write a quality essay, you need to dig deep. What makes your family unique and special, and why do you love that?

Keep in mind that all families have quirks and even problems. Yet you love your family in spite of these and sometimes even because of them. Don’t be afraid to include these in your essay.

Think of your family and the leaders in it. Is there one that stands out for a particular reason? Have you modeled some of your own life on how that person lived theirs?

Whether you choose a parent or a grandparent or even an extended family member, look more closely at what makes that individual so important in your life. Then, in your essay, you can outline how you are trying to emulate what they did in their life to make you more successful in yours.

When families go through difficult times, the effect is not limited to those struggling the most. The whole family will suffer when parents are fighting or financial problems arise. Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to dysfunctional family dynamics. They may act out, experience depression, or feel pressured to lead the family when their parents are facing conflict.

This essay explores the effect of family problems on teenagers and their emotional or social development. Consider providing solutions that can help teens manage their challenging emotions even while dealing with the unique challenge of a dysfunctional family.

The definition of family is constantly evolving, but what does sociology say about it? This question could lead to an exciting and engaging essay as you dig into sociology to find your family definition. Based on most sociological definitions , a family is a group of related individuals connected by blood, marriage, or adoption. It may also mean people who live under the same roof.

Based on this definition, the word family has a distinct boundary. While close friends might be something you consider as family personally, sociologists will not define family in this way. Looking at the way sociologists, specifically, define family will give you quite a bit for your essay.

Much has been written about the nuclear family and its impact on the child’s development, but the whole family can have a role to play. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other extended family members can contribute to the life experiences of a child, and you can turn this into an interesting essay topic.

Use your essay to explore what happens when the extended family lives close by and what happens when they do not. You can look at how much of an influence the extended family has on a child’s development, and what increases or decreases that influence.

What does the happy nuclear family look like in television shows and movies? Is it usually a mother, father, and child, or are same-sex couples shown regularly? Do single-parent households get equal representation, or not?

This topic could be a fascinating one to explore in your essay. Once you establish the facts, you can discuss if this portrayal reflects real life or not. Finally, you can talk about whether or not the cultural portrayal of the family represents the type of family values the average family embraces.

Not everyone grows up in a happy, stable family, but sometimes bad times can improve someone’s character and give them the drive to be better. If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you could show how that helped define your character.

In this essay, work to make a positive spin on your difficult situation. This topic can work well for a personal essay for college entrance or employment purposes.

Is the definition of family changing in American society? Some would argue that it is. While the mother, father, and children style family is still common, many other families exist now.

For example, we have an increasing number of grandparents who are raising their grandchildren . Single-parent families are also on the rise, as are families with a single parent who was never married to the other parent to begin with. Families with same-sex parents are becoming more common as well. Take your essay and define this change and how the nuclear family may look in the future.

Another take on the idea of the changing family dynamic s discussing whether or not families are changing, or if the state of the family is in decline. This essay topic will require some research, but you can explore whether families are breaking down or if they are simply changing.

If you decide that the family is breaking down, you can explore the reasons for this breakdown and its impact on society.

From bringing in the income that the family members need to live on to giving direction for the growth and development of children, the family holds a significant role in everyday life. You can explore this role in your essay and talk about the different components of life that the family controls.

For people who grow up in a stable environment, the family provides emotional support and improves overall well-being. It is also the source for moral development, cultural development, and work ethic development. It also provides for the physical safety and needs of the children. All of these lend themselves well to an essay topic.

While the main definition of family is nearly universal, the nuances of family dynamics change significantly from one culture to the next. For example, some cultures are highly patriarchal in nature, while others focus on maternal leadership. Pick a very different culture from your own, and then compare and contrast them in your essay.

For this essay, make sure that you look at differences as well as similarities. Do not disparage either culture, either, but rather focus on their differences positively. This essay works well if you have contact or knowledge of both cultures so that it can be a great choice for someone growing up in a multi-cultural family.

This essay topic is a twist on the previous one. In addition to comparing and contrasting the family dynamic of the two cultures, you can look at how that directly impacted you. What did you gain from each of the two cultures that merged in your home?

The personal nature of this essay topic makes it easier to write, but be willing to do some research, too. Learn why your parents acted the way they did and how it tied into their cultures. Consider ways the cultures clashed and how your family worked through those problems.

Single-parent families can be loving and supportive families, and children can grow well in them, but they face some challenges. Your essay can expound on these challenges and help you show how they are overcome within the family dynamic.

As you develop this family essay, remember to shed some positive light on the tenacity of single parents. There are challenges in this family structure, but most single parents meet them head-on and grow happy, well-balanced children. Remember to discuss both single fathers and single mothers, as single-parent families have both.

You can use this personal essay topic when writing essays about the family. Think back to your childhood and your most vivid family memory. Maybe it is something positive, like an epic family vacation, or maybe it is something negative, like the time when your parents split up.

Write about how that family memory changed you as a child and even in your adult years. Discuss what you remember about it and what you know about it now, after the fact. Show how that memory helped develop you into who you are today.

Are you the family’s baby or the oldest child? What challenges did you face in this role? Discuss those as you develop your family essay topic.

Even if you were the middle child, you can use your observations of your family to discuss the challenges of the bookend children. Do you feel that the baby or the eldest has the easier path? Develop this into a well-thought-out essay.

If you are interested in learning more, check out our essay writing tips !

Nicole Harms has been writing professionally since 2006. She specializes in education content and real estate writing but enjoys a wide gamut of topics. Her goal is to connect with the reader in an engaging, but informative way. Her work has been featured on USA Today, and she ghostwrites for many high-profile companies. As a former teacher, she is passionate about both research and grammar, giving her clients the quality they demand in today's online marketing world.

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Essay about Family Values & Traditions: Prompts + Examples

A family values essay (or a family traditions essay) is a type of written assignment. It covers such topics as family traditions, customs, family history, and values. It is usually assigned to those who study sociology, culture, anthropology, and creative writing.

In this article, you will find:

• 150 family values essay topics
• Outline structure
• Thesis statement examples
• “Family values” essay sample
• “Family traditions” essay sample
• “What does family mean to you?” essay sample.

Learn how to write your college essay about family with our guide.

• 👪 What Is a Family Values Essay about?
• 💡 Topic Ideas
• 📑 Outlining Your Essay️
• 🏠️ Family Values: Essay Example
• 🎃 Family Traditions: Essay Example
• 😍 What Does Family Mean to You: Essay Example

👪 Family Values Essay: What Is It about?

What are family values.

Family values are usually associated with a traditional family. In western culture, it is called “ a nuclear family .”

A nuclear family represents a family with a husband, wife, and children living together.

The nuclear family became common in the 1960s – 1970s . That happened because of the post-war economic boom and the health service upgrade. That allowed elder relatives to live separately from their children.

These days, the nuclear family is no longer the most common type of family . There are various forms of families:

• Single-parent families
• Non-married parents
• Blended families
• Couples with no children
• Foster parents, etc.

How did the nuclear family become so wide-spread?

The nuclear family culture was mostly spread in western cultures. According to many historians, it was because of the Christian beliefs .

However, many people believe that Christianity was not the only reason. The industrial revolution also played a significant role.

Nowadays, the understanding of the term varies from person to person. It depends on their religious , personal, or cultural beliefs.

Family Values List

Cultural background plays a significant role in every family’s values. However, each family has its own customs and traditions as well.

Some common types of family values include:

• Some moral values are:
• Having a sense of justice
• Being honest
• Being respectful to others
• Being patient
• Being responsible
• Having courage
• Some social values are:
• Participating in teamwork
• Being generous
• Volunteering
• Being respectful
• Featuring dignity
• Demonstrating humanity
• Some work values include:
• Saving salary
• Prioritizing education
• Doing your best at work
• Maintaining respectful relationships with coworkers/ classmates
• Some religious values are:
• Being caring
• Willing to learn
• Treating others with respect
• Being modest
• Some recreational values are:
• Family game nights
• Family vacations
• Family meals
• Some political values are:
• Being patriotic
• Being tolerant
• Following the law
• Being open-minded

💡 150 Family Values Essay Topics

If you find it challenging to choose a family values topic for your essay, here is the list of 150 topics.

• Social family values and their impact on children.
• Divorce: Psychological Effects on Children .
• Do family values define your personality?
• Toys, games, and gender socialization.
• The correlation between teamwork and your upbringing.
• Family Structure and Its Effects on Children .
• What does honesty have to do with social values?
• Solution Focused Therapy in Marriage and Family .
• The importance of being respectful to others.
• Parent-Child Relationships and Parental Authority .
• Political family values and their impact on children.
• Postpartum Depression Effect on Children Development .
• The importance of patriotism.
• Social factors and family issues.
• Is being open-minded crucial in modern society ?
• Modern Society: American Family Values .
• What role does tolerance play in modern society?
• Does hard work identify your success?
• Family involvement impact on student achievement.
• Religious family values and their impact on children.
• Native American Women Raising Children off the Reservation .
• What does spiritual learning correlate with family values?
• Modest relations and their importance.
• The role of parental involvement.
• What is violence , and why is it damaging?
• Myths of the Gifted Children .
• Work family values and their impact on children.
• When Should Children Start School?
• Does salary saving help your family?
• Family as a System and Systems Theory .
• Why should education be a priority?
• Child-free families and their values.
• Family violence effects on family members.
• Why is doing your best work important for your family?
• School-Family-Community Partnership Policies .
• Moral values and their impact on children.
• Does being trustworthy affect your family values?
• Gender Inequality in the Study of the Family .
• Can you add your value to the world?
• Your responsibility and your family.
• Family in the US culture and society.
• Recreational family values and their impact.
• Balancing a Career and Family Life for Women .
• Family vacations and their effects on relationships.
• Family meal and its impact on family traditions.
• Children Play: Ingredient Needed in Children’s Learning .
• Family prayer in religious families.
• Family changes in American and African cultures.
• Hugs impact on family ties.
• Are bedtime stories important for children?
• How Video Games Affect Children .
• Do family game nights affect family bonding?
• Divorce Remarriage and Children Questions .
• What is the difference between tradition and heritage culture ?
• How Autistic Children Develop and Learn?
• The true meaning of family values.
• Egypt families in changed and traditional forms.
• Does culture affect family values?
• Are family values a part of heritage?
• The Development of Secure and Insecure Attachments in Children .
• Does supporting family traditions impact character traits?
• Parents’ Accountability for Children’s Actions .
• Does your country’s history affect your family’s values?
• Do family traditions help with solving your family problems?
• Impact of Domestic Violence on Children in the Classroom .
• Does having business with your family affect your bonding?
• Family as a social institution.
• Different weekly family connections ideas and their impact.
• Different monthly family connections ideas and their impact.
• The importance of your family’s daily rituals.
• Group and Family Therapies: Similarities and Differences .
• Holiday family gatherings as an instrument of family bonding.
• Should a family have separate family budgets ?
• Parental non-engagement in education.
• Globalization and its impact on family values.
• The difference between small town and big city family values.
• Divorce and how it affects the children.
• Child’s play observation and parent interview.
• Family fights and their impact on the family atmosphere.
• Why are personal boundaries important?
• Single-parent family values.
• Gender Differences in Caring About Children .
• Does being an only child affect one’s empathy ?
• Grandparents’ involvement in children upbringing.
• Use of Social Networks by Underage Children .
• Same-sex marriage and its contribution to family values.
• Does surrogacy correspond to family values?
• Are women better parents than men?
• Does the age gap between children affect their relationship?
• Does having pets affect family bonding?
• Parenting Gifted Children Successfully Score .
• Having a hobby together and its impact.
• Discuss living separately from your family.
• Shopping together with your family and its impact on your family values.
• Movie nights as a family tradition.
• Parents’ perception of their children’s disability.
• Does being in the same class affect children’s relationships ?
• Does sharing a room with your siblings affect your relationship?
• Raising Awareness on the Importance of Preschool Education Among Parents .
• Pros and cons of having a nanny.
• Do gadgets affect your children’s social values?
• The Role of Parents in Underage Alcohol Use and Abuse .
• Pros and cons of homeschooling .
• Limiting children’s Internet usage time and their personal boundaries.
• Is having an heirloom important?
• Divorce influence on children’s mental health.
• Is daycare beneficial?
• Should your parents-in-law be involved in your family?
• Children’s Foster Care and Associated Problems .
• Pets’ death and its impact on children’s social values.
• Clinical Map of Family Therapy .
• Passing of a relative and its impact on the family.
• How Do Parents See the Influence of Social Media Advertisements on Their Children ?
• Relationship within a family with an adopted child.
• Discuss naming your child after grandparents.
• The Effects of Post-Divorce Relationships on Children.
• Discuss the issue of spoiling children.
• Discuss nuclear family values.
• Parental Involvement in Second Language Learning .
• Children’s toys and their impact on children’s values.
• Discuss the children’s rivalry phenomenon.
• Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act History .
• Relationship between parents and its impact on children.
• Lockdown and its impact on family values.
• Financial status and children’s social values.
• Do parents’ addictions affect children?
• Corporal punishment and its effects on children.
• Discuss step-parents’ relationship with children.
• Severe diseases in the family and their impact.
• Developing Family Relationship Skills to Prevent Substance Abuse Among Youth Population .
• Arranged marriages and their family values.
• Discuss the age gap in marriages.
• The Effects of Parental Involvement on Student Achievement .
• International families and their values.
• Early marriages and their family values.
• Parental Divorce Impact on Children’s Academic Success .
• Discuss parenting and family structure after divorce .
• Mental Illness in Children and Its Effects on Parents .
• Discuss family roles and duties.
• Healthy habits and their importance in the family.
• Growing-up Family Experience and the Interpretive Style in Childhood Social Anxiety .
• Discuss different family practices.
• Dealing With Parents: Schools Problem .
• Ancestors worship as a family value.
• The importance of family speech.
• Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?
• Mutual respect as a core of a traditional family.
• Experiential Family Psychotherapy .
• Should the law protect the family values?
• Family as a basic unit of society.

Couldn’t find the perfect topic for your paper? Use our essay topic generator !

📑 Family Values Essay Outline

The family values essay consists of an introduction, body, and conclusion. You can write your essay in five paragraphs:

• One introductory paragraph
• Three body paragraphs
• One conclusion paragraph.

Family values or family history essay are usually no more than 1000 words long.

What do you write in each of them?

Learn more on the topic from our article that describes outline-making rules .

Thesis Statement about Family Values

The thesis statement is the main idea of your essay. It should be the last sentence of the introduction paragraph .

Why is a thesis statement essential?

It gives the reader an idea of what your essay is about.

The thesis statement should not just state your opinion but rather be argumentative. For the five-paragraph family values essay, you can express one point in your thesis statement.

Let’s take a look at good and bad thesis statement about family values templates.

Need a well-formulated thesis statement? You are welcome to use our thesis-making tool !

🏠️ Family Values Essay: Example & Writing Prompts

So, what do you write in your family values essay?

Start with choosing your topic. For this type of essay, it can be the following:

• Your reflection about your family’s values
• The most common family values in your country
• Your opinion on family values.

Let’s say you want to write about your family values. What do you include in your essay?

First, introduce family values definition and write your thesis statement.

Then, in the body part, write about your family’s values and their impact on you (one for each paragraph).

Finally, sum up your essay.

Family Values Essay Sample: 250 Words

🎃 family traditions essay: example & writing prompts.

Family traditions essay covers such topics as the following:

• Family traditions in the USA (in England, in Spain, in Pakistan, etc.)
• Traditions in my family
• The importance of family traditions for children.
• My favorite family traditions

After you decide on your essay topic, make an outline.

For the introduction part, make sure to introduce the traditions that you are going to write about. You can also mention the definition of traditions.

In the body part, introduce one tradition for each paragraph. Make sure to elaborate on why they are essential for you and your family.

Finally, sum up your essay in the conclusion part.

Family Traditions Essay Sample: 250 Words

😍 what does family mean to you essay: example & writing prompts.

The family definition essay covers your opinion on family and its importance for you.

Some of the questions that can help you define your topic:

• How has your family shaped your character?
• How can you describe your upbringing?

In the introduction part, you can briefly cover the importance of family in modern society. Then make sure to state your thesis.

As for the body parts, you can highlight three main ideas of your essay (one for each paragraph).

Finally, sum up your essay in the conclusion part. Remember that you can restate your thesis statement here.

What Does Family Mean to You Essay Sample: 250 Words

Now you have learned how to write your family values essay. What values have you got from your family? Let us know in the comments below!

❓ Family Values FAQ

Family values are the principles, traditions, and beliefs that are upheld in a family. They depend on family’s cultural, religious, and geographical background. They might be moral values, social values, work values, political values, recreational values, religious values, etc. These values are usually passed on to younger generations and may vary from family to family.

Why are family values important?

Family values are important because they have a strong impact on children’s upbringing. These values might influence children’s behavior, personality, attitude, and character traits. These can affect how the children are going to build their own families in the future.

What are Christian family values?

Some Christian family values are the following: 1. Sense of justice 2. Being thankful 3. Having wisdom 4. Being compassion 5. Willing to learn 6. Treating others with respect 7. Modesty

What are traditional family values?

Each family has its own values. However, they do have a lot of resemblances. Some traditional family values are the following: 1. Having responsibilities to your family 2. Being respectful to your family members 3. Not hurting your family members 4. Compromising

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Family History — How My Family Has Defined My Identity as a Person

How My Family Has Defined My Identity as a Person

• Categories: Family History Personal Identity Self Identity

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Words: 1039 |

Published: May 14, 2021

Words: 1039 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, the multifaceted family identity, the religious identity within the family, the branches of my identity, the missing leaves of humanity, works cited.

• Sharma, R. S. (2001). India's Ancient Past. Oxford University Press.
• Rodrigues, H. (2006). Hinduism: The eBook. Journal of Buddhist Ethics Online Books, Ltd.
• Kapoor, K. (2019). Sindhis: A Seafaring Community. Niyogi Books.
• Haider, F. (2005). The Origins of the Pakistani Civil War. Oxford University Press.
• Kour, J., & Oberoi, J. P. S. (2008). The Sikhs and Their Literature: A Guide to Tracts, Books, and Periodicals, 1849-1919. Oxford University Press.
• Rothstein, R. L. (2014). From Hinduism to Humanism: My Intellectual and Spiritual Journey. International Journal of Hindu Studies, 18(2-3), 165-184.

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Article contents

Family, culture, and communication.

• V. Santiago Arias V. Santiago Arias College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
•  and  Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.504
• Published online: 22 August 2017

Through the years, the concept of family has been studied by family therapists, psychology scholars, and sociologists with a diverse theoretical framework, such as family communication patterns (FCP) theory, dyadic power theory, conflict, and family systems theory. Among these theories, there are two main commonalities throughout its findings: the interparental relationship is the core interaction in the familial system because the quality of their communication or coparenting significantly affects the enactment of the caregiver role while managing conflicts, which are not the exception in the familial setting. Coparenting is understood in its broader sense to avoid an extensive discussion of all type of families in our society. Second, while including the main goal of parenting, which is the socialization of values, this process intrinsically suggests cultural assimilation as the main cultural approach rather than intergroup theory, because intercultural marriages need to decide which values are considered the best to be socialized. In order to do so, examples from the Thai culture and Hispanic and Latino cultures served to show cultural assimilation as an important mediator of coparenting communication patterns, which subsequently affect other subsystems that influence individuals’ identity and self-esteem development in the long run. Finally, future directions suggest that the need for incorporating a nonhegemonic one-way definition of cultural assimilation allows immigration status to be brought into the discussion of family communication issues in the context of one of the most diverse countries in the world.

• parental communication
• dyadic power
• family communication systems
• cultural assimilation

Introduction

Family is the fundamental structure of every society because, among other functions, this social institution provides individuals, from birth until adulthood, membership and sense of belonging, economic support, nurturance, education, and socialization (Canary & Canary, 2013 ). As a consequence, the strut of its social role consists of operating as a system in a manner that would benefit all members of a family while achieving what is considered best, where decisions tend to be coherent, at least according to the norms and roles assumed by family members within the system (Galvin, Bylund, & Brommel, 2004 ). Notwithstanding, the concept of family can be interpreted differently by individual perceptions to an array of cultural backgrounds, and cultures vary in their values, behaviors, and ideas.

The difficulty of conceptualizing this social institution suggests that family is a culture-bound phenomenon (Bales & Parsons, 2014 ). In essence, culture represents how people view themselves as part of a unique social collective and the ensuing communication interactions (Olaniran & Roach, 1994 ); subsequently, culture provides norms for behavior having a tremendous impact on those family members’ roles and power dynamics mirrored in its communication interactions (Johnson, Radesky, & Zuckerman, 2013 ). Thus, culture serves as one of the main macroframeworks for individuals to interpret and enact those prescriptions, such as inheritance; descent rules (e.g., bilateral, as in the United States, or patrilineal); marriage customs, such as ideal monogamy and divorce; and beliefs about sexuality, gender, and patterns of household formation, such as structure of authority and power (Weisner, 2014 ). For these reasons, “every family is both a unique microcosm and a product of a larger cultural context” (Johnson et al., 2013 , p. 632), and the analysis of family communication must include culture in order to elucidate effective communication strategies to solve familial conflicts.

In addition, to analyze familial communication patterns, it is important to address the most influential interaction with regard to power dynamics that determine the overall quality of family functioning. In this sense, within the range of family theories, parenting function is the core relationship in terms of power dynamics. Parenting refers to all efforts and decisions made by parents individually to guide their children’s behavior. This is a pivotal function, but the quality of communication among people who perform parenting is fundamental because their internal communication patterns will either support or undermine each caregiver’s parenting attempts, individually having a substantial influence on all members’ psychological and physical well-being (Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013 ). Subsequently, parenting goes along with communication because to execute all parenting efforts, there must be a mutual agreement among at least two individuals to conjointly take care of the child’s fostering (Van Egeren & Hawkins, 2004 ). Consequently, coparenting serves as a crucial predictor of the overall family atmosphere and interactions, and it deserves special attention while analyzing family communication issues.

Through the years, family has been studied by family therapists, psychology scholars, and sociologists, but interaction behaviors define the interpersonal relationship, roles, and power within the family as a system (Rogers, 2006 ). Consequently, family scholarship relies on a wide range of theories developed within the communication field and in areas of the social sciences (Galvin, Braithwaite, & Bylund, 2015 ) because analysis of communication patterns in the familial context offers more ecological validity that individuals’ self-report measures. As many types of interactions may happen within a family, there are many relevant venues (i.e., theories) for scholarly analysis on this subject, which will be discussed later in this article in the “ Family: Theoretical Perspectives ” section. To avoid the risk of cultural relativeness while defining family, this article characterizes family as “a long-term group of two or more people related through biological, legal, or equivalent ties and who enact those ties through ongoing interactions providing instrumental and/or emotional support” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 5).

Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the most relevant theories in family communication to identify frustrations and limitations with internal communication. Second, as a case in point, the United States welcomes more than 50 million noncitizens as temporary visitors and admits approximately 1 million immigrants to live as lawful residents yearly (Fullerton, 2014 ), this demographic pattern means that nearly one-third of the population (102 million) comes from different cultural backgrounds, and therefore, the present review will incorporate culture as an important mediator for coparenting, so that future research can be performed to find specific techniques and training practices that are more suitable for cross-cultural contexts.

Family: Theoretical Perspectives

Even though the concept of family can be interpreted individually and differently in different cultures, there are also some commonalities, along with communication processes, specific roles within families, and acceptable habits of interactions with specific family members disregarding cultural differences. This section will provide a brief overview of the conceptualization of family through the family communication patterns (FCP) theory, dyadic power theory, conflict, and family systems theory, with a special focus on the interparental relationship.

Family Communication Patterns Theory

One of the most relevant approaches to address the myriad of communication issues within families is the family communication patterns (FCP) theory. Originally developed by McLeod and Chaffee ( 1973 ), this theory aims to understand families’ tendencies to create stable and predictable communication patterns in terms of both relational cognition and interpersonal behavior (Braithwaite & Baxter, 2005 ). Specifically, this theory focuses on the unique and amalgamated associations derived from interparental communication and its impact on parenting quality to determine FCPs and the remaining interactions (Young & Schrodt, 2016 ).

To illustrate FCP’s focus on parental communication, Schrodt, Witt, and Shimkowski ( 2014 ) conducted a meta-analysis of 74 studies (N = 14,255) to examine the associations between the demand/withdraw family communication patterns of interaction, and the subsequent individual, relational, and communicative outcomes. The cumulative evidence suggests that wife demand/husband withdraw and husband demand/wife withdraw show similar moderate correlations with communicative and psychological well-being outcomes, and even higher when both patterns are taken together (at the relational level). This is important because one of the main tenets of FCP is that familial relationships are drawn on the pursuit of coorientation among members. Coorientation refers to the cognitive process of two or more individuals focusing on and assessing the same object in the same material and social context, which leads to a number of cognitions as the number of people involved, which results in different levels of agreement, accuracy, and congruence (for a review, see Fitzpatrick & Koerner, 2005 ); for example, in dyads that are aware of their shared focus, two different cognitions of the same issue will result.

Hereafter, the way in which these cognitions are socialized through power dynamics determined socially and culturally by roles constitutes specific interdependent communication patterns among family members. For example, Koerner and Fitzpatrick ( 2006 ) provide a taxonomy of family types on the basis of coorientation and its impact on communication pattern in terms of the degree of conformity in those conversational tendencies. To wit, consensual families mostly agree for the sake of the hierarchy within a given family and to explore new points of view; pluralistic families allow members to participate equally in conversations and there is no pressure to control or make children’s decisions; protective families maintain the hierarchy by making decisions for the sake of achieving common family goals; and laissez-faire families, which are low in conversation and conformity orientation, allow family members to not get deeply involved in the family.

The analysis of family communication patterns is quintessential for family communication scholarly work because it influences forming an individual’s self concept in the long run. As a case in point, Young and Schrodt ( 2016 ) surveyed 181 young adults from intact families, where conditional and interaction effects between communication patterns and conformity orientation were observed as the main predictors of future romantic partners. Moreover, this study concluded that FCPs and interparental confirmation are substantial indicators of self-to-partner confirmation, after controlling for reciprocity of confirmation within the romantic relationship. As a consequence, FCP influences children’s and young adults’ perceptions of romantic behavior (e.g., Fowler, Pearson, & Beck, 2010 ); the quality of communication behavior, such as the degree of acceptation of verbal aggression in romantic dyads (e.g., Aloia & Solomon, 2013 ); gender roles; and conflict styles (e.g., Taylor & Segrin, 2010 ), and parental modeling (e.g., Young & Schrodt, 2016 ).

This suggests three important observations. First, family is a very complex interpersonal context, in which communication processes, specific roles within families, and acceptable habits of interactions with specific family members interact as subsystems (see Galvin et al., 2004 ; Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013 ). Second, among those subsystems, the core interaction is the individuals who hold parenting roles (i.e., intact and post divorced families); the couple (disregarding particular sexual orientations), and, parenting roles have a reciprocal relationship over time (Le, McDaniel, Leavitt, & Feinberg, 2016 ). Communication between parenting partners is crucial for the development of their entire family; for example, Schrodt and Shimkowski ( 2013 ) conducted a survey with 493 young adult children from intact (N = 364) and divorced families (N = 129) about perceptions of interparental conflict that involves triangulation (the impression of being in the “middle” and feeling forced to display loyalty to one of the parents). Results suggest that supportive coparental communication positively predicts relational satisfaction with mothers and fathers, as well as mental health; on the other hand, antagonist and hostile coparental communication predicted negative marital satisfaction.

Consequently, “partners’ communication with one another will have a positive effect on their overall view of their marriage, . . . and directly result[ing in] their views of marital satisfaction” (Knapp & Daly, 2002 , p. 643). Le et al. ( 2016 ) conducted a longitudinal study to evaluate the reciprocal relationship between marital interaction and coparenting from the perspective of both parents in terms of support or undermining across the transition to parenthood from a dyadic perspective; 164 cohabiting heterosexual couples expecting their first child were analyzed from pregnancy until 36 months after birth. Both parents’ interdependence was examined in terms of three variables: gender difference analysis, stability over time in marriage and coparenting, and reciprocal associations between relationship quality and coparenting support or undermining. The findings suggest a long-term reciprocal association between relationship quality and coparenting support or undermining in heterosexual families; the quality of marriage relationship during prenatal stage is highly influential in coparenting after birth for both men and women; but, coparenting is connected to romantic relationship quality only for women.

Moreover, the positive association between coparenting and the parents’ relationship relates to the spillover hypothesis, which posits that the positive or negative factors in the parental subsystem are significantly associated with higher or lower marital satisfaction in the spousal subsystem, respectively. Ergo, overall parenting performance is substantially affected by the quality of marital communication patterns.

Dyadic Power

In addition, after analyzing the impact of marital interaction quality in families on marital satisfaction and future parental modeling, it is worth noting that marital satisfaction and coparenting are importantly mediated by power dynamics within the couple (Halstead, De Santis, & Williams, 2016 ), and even mediates marital commitment (e.g., Lennon, Stewart, & Ledermann, 2013 ). If the quality of interpersonal relationship between those individuals who hold parenting roles determines coparenting quality as well, then the reason for this association lies on the fact that virtually all intimate relationships are substantially characterized by power dynamics; when partners perceive more rewards than costs in the relationship, they will be more satisfied and significantly more committed to the relationship (Lennon et al., 2013 ). As a result, the inclusion of power dynamics in the analysis of family issues becomes quintessential.

For the theory of dyadic power, power in its basic sense includes dominance, control, and influence over others, as well as a means to meet survival needs. When power is integrated into dyadic intimate relationships, it generates asymmetries in terms of interdependence between partners due to the quality of alternatives provided by individual characteristics such as socioeconomic status and cultural characteristics such as gender roles. This virtually gives more power to men than women. Power refers to “the feeling derived from the ability to dominate, or control, the behavior, affect, and cognitions of another person[;] in consequence, this concept within the interparental relationship is enacted when one partner who controls resources and limiting the behavioral options of the other partner” (Lennon et al., 2013 , p. 97). Ergo, this theory examines power in terms of interdependence between members of the relationship: the partner who is more dependent on the other has less power in the relationship, which, of course, directly impact parenting decisions.

As a case in point, Worley and Samp ( 2016 ) examined the balance of decision-making power in the relationship, complaint avoidance, and complaint-related appraisals in 175 heterosexual couples. Findings suggest that decision-making power has a curvilinear association, in which individuals engaged in the least complaint avoidance when they were relatively equal to their partners in terms of power. In other words, perceptions of one another’s power potentially encourage communication efficacy in the interparental couple.

The analysis of power in intimate relationships, and, to be specific, between parents is crucial because it not only relates to marital satisfaction and commitment, but it also it affects parents’ dyadic coping for children. In fact, Zemp, Bodenmann, Backes, Sutter-Stickel, and Revenson ( 2016 ) investigated parents’ dyadic coping as a predictor of children’s internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and prosocial behavior in three independent studies. When there is a positive relationship among all three factors, the results indicated that the strongest correlation was the first one. Again, the quality of the marital and parental relationships has the strongest influence on children’s coping skills and future well-being.

From the overview of the two previous theories on family, it is worth addressing two important aspects. First, parenting requires an intensive great deal of hands-on physical care, attention to safety (Mooney-Doyle, Deatrick, & Horowitz, 2014 ), and interpretation of cues, and this is why parenting, from conception to when children enter adulthood, is a tremendous social, cultural, and legally prescribed role directed toward caregiving and endlessly attending to individuals’ social, physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive development (Johnson et al., 2013 ). And while parents are making decisions about what they consider is best for all family members, power dynamics play a crucial role in marital satisfaction, commitment, parental modeling, and overall interparental communication efficacy in the case of postdivorce families. Therefore, the likelihood of conflict is latent within familial interactions while making decisions; indeed, situations in which family members agree on norms as a consensus is rare (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990 ).

In addition to the interparental and marital power dynamics that delineates family communication patterns, the familial interaction is distinctive from other types of social relationships in the unequaled role of emotions and communication of affection while family members interact and make decisions for the sake of all members. For example, Ritchie and Fitzpatrick ( 1990 ) provided evidence that fathers tended to perceive that all other family members agree with his decisions or ideas. Even when mothers confronted and disagreed with the fathers about the fathers’ decisions or ideas, the men were more likely to believe that their children agreed with him. When the children were interviewed without their parents, however, the majority of children agreed with the mothers rather than the fathers (Ritchie & Fitzpatrick, 1990 ). Subsequently, conflict is highly present in families; however, in general, the presence of conflict is not problematic per se. Rather, it is the ability to manage and recover from it and that could be problematic (Floyd, 2014 ).

One of the reasons for the role of emotions in interpersonal conflicts is explained by the Emotion-in-Relationships Model (ERM). This model states that feelings of bliss, satisfaction, and relaxation often go unnoticed due to the nature of the emotions, whereas “hot” emotions, such as anger and contempt, come to the forefront when directed at a member of an interpersonal relationship (Fletcher & Clark, 2002 ). This type of psychophysical response usually happens perhaps due to the different biophysical reactive response of the body compared to its reaction to positive ones (Floyd, 2014 ). There are two dimensions that define conflict. Conflict leads to the elicitation of emotions, but sometimes the opposite occurs: emotions lead to conflict. The misunderstanding or misinterpretation of emotions among members of a family can be a source of conflict, as well as a number of other issues, including personality differences, past history, substance abuse, mental or physical health problems, monetary issues, children, intimate partner violence, domestic rape, or maybe just general frustration due to recent events (Sabourin, Infante, & Rudd, 1990 ). In order to have a common understanding of this concept for the familial context in particular, conflict refers to as “any incompatibility that can be expressed by people related through biological, legal, or equivalent ties” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 6). Thus, the concept of conflict goes hand in hand with coparenting.

There is a myriad of everyday family activities in which parents need to decide the best way to do them: sometimes they are minor, such as eating, watching TV, or sleeping schedules; others are more complicated, such as schooling. Certainly, while socializing and making these decisions, parents may agree or not, and these everyday situations may lead to conflict. Whether or not parents live together, it has been shown that “the extent to which children experience their parents as partners or opponents in parenting is related to children’s adjustment and well-being” (Gable & Sharp, 2016 , p. 1), because the ontology of parenting is materialized through socialization of values about every aspect and duty among all family members, especially children, to perpetuate a given society.

As the findings provided in this article show, the study of family communication issues is pivotal because the way in which those issues are solved within families will be copied by children as their values. Values are abstract ideas that delineate behavior toward the evaluation of people and events and vary in terms of importance across individuals, but also among cultures. In other words, their future parenting (i.e., parenting modeling) of children will replicate those same strategies for conflict solving for good or bad, depending on whether parents were supportive between each other. Thus, socialization defines the size and scope of coparenting.

The familial socialization of values encompasses the distinction between parents’ personal execution of those social appraisals and the values that parents want their children to adopt, and both are different things; nonetheless, familial socialization does not take place in only one direction, from parents to children. Benish-Weisman, Levy, and Knafo ( 2013 ) investigated the differentiation process—or, in other words, the distinction between parents’ own personal values and their socialization values and the contribution of children’s values to their parents’ socialization values. In this study, in which 603 Israeli adolescents and their parents participated, the findings suggest that parents differentiate between their personal values and their socialization values, and adolescents’ values have a specific contribution to their parents’ socialization values. As a result, socialization is not a unidirectional process affected by parents alone, it is an outcome of the reciprocal interaction between parents and their adolescent children, and the given importance of a given value is mediated by parents and their culture individually (Johnson et al., 2013 ). However, taking power dynamics into account does not mean that adolescents share the same level of decision-making power in the family; thus, socialization take place in both directions, but mostly from parents to children. Finally, it is worth noticing that the socialization of values in coparenting falls under the cultural umbrella. The next section pays a special attention to the role of culture in family communication.

The Role of Culture in Parenting Socialization of Values

There are many individual perceived realities and behaviors in the familial setting that may lead to conflict among members, but all of them achieve a common interpretation through culture; indeed, “all family conflict processes by broad cultural factors” (Canary & Canary, 2013 , p. 46). Subsequently, the goal of this section is to provide an overview of the perceived realities and behaviors that exist in family relationships with different cultural backgrounds. How should one approach the array of cultural values influencing parental communication patterns?

An interesting way of immersing on the role of culture in family communication patterns and its further socialization of values is explored by Schwartz ( 1992 ). The author developed a value system composed of 10 values operationalized as motivational goals for modern society: (a) self-direction (independence of thought and action); (b) stimulation (excitement, challenge, and novelty); (c) hedonism (pleasure or sensuous gratification); (d) achievement (personal success according to social standards); (e) power (social status, dominance over people and resources); (f) conformity (restraint of actions that may harm others or violate social expectations); (g) tradition (respect and commitment to cultural or religious customs and ideas); (h) benevolence (preserving and enhancing the welfare of people to whom one is close); (i) universalism (understanding, tolerance, and concern for the welfare of all people and nature); and (j) security (safety and stability of society, relationships, and self).

Later, Schwartz and Rubel ( 2005 ) applied this value structure, finding it to be commonly shared among over 65 countries. Nevertheless, these values are enacted in different ways by societies and genders about the extent to which men attribute more relevance to values of power, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, and self-direction, and the opposite was found for benevolence and universalism and less consistently for security. Also, it was found that all sex differences were culturally moderated, suggesting that cultural background needs to be considered in the analysis of coparental communication when socializing those values.

Even though Schwartz’s work was more focused on individuals and societies, it is a powerful model for the analysis of the role of culture on family communication and parenting scholarships. Indeed, Schwartz et al. ( 2013 ) conducted a longitudinal study with a sample of 266 Hispanic adolescents (14 years old) and their parents that looked at measures of acculturation, family functioning, and adolescent conduct problems, substance use, and sexual behavior at five time points. Results suggest that higher levels of acculturation in adolescents were linked to poorer family functioning; however, overall assimilation negatively predicted adolescent cigarette smoking, sexual activity, and unprotected sex. The authors emphasize the role of culture, and acculturation patterns in particular, in understanding the mediating role of family functioning and culture.

Ergo, it is crucial to address the ways in which culture affects family functioning. On top of this idea, Johnson et al. ( 2013 ) observed that Western cultures such as in the United States and European countries are oriented toward autonomy, favoring individual achievement, self-reliance, and self-assertiveness. Thus, coparenting in more autonomous countries will socialize to children the idea that achievement in life is an outcome of independence, resulting in coparenting communication behaviors that favor verbal praise and feedback over physical contact. As opposed to autonomy-oriented cultures, other societies, such as Asian, African, and Latin American countries, emphasize interdependence over autonomy; thus, parenting in these cultures promotes collective achievement, sharing, and collaboration as the core values.

These cultural orientations can be observed in parents’ definitions of school readiness and educational success; for Western parents, examples include skills such as counting, recognizing letters, or independently completing tasks such as coloring pictures, whereas for more interdependent cultures, the development of obedience, respect for authority, and appropriate social skills are the skills that parents are expecting their children to develop to evaluate school readiness. As a matter of fact, Callaghan et al. ( 2011 ) conducted a series of eight studies to evaluate the impact of culture on the social-cognitive skills of one- to three-year-old children in three diverse cultural settings such as Canada, Peru, and India. The results showed that children’s acquisition of specific cognitive skills is moderated by specific learning experiences in a specific context: while Canadian children were understanding the performance of both pretense and pictorial symbols skillfully between 2.5 and 3.0 years of age, on average, Peruvian and Indian children mastered those skills more than a year later. Notwithstanding, this finding does not suggest any kind of cultural superiority; language barriers and limitations derived from translation itself may influence meanings, affecting the results (Sotomayor-Peterson, De Baca, Figueredo, & Smith-Castro, 2013 ). Therefore, in line with the findings of Schutz ( 1970 ), Geertz ( 1973 ), Grusec ( 2002 ), Sotomayor-Peterson et al. ( 2013 ), and Johnson et al. ( 2013 ), cultural values provide important leverage for understanding family functioning in terms of parental decision-making and conflict, which also has a substantial impact on children’s cognitive development.

Subsequently, cultural sensitivity to the analysis of the familial system in this country needs to be specially included because cultural differences are part of the array of familial conflicts that may arise, and children experience real consequences from the quality of these interactions. Therefore, parenting, which is already arduous in itself, and overall family functioning significantly become troublesome when parents with different cultural backgrounds aim to socialize values and perform parenting tasks. The following section provides an account of these cross-cultural families.

Intercultural Families: Adding Cultural Differences to Interparental Communication

For a country such as the United States, with 102 million people from many different cultural backgrounds, the presence of cross-cultural families is on the rise, as is the likelihood of intermarriage between immigrants and natives. With this cultural diversity, the two most prominent groups are Hispanics and Asians, particular cases of which will be discussed next. Besides the fact that parenting itself is a very complex and difficult task, certainly the biggest conflict consists of making decisions about the best way to raise children in terms of their values with regard to which ethnic identity better enacts the values that parents believe their children should embrace. As a result, interracial couples might confront many conflicts and challenges due to cultural differences affecting marital satisfaction and coparenting.

Assimilation , the degree to which a person from a different cultural background has adapted to the culture of the hostage society, is an important phenomenon in intermarriage. Assimilationists observe that children from families in which one of the parents is from the majority group and the other one from the minority do not automatically follow the parent from the majority group (Cohen, 1988 ). Indeed, they follow their mothers more, whichever group she belongs to, because of mothers are more prevalent among people with higher socioeconomic status (Gordon, 1964 ; Portes, 1984 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ).

In an interracial marriage, the structural and interpersonal barriers inhibiting the interaction between two parents will be reduced significantly if parents develop a noncompeting way to communicate and solve conflicts, which means that both of them might give up part of their culture or ethnic identity to reach consensus. Otherwise, the ethnic identity of children who come from interracial marriages will become more and more obscure (Saenz, Hwang, Aguirre, & Anderson, 1995 ). Surely, parents’ noncompeting cultural communication patterns are fundamental for children’s development of ethnic identity. Biracial children develop feelings of being outsiders, and then parenting becomes crucial to developing their strong self-esteem (Ward, 2006 ). Indeed, Gordon ( 1964 ) found that children from cross-racial or cross-ethnic marriages are at risk of developing psychological problems. In another example, Jognson and Nagoshi ( 1986 ) studied children who come from mixed marriages in Hawaii and found that the problems of cultural identification, conflicting demands in the family, and of being marginal in either culture still exist (Mann & Waldron, 1977 ). It is hard for those mixed-racial children to completely develop the ethnic identity of either the majority group or the minority group.

The question of how children could maintain their minority ethnic identity is essential to the development of ethnic identity as a whole. For children from interracial marriage, the challenge to maintain their minority ethnic identity will be greater than for the majority ethnic identity (Waters, 1990 ; Schwartz et al., 2013 ) because the minority-group spouse is more likely to have greater ethnic consciousness than the majority-group spouse (Ellman, 1987 ). Usually, the majority group is more influential than the minority group on a child’s ethnic identity, but if the minority parent’s ethnicity does not significantly decline, the child’s ethnic identity could still reflect some characteristics of the minority parent. If parents want their children to maintain the minority group’s identity, letting the children learn the language of the minority group might be a good way to achieve this. By learning the language, children form a better understanding of that culture and perhaps are more likely to accept the ethnic identity that the language represents (Xin & Sandel, 2015 ).

In addition to language socialization as a way to contribute to children’s identity in biracial families, Jane and Bochner ( 2009 ) indicated that family rituals and stories could be important in performing and transforming identity. Families create and re-create their identities through various kinds of narrative, in which family stories and rituals are significant. Festivals and rituals are different from culture to culture, and each culture has its own. Therefore, exposing children to the language, rituals, and festivals of another culture also could be helpful to form their ethnic identity, in order to counter problems of self-esteem derived from the feeling of being an outsider.

To conclude this section, the parenting dilemma in intercultural marriages consists of deciding which culture they want their children to be exposed to and what kind of heritage they want to pass to children. The following section will provide two examples of intercultural marriages in the context of American society without implying that there are no other insightful cultures that deserve analysis, but the focus on Asian-American and Hispanics families reflects the available literature (Canary & Canary, 2013 ) and its demographic representativeness in this particular context. In addition, in order to acknowledge that minorities within this larger cultural background deserve more attention due to overemphasis on larger cultures in scholarship, such as Chinese or Japanese cultures, the Thai family will provide insights into understanding the role of culture in parenting and its impact on the remaining familial interaction, putting all theories already discussed in context. Moreover, the Hispanic family will also be taken in account because of its internal pan-ethnicity variety.

An Example of Intercultural Parenting: The Thai Family

The Thai family, also known as Krob Krua, may consist of parents, children, paternal and maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, grandchildren, in-laws, and any others who share the same home. Thai marriages usually are traditional, in which the male is the authority figure and breadwinner and the wife is in charge of domestic items and the homemaker. It has been noted that Thai mothers tend to be the major caregivers and caretakers in the family rather than fathers (Tulananda, Young, & Roopnarine, 1994 ). On the other hand, it has been shown that Thai mothers also tend to spoil their children with such things as food and comfort; Tulananda et al. ( 1994 ) studied the differences between American and Thai fathers’ involvement with their preschool children and found that American fathers reported being significantly more involved with their children than Thai fathers. Specifically, the fathers differed in the amount of socialization and childcare; Thai fathers reported that they obtained more external support from other family members than American fathers; also, Thai fathers were more likely to obtain support for assisting with daughters than sons.

Furthermore, with regard to the family context, Tulananda and Roopnarine ( 2001 ) noted that over the years, some attention has been focused on the cultural differences among parent-child behaviors and interactions; hereafter, the authors believed that it is important to look at cultural parent-child interactions because that can help others understand children’s capacity to socialize and deal with life’s challenges. As a matter of fact, the authors also noted that Thai families tend to raise their children in accordance with Buddhist beliefs. It is customary for young Thai married couples to live with either the wife’s parents (uxorilocal) or the husband’s parents (virilocal) before living on their own (Tulananda & Roopnarine, 2001 ). The process of developing ethnicity could be complicated. Many factors might influence the process, such as which parent is from the minority culture and the cultural community, as explained in the previous section of this article.

This suggests that there is a difference in the way that Thai and American fathers communicate with their daughters. As a case in point, Punyanunt-Carter ( 2016 ) examined the relationship maintenance behaviors within father-daughter relationships in Thailand and the United States. Participants included 134 American father-daughter dyads and 154 Thai father-daughter dyads. The findings suggest that when quality of communication was included in this relationship, both types of families benefit from this family communication pattern, resulting in better conflict management and advice relationship maintenance behaviors. However, differences were found: American fathers are more likely than American daughters to employ relationship maintenance behaviors; in addition, American fathers are more likely than Thai fathers to use relationship maintenance strategies.

As a consequence, knowing the process of ethnic identity development could provide parents with different ways to form children’s ethnic identity. More specifically, McCann, Ota, Giles, and Caraker ( 2003 ), and Canary and Canary ( 2013 ) noted that Southeast Asian cultures have been overlooked in communication studies research; these countries differ in their religious, political, and philosophical thoughts, with a variety of collectivistic views and religious ideals (e.g., Buddhism, Taoism, Islam), whereas the United States is mainly Christian and consists of individualistic values.

The Case of Hispanic/Latino Families in the United States

There is a need for including Hispanic/Latino families in the United States because of the demographic representativeness and trends of the ethnicity: in 2016 , Hispanics represent nearly 17% of the total U.S. population, becoming the largest minority group. There are more than 53 million Hispanics and Latinos in the United States; in addition, over 93% of young Hispanics and Latinos under the age of 18 hold U.S. citizenship, and more than 73,000 of these people turn 18 every month (Barreto & Segura, 2014 ). Furthermore, the current Hispanic and Latino population is spread evenly between foreign-born and U.S.-born individuals, but the foreign-born population is now growing faster than the number of Hispanic children born in the country (Arias & Hellmueller, 2016 ). This demographic trend is projected to reach one-third of the U.S. total population by 2060 ; therefore, with the growth of other minority populations in the country, the phenomenon of multiracial marriage and biracial children is increasing as well.

Therefore, family communication scholarship has an increasing necessity to include cultural particularities in the analysis of the familial system; in addition to the cultural aspects already explained in this article, this section addresses the influence of familism in Hispanic and Latino familial interactions, as well as how immigration status moderates the internal interactions, reflected in levels of acculturation, that affect these families negatively.

With the higher marriage and birth rates among Hispanics and Latinos living in the United States compared to non-Latino Whites and African American populations, the Hispanic familial system is perhaps the most stereotyped as being familistic (Glick & Van Hook, 2008 ). This family trait consists of the fact that Hispanics place a very high value on marriage and childbearing, on the basis of a profound commitment to give support to members of the extended family as well. This can be evinced in the prevalence of extended-kind shared households in Hispanic and Latino families, and Hispanic children are more likely to live in extended-family households than non-Latino Whites or blacks (Glick & Van Hook, 2008 ). Living in extended-family households, most likely with grandparents, may have positive influences on Hispanic and Latino children, such as greater attention and interaction with loving through consistent caregiving; grandparents may help by engaging with children in academic-oriented activities, which then affects positively cognitive educational outcomes.

However, familism is not the panacea for all familial issues for several reasons. First, living in an extended-family household requires living arrangements that consider adults’ needs more than children’s. Second, the configuration of Hispanic and Latino households is moderated by any immigration issues with all members of the extended family, and this may cause problems for children (Menjívar, 2000 ). The immigration status of each individual member may produce a constant state of flux, whereas circumstances change to adjust to economic opportunities, which in turn are limited by immigration laws, and it gets even worse when one of the parents isn’t even present in the children’s home, but rather live in their home country (Van Hook & Glick, 2006 ). Although Hispanic and Latino children are more likely to live with married parents and extended relatives, familism is highly affected by the immigration status of each member.

On the other hand, there has been research to address the paramount role of communication disregarding the mediating factor of cultural diversity. For example, Sotomayor-Peterson et al. ( 2013 ) performed a cross-cultural comparison of the association between coparenting or shared parental effort and family climate among families from Mexico, the United States, and Costa Rica. The overall findings suggest what was explained earlier in this article: more shared parenting predicts better marital interaction and family climate overall.

In addition, parenting quality has been found to have a positive relationship with children’s developmental outcomes. In fact, Sotomayor-Peterson, Figueredo, Christensen, and Taylor ( 2012 ) conducted a study with 61 low-income Mexican American couples, with at least one child between three and four years of age, recruited from a home-based Head Start program. The main goal of this study was to observe the extent that shared parenting incorporates cultural values and income predicts family climate. The findings suggest that the role of cultural values such as familism, in which family solidarity and avoidance of confrontation are paramount, delineate shared parenting by Mexican American couples.

Cultural adaptation also has a substantial impact on marital satisfaction and children’s cognitive stimulation. Indeed, Sotomayor-Peterson, Wilhelm, and Card ( 2011 ) investigated the relationship between marital relationship quality and subsequent cognitive stimulation practices toward their infants in terms of the actor and partner effects of White and Hispanic parents. The results indicate an interesting relationship between the level of acculturation and marital relationship quality and a positive cognitive stimulation of infants; specifically, marital happiness is associated with increased cognitive stimulation by White and high-acculturated Hispanic fathers. Nevertheless, a major limitation of Hispanic acculturation literature has been seen, reflecting a reliance on cross-sectional studies where acculturation was scholarly operationalized more as an individual difference variable than as a longitudinal adaptation over time (Schwartz et al., 2013 ).

Culture and Family Communication: the “so what?” Question

This article has presented an entangled overview of family communication patterns, dyadic power, family systems, and conflict theories to establish that coparenting quality plays a paramount role. The main commonality among those theories pays special attention to interparental interaction quality, regardless of the type of family (i.e., intact, postdivorce, same-sex, etc.) and cultural background. After reviewing these theories, it was observed that the interparental relationship is the core interaction in the familial context because it affects children from their earlier cognitive development to subsequent parental modeling in terms of gender roles. Thus, in keeping with Canary and Canary ( 2013 ), no matter what approach may be taken to the analysis of family communication issues, the hypothesis that a positive emotional climate within the family is fostered only when couples practice a sufficient level of shared parenting and quality of communication is supported.

Nevertheless, this argument does not suggest that the role of culture in the familial interactions should be undersold. While including the main goal of parenting, which is the socialization of values, in the second section of this article, the text also provides specific values of different countries that are enacted and socialized differently across cultural contexts to address the role of acculturation in the familial atmosphere, the quality of interactions, and individual outcomes. As a case in point, Johnson et al. ( 2013 ) provided an interesting way of seeing how cultures differ in their ways of enacting parenting, clarifying that the role of culture in parenting is not a superficial or relativistic element.

In addition, by acknowledging the perhaps excessive attention to larger Asian cultural backgrounds (such as Chinese or Japanese cultures) by other scholars (i.e., Canary & Canary, 2013 ), an insightful analysis of the Thai American family within the father-daughter relationship was provided to exemplify, through the work of Punyanunt-Carter ( 2016 ), how specific family communication patterns, such as maintenance relationship communication behaviors, affect the quality of familial relationships. Moreover, a second, special focus was put on Hispanic families because of the demographic trends of the United States, and it was found that familism constitutes a distinctive aspect of these families.

In other words, the third section of this article provided these two examples of intercultural families to observe specific ways that culture mediates the familial system. Because one of the main goals of the present article was to demonstrate the mediating role of culture as an important consideration for family communication issues in the United States, the assimilationist approach was taken into account; thus, the two intercultural family examples discussed here correspond to an assimilationist nature rather than using an intergroup approach.

This decision was made without intending to diminish the value of other cultures or ethnic groups in the country, but an extensive revision of all types of intercultural families is beyond the scope of this article. Second, the assimilationist approach forces one to consider cultures that are in the process of adapting to a new hosting culture, and the Thai and Hispanic families in the United States comply with this theoretical requisite. For example, Whites recognize African Americans as being as American as Whites (i.e., Dovidio, Gluszek, John, Ditlmann, & Lagunes, 2010 ), whereas they associate Hispanics and Latinos with illegal immigration in the United States (Stewart et al., 2011 ), which has been enhanced by the U.S. media repeatedly since 1994 (Valentino et al., 2013 ), and it is still happening (Dixon, 2015 ). In this scenario, “ask yourself what would happen to your own personality if you heard it said over and over again that you were lazy, a simple child of nature, expected to steal, and had inferior blood? . . . One’s reputation, whether false or true, cannot be hammered, hammered, hammered, into one’s head without doing something to one’s character” (Allport, 1979 , p. 142, cited in Arias & Hellmueller, 2016 ).

As a consequence, on this cultural canvas, it should not be surprising that Lichter, Carmalt, and Qian ( 2011 ) found that second-generation Hispanics are increasingly likely to marry foreign-born Hispanics and less likely to marry third-generation or later coethnics or Whites. In addition, this study suggests that third-generation Hispanics and later were more likely than in the past to marry non-Hispanic Whites; thus, the authors concluded that there has been a new retreat from intermarriage among the largest immigrant groups in the United States—Hispanics and Asians—in the last 20 years.

If we subscribe to the idea that cultural assimilation goes in only one direction—from the hegemonic culture to the minority culture—then the results of Lichter, Carmalt, and Qian ( 2011 ) should not be of scholarly concern; however, if we believe that cultural assimilation happens in both directions and intercultural families can benefit both the host and immigrant cultures (for a review, see Schwartz et al., 2013 ), then this is important to address in a country that just elected a president, Donald Trump, who featured statements racially lambasting and segregating minorities, denigrating women, and criticizing immigration as some of the main tenets of his campaign. Therefore, we hope that it is clear why special attention was given to the Thai and Hispanic families in this article, considering the impact of culture on the familial system, marital satisfaction, parental communication, and children’s well-being. Even though individuals with Hispanic ancentry were in the United States even before it became a nation, Hispanic and Latino families are still trying to convince Americans of their right to be accepted in American culture and society.

With regard to the “So what?” question, assimilation is important to consider while analyzing the role of culture in family communication patterns, power dynamics, conflict, or the functioning of the overall family system in the context of the United States. This is because this country is among the most popular in the world in terms of immigration requests, and its demographics show that one out of three citizens comes from an ethnic background other than the hegemonic White culture. In sum, cultural awareness has become pivotal in the analysis of family communication issues in the United States. Furthermore, the present overview of family, communication, and culture ends up supporting the idea of positive associations being derived from the pivotal role of marriage relationship quality, such that coparenting and communication practices vary substantially within intercultural marriages moderated by gender roles.

Culture is a pivotal moderator of these associations, but this analysis needs to be tethered to societal structural level, in which cultural differences, family members’ immigration status, media content, and level of acculturation must be included in family research. This is because in intercultural marriages, in addition to the tremendous parenting role, they have to deal with cultural assimilation and discrimination, and this becomes important if we care about children’s cognitive development and the overall well-being of those who are not considered White. As this article shows, the quality of familial interactions has direct consequences on children’s developmental outcomes (for a review, see Callaghan et al., 2011 ).

Therefore, the structure and functioning of family has an important impact on public health at both physiological and psychological levels (Gage, Everett, & Bullock, 2006 ). At the physiological level, the familial interaction instigates expression and reception of strong feelings affecting tremendously on individuals’ physical health because it activates neuroendocrine responses that aid stress regulation, acting as a stress buffer and accelerating physiological recovery from elevated stress (Floyd & Afifi, 2012 ; Floyd, 2014 ). Robles, Shaffer, Malarkey, and Kiecolt-Glaser ( 2006 ) found that a combination of supportive communication, humor, and problem-solving behavior in husbands predicts their wives’ cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)—both physiological factors are considered as stress markers (see 2006 ). On the other hand, the psychology of individuals, the quality of family relationships has major repercussions on cognitive development, as reflected in educational attainment (Sohr-Preston et al., 2013 ), and highly mediated by cultural assimilation (Schwartz et al., 2013 ), which affects individuals through parenting modeling and socialization of values (Mooney-Doyle, Deatrick, & Horowitz, 2014 ).

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Essay on My Family

List of essays on my family, essay on my family – short essay for kids in english (essay 1 – 250 words), essay on my family – for children (essay 2 – 300 words), essay on my family – paragraph (essay 3 – 400 words), essay on my family –topics (essay 4 – 500 words), essay on my family (essay 5 – 500 words), essay on my family – why i love my family (essay 6 – 500 words), essay on my family – for school students (class 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 standard) (essay 7 – 500 words), essay on my family (essay 8 – 750 words), essay on my family – long essay (essay 9 – 1000 words).

A family is one of the greatest gift god has given to all living creatures on the earth including humans. It is a privilege to have a happy family as not everyone in the world has it.

The joy of living with your parents, fighting with your siblings over petty can just make you smile the moment you think of it. In order to inculcate the values of a family in the students, we have composed some short essays for students.

These essays are suited for students of all ages and classes. Not only these essays shall give an insight on how a family should be but shall also enrich the students with the moral values of a family.

Audience: The below given essays are exclusively written for kids, children and school students.

Family is important to every one of us and we all love our family. Wherever we go in this world and whatever we may achieve, our heart and soul will always be in our home because it is where our beautiful family is. Nothing in this world can be stronger than the bonding of the blood . The members of the same family may have differences of opinions, may quarrel often for silly things but in spite of all these it is our family that supports us during our ups and downs.

As the saying goes, “ Family is the best thing you could ever wish for. They are there for you during the ups and downs and love you no matter what”.

Contrary to this saying, we cannot choose our family as we choose our friends. But I can say that I’m blessed with a wonderful family. My family is very small with four members – my mother, my father, my elder sister and me. My family is a middle class family and my father is officially the bread winner of our family. My mother supports him financially by taking tuitions for school children.

We do not have much money or wealth but what my family has in abundance is love for each other which cannot be replaced by anything else in this world. My father and my mother are the role models to my sister and me. They struggle a lot to give us a better life. More than anything they have taught us discipline and morals of life which is helping us to lead our lives in a righteous path even today.

I cannot ask anything more to God since he has already showered me with my family which I treasure the most every second and will safeguard even in the future.

The family is a valuable god gift which plays a most crucial role in every individual’s life. I love my family very much because all of my family members stand in my good as well as bad times. From moral teachings to love and support, my family has always helped me without any demand. There is no doubt that we experience our biggest triumphs when we really connect to them.

My family is like a strong pillar for me, on which I can rely blindly anytime I require support. From my family, I have learned the social graces of loyalty & cooperation.

My family consists of my grandfather, my grandmother, my mother, my father, two young sisters and myself. My grandparents are the pillars of my family and my grandfather is the head of my family. He is the one whose decision relating to any matter is final and all of us do respect it.

Right from my childhood, my family members have prepared me for the challenges that I’ll face in the years ahead. In addition to this, all of my family members help and serve each other at times of need. These qualities that I have learnt from my family has helped me to shape my adult life in a right manner.

I am really very attached to my grandfather. He holds an excellent life experience because he has already faced so many ups and downs. My Grandfather has helped me to build my perception & vision towards society.

My family has always been there to motivate and encourage me to overcome all difficulties in life and achieve success. The role of every member in my family is unique and important in their own way. I thank God that I have grown up in a family full of love and discipline. My family values will definitely help me in becoming a better person.

A person without family and its love never becomes completely happy in his/her life. I am complete and happy with my family that includes five members. My family is a group of five including me, father, mother, brother, and sister. Family bonding is a unique type of love that gives you every lesson needed to live a harmonious life.

Growing under the supervision of a caring and loving family will increase our social values and overall well-being. Each member of my family carries out equal responsibility in sculpting the strong bonding needed for a better future and develop moral importance in each other.

My father owns a successful business of office stationery store. He uses the money to cover all our expenses and give a better lifestyle to the family. He works hard day and night to get us better education, food, home, etc. He hides all his tiredness when he comes home after a long day to spend quality time with us.

My mother is a talented homemaker who also does a part-time tailoring at home. She does all her duties with at most interest, from taking care of us to all the household chores and finds time to pursue her passion as well. She is a multi-tasker and does all the tasks from helping us in our studies to preparing delicious healthy foods to sculpt us into a better human being.

My brother is an engineering graduate and does a job in a well-known company. He is my best well-wisher and helps me in all ups and downs. My sister is also an engineering graduate and an employee in an IT company. She always finds time to help me with all my difficulties and she is my secret keeper too.

My family is a lifeline to whom I can run to, whatever may be the situation I am facing. My family guides me to be a good person and help me in nurturing good values. We, humans, are animals that live together spreading love and care for each other, and this togetherness is called family. The absence of such a divine bonding make us equal to animals.

Family value and growing in such a caring surrounding helps me to pass all the struggles and hardships that I face in my daily life. Whatever be the situation we are facing, our family will never leave us alone. My family is a blessing for me and I value everyone in my family with equal respect and love.

Most of the people in the world are blessed with having a family. A family, with whom you can share all your joys and sorrows, who is there to guide you through your growing years, who stands by you in the toughest of the situations. I too am blessed to have such a family.

My family is one the most bizarre family in the world. We are four people, my mother, my father, my younger brother and me. While my father is the one who does work for a living, it is my mother who is the boss of the house. My father is a humble person. He is an officer in a government department. My mother is a housewife. It is our mother who takes care of our studies as our father is often busy with his official assignments and even travels for days together. We just miss him when he is not at home.

He never scolds us. But, our mother is just the opposite. She wants us to remain disciplined and we often get scolded by her. However, our father comes to our rescue most of the times. My brother, still in school is the one with whom I love to spend my time the most. Not because I love to play with him, but because, being the elder sister, I enjoy instructing him and showing him who is more powerful at home. He, at a time, seems so helpless when our mother says to obey his sister. I just love that moment. But not all days are the same. I hate having to study all along while he gets to play more than me.

The Atmosphere in my Family:

We largely have a peaceful atmosphere at home. After school, our time is spent on studying, playing and watching television, which of course our mother does not like. Unlike other couples, my mother and father seldom have a fight. In fact, as soon we see an argument brewing up, one of them just withdraws and it is just rare to see a heated conversation between them. This is what I like the most about them as I feel that my parents are so cool. It is only me and brother who love to fight with each other.

However, we know that behind those fights, it is actually our love for each other which binds us together. I just enjoy being at home spending time with my parents and my brother. I just feel how bad it would be when tomorrow I and my brother shall move on for our professional lives and we shall not be able to spend much time together. However, it is the memories of today which shall be with me forever and will bring a smile on my face anytime when I feel low.

The Importance of a Family:

A family is said to be the first school of a child. It is from here you start to learn how to speak, walk and interact with the world. It is important to value the importance of a family in one’s life. At times, people feel that they are grown-ups and that their parent’s advice does not matter anymore, but that is not true. It is the elders of the family who at any given of time would know the world better than us and we should all respect our family members and love our siblings as well. It is the family who builds our character and we should feel fortunate to have a family around us.

Introduction

My family values are what I take so dear to my heart because they have made me what I am today and I plan on passing these great values to my children in future. Every family has those things, acts and values that they hold in high esteem and they cherish so much. These vales have become a part of them: most times, it is what distinguishes the traits in each family and in some ways it makes or mars the future of the family members. Same applies to my family, we have some set values that has become a part of us and it has made my life a lot better because I have become a better person who is not only valuable to himself but also to the society at large. I will be sharing some of these values with you.

My Family Values:

Some of my family values include:

1. Honesty:

This is a principle that is highly protected in my family. My dad has this saying that, “honesty is the best policy.” Ever since I was little, my family has taught me how to be honest and the benefits that lie within. Sometimes, my parents even test us in ways we were not expecting and a reward is given to the person that comes out honest. This is one of my family values that I cherish so much and I am proud that it is what my family hold in high esteem.

2. Kindness to Others:

This is not a common trait to all. My mom has this belief that if the world and everybody in it shows love and kindness to one another, there will be no hatred and wars will be eradicated. This is a family value that we cherish so much. I learnt to show love to everybody. Even when we did not have much, my parents will still give to those who are needy. My dad says that the world is like a river, we would eventually flow into one another later and you do not know the future, the person you helped today might eventually be of help to you tomorrow.

3. Education:

This is a value that has been passed from generation to generation in my family. My dad would say that education is the best legacy you can give to a child. My family does everything in their capacity for you to get a sound and benefitting education. The acquisition of knowledge is also quite important. All of us try to gain more and more knowledge because we all have a family slogan that says “knowledge is power and that power makes me a hero.”

4. Dress and Appearance:

This is a religious value we cherish in my family. My dad would say that you are addressed the way you dress. I do not want to be address wrongly and give out a wrong impression. So, our appearance really matter a lot to us and the way we dress.

Conclusion:

Every family has one thing or the other that they hold in high esteem and tend to pass on from generation to generation. This is what makes a family a united sect not because we are related by blood but because of we share the same values.

Introduction:

Why I love my family is a question that has been floating through my mind for a very long time because no matter how hard I try to pin out a reason why I love them, I just can’t find one. This can be due to fact that they mean the whole world to me and I will do anything for them. I love my family a lot and I would like to share some of the reasons why I love my family and will never trade them for anything.

Why I Love My Family:

I have a family that consists of 6 people: my father, my mother and four children which includes me. For you to understand why I love my family I will tell you a little about each of them and why I love them so much.

My father is the best father in the world: well, that’s what I say. He is a business manager. I look up to my father a lot because I will like to take a lot of his behaviours and make it mine. He taught me to be contented with whatever I have. We did not have much when I was growing up; my dad lost his job and still did not allow anything of the pressure change how he behaved to us at home. He is caring, gentle, accommodating and disciplined.

My mum is the best cook in the world. I do not know where I would be today without my mum. I owe her a lot. She is a teacher by profession and this fascinates me a lot because not only is she inculcating knowledge in the young minds of tomorrow, she is also building the future of our society at large. I want to be like my mum. I remember those times when she had to sacrifice when the most precious of her things just to make me happy. She is loving, caring, understanding, accommodating. In fact, she is everything you can ever wish for in a mother.

My elder sisters are the best. Although they can be frustrating sometimes but that is mostly because of my stubbornness. They pretend they do not really care but deep inside they do. The things they do even subconsciously say otherwise. I remember a day in elementary school, I was being bullied a boy in class. On this particular day, he hit me. Unknowing to me, my sister heard about it and she beat the boy and made him apologise to me, I felt so happy that day because I had someone who had my back.

My brother is one of the best gifts I have received. He is the last child and this gives him an opportunity to be annoying if you know what I mean. He is joyful and always ready to heed correction. There was this day, I heard him bragging to his friends about how awesome I am, and I was the happiest that day.

We all have one reason or the other on why we love our family. I love mine because they are the best gift I could ever ask for and the fact that they have been there for me through the good, bad and funny times.

Importance of family is something that is greatly overlooked and underrated in the world we live in today. The definition that the family had about one hundred years before now was very clear. Back then, a family was believed to be a unit that consisted of the father that was in charge of the finances of the family, a mother whose primary duty was to look after the home and take care of the children and then there were the children. Largely based on the region you are from, a family can also include members of the extended family like aunts, uncles and grandparents. This type of family system is referred to as joint family.

Family Importance:

A family that is important is one that is very strong. If a family is going to be very strong, there is a need for the bond between them to be very strong. Bonds that help in keeping the members of a family with each other are relationships. If there are very strong relationships among all the members of a family, there is going to be stronger commitment between all of them and the family as a unit will be very important.

Better communication is also a result of family relationships that are very strong. If all the family members can take time out to talk and know each other well, the bond between them is bound to be very strong. Even if the conversations are about big things or small things, it does not really matter. The most important thing is that all family members stay connected to one another. It is very important that they all list to each other and understand every member.

How to make Family Bonds Very Strong:

We have various things that can help our family bond to improve.

A few of them include:

1. Love: love is the most important thing we need for our bonds as a family to improve. When we love the members in our family, we will also be able to know all about privacy, intimacy, caring, belonging and sharing. When there is love in a family, the family will prosper.

2. Loyalty: loyalty is something that comes as a result of love. Family members should stay devoted to each other. It is important that we are able to count on our family to have our back anytime we are facing problems.

The importance of family can never be overstated even though we live in a different time now and our attitudes to relationships, marriage and what a family should be has changed. The family is something that we need to help share our problems and be there for us anytime we have issues. A lot of the things that were not acceptable in the past and we now see as normal. Even with all the changes that the society has effected on our family system, the family still remains the major foundation of our society and this will remain the same.

My family is the best gift I have got. A family can be simply said to mean a social group of different people in our society that includes one or more parents and also their children. In a family, every member of the family commits to other members of the family in a mutual relationship. A family is a very important unit and the smallest unit in the society. A family whether a big one or a small one is of very great importance and use to all of its members and is believed to be the unit of our society that is strongest because the society is formed from the coming together and culmination of various families.

In many cultures, the family serves a child’s first school where the child learns all about their traditions and cultures more importantly learn about all the rudimentary values in life. A family is very essential in the teaching of healthy habits and good manners to all the members of the family. It gives the members of the family the opportunity to become people with better character in our society. I feel very lucky to be born into a small and lovely family; I learnt a lot of things from my family.

I am from a middle class and average family with six members (my father, my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, my younger brother and me). My grandfather is the head of the family and we all respect and listen to him. He is really wise and tries to advise each and every one of us using his many life experiences. He has been involved in many interesting and adventurous activities that he tells me about all the time. Most of the time, he has the final say on all of our family issues and he does his best to make all his decisions impartial.

Any time we are eating today as a family, he sits at the top of the table; we all have designated seats at the dining table. When my brother and I are available, my grandfather teaches us about our traditions and cultures. My grandfather is very friendly and has a cool and great personality and tries to talk nicely and calmly to everyone passing across his message without being rude. He helps my brother and sometimes me with our assignments. He majorly teaches us about all of the tools we need to be successful in life including punctuality, discipline, moral, cleanliness, continuity, honesty, hard work and trustworthiness.

My lovely grandmother is one of the nicest people I know, she tells my brother and I lovely stories every night. My father is a civil engineer and he is very hardworking, sincere and punctual. He is the breadwinner of the family and does his best to provide for every member of the family even if that means he has to work extra hours. My mother is very sweet and takes care of every member of the family even though she works as an accountant at a firm. She wakes up very early in the morning to make preparations for the day. My brother is a funny and jovial person that enjoys sporting activities and I love him so much.

Sometimes I wish my cousins, uncles and aunts lived with us, I love having them around. There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages of having everyone around. I have highlighted some below.

Some advantages are:

1. It gives a better routine of living that can contribute to a proper growth.

2. Having a joint family helps in following the numerous principles of an equitable economy and helps teach discipline and respect. It also teaches us how to share the burden of other family members.

3. There is the understanding of having to adjust to the needs of other family members.

4. The children in a large family get to grow up in a happy environment because they have children of their age around that they can play with.

5. All the members of a joint family are usually very disciplined and responsible as everyone has to follow the instructions of the family head.

Some of the disadvantages include:

1. There is always the chance of a rift or fight between the family members because of the possible imbalance of feelings of oneness, brotherly love and feeling of generosity.

2. There is a chance of the members of the family that earn very high looking down on members of the family that do not.

The concept of family is important in India for every individual. Family defines an individual background in terms of social relations and growth. Families influence the lives of individuals from childhood to adulthood especially in decisions concerning life milestones like marriage and career paths. Indian families live together for up to four generations under one roof and they manage to maintain lose family relations compared to other families across the globe. Indian families tend to stick to their cultural practices as a family and they maintain religious practices that cut across the family. Elders in Indian families are respected by the members of the family and their opinions are considered during decision making.

What Family Really Means :

Basic knowledge defines a family as a group of people who share genetic and legal bonds. However, the concept of family means a lot more for other people than just the bond and it incorporates the concepts of culture and religion. In India, the concept of family differs from what the rest of the world perceives as family.

Families in India go beyond nuclear and extend to wider circles, whereby the extended family lives together and are closely related. The relationships in the family are strong such that cousins are considered siblings and aunts and uncles are considered parents. Family also means the unconditional love among the members of the family whereby there is support in terms of finances and emotions.

Why the Family is so important:

The family plays a central role in lives of individuals in teaching of moral values. Parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents have been known to teach the children on morality and disciplinary issue s in most cultures. Both spiritual and moral values are instilled through family. Family give a sense of belonging to individuals because they are over by the family and supported at all times.

A family will always support its members with needs including financial and emotional needs. In a family, there has been established levels of satisfaction and happiness from the joy of being together. Families also helping community development through contributions and participating in activities in the community. The family is important in the society in maintaining order, discipline and peace.

I come from a big family. My family has not moved to an urban area and so we still live as a wider circle together with the extended family. In my nuclear family, I am the first born of four children. I have one sister and two brothers who are still at school. I have three aunts and two uncles. My cousins are twelve in number and most of them are at school except for the youngest ones.

My grandparents are very old and they do not get out of the house much and are being taken care by my parents and aunts. Most of the children are always at school and the house gets quiet but during holiday, we all unite together as a full house. My family is of the middle class in terms of wealth. Our religion is Hindu and we all practice the Indian cultures and traditions. What I love about my family is that everyone is a good cook and the food is always amazing. Members of my family are kind and respectful and that is why we rarely have disputes. The family support is strong and we all love each other.

Why I love My Family:

Having a big family is interesting because the house always feels warm. As I had earlier mentioned, my family is made of good cooks, which makes me love them. There is always teamwork within the family and good relationships are maintained. I like the adventurous nature of my family because we always have fun whenever we go for holiday vacations or have a family event.

Moral cultural and spiritual values are highly cared for in the society. My family is oriented in good moral values and believe we make a good role model for the society. Despite the influence of education, the family has been able to maintain the culture and traditions of Indian people. The love that exists in my family is precious and that is the most important value of all times because what family without love?

Our Weekend Outings and House Parties:

We do not have many of these in our family because of the different schedules among the members. We only have weekend outings and house parties during holidays. Birthday parties are and weddings are the parties that we frequently have as a family. I love parties at home because the food is usually exceptionally good. Also, the dancing and happy faces. Weekend outings are usually in form of picnics and they are usually full of games.

Cousins Visit during Summer:

My family is young and only three of my cousins are in college. The rest are in high school or elementary schools. Whenever my cousins come home from school, it is a happy moment for the whole family and we host parties to welcome them home. Whenever my older cousins are at home, I enjoy their company and I love to hear stories about college because that is where I will be in a few years’ time.

In the spirit of holidays, we have a vacation or two in a year. During these vacations, plans begin early and when the time comes, it is enjoyable and relaxing. Vacations for us as children tend to be more enjoyable because we have an environment away from home and with minimal parental supervision and we tend to explore and talk among ourselves. Team building during vacations strengthens the bond in families.

Family is a blessing to individuals because that is where they belong and it is what defines them. A good family is built through moral values and team effort. Having family events and parties or vacations re important is strengthening the relationships within a family. A happy individual is definitely from a happy family.

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Essay on Family Influence On Child Development

Students are often asked to write an essay on Family Influence On Child Development in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Family Influence On Child Development

Introduction.

A family is the first school for a child. Here, they learn the primary lessons of life. The family’s influence on a child’s development is immense and covers various areas including behavior, education, and social skills.

Behavioral Development

Children often mirror the behavior of their family members. They pick up habits, manners, and attitudes from parents and siblings. If the family environment is positive, a child learns kindness, honesty, and respect.

Educational Growth

The family’s attitude towards education can shape a child’s academic progress. Parents who value education often inspire their children to do well in school. They also provide necessary support and resources.

Social Skills

A child learns how to interact with others in the family. They learn to share, cooperate, and resolve conflicts. These skills are crucial in forming friendships and working in teams.

In conclusion, a family plays a significant role in a child’s development. The values, attitudes, and behaviors acquired from family are fundamental for a child’s growth into a well-rounded individual.

250 Words Essay on Family Influence On Child Development

A family is the first school for a child. It is where we learn to walk, talk, and understand our world. The influence of our family on our development is huge. This essay will explore how family affects a child’s growth.

Emotional Growth

The family shapes a child’s feelings and emotions. Parents and siblings help a child understand feelings like love, sadness, anger, and happiness. When a child sees his family expressing emotions, he learns to do the same. This helps him handle his feelings better.

Social Development

A child learns to interact with others in his family. He learns to share, cooperate, and respect others. These social skills help him make friends and get along with people outside the family.

Learning and Education

Parents play a big role in a child’s education. They help with homework, encourage reading and learning, and guide the child in his studies. This support boosts the child’s interest in learning and helps him do well in school.

Values and Morals

A family teaches a child about right and wrong. The values and morals a child learns from his family guide his behavior. They shape his character and help him become a good person.

In conclusion, a family’s influence on a child’s development is deep and lasting. It shapes a child’s emotions, social skills, learning, and values. A supportive and loving family can help a child grow into a happy, successful, and good person.

500 Words Essay on Family Influence On Child Development

Family is like the first school for a child. Here, a child learns about love, respect, and the values of life. The family’s influence on a child’s development is immense and it shapes a child’s personality, behavior, and understanding of the world.

Role of Parents

Parents play a key role in a child’s life. They are like the first teachers who instill good habits, manners, and values. A child learns to speak, eat, and behave by watching their parents. If parents treat others with kindness and respect, the child will also do the same. On the other hand, if parents are always fighting or arguing, the child may grow up to be aggressive or sad.

Learning from Siblings

Brothers and sisters also have a big impact on a child’s development. Older siblings often act as role models. Younger children look up to their older siblings and often copy their behavior, habits, and attitudes. This can be both good and bad, depending on the behavior of the older sibling.

Family Environment

The environment at home also affects a child’s growth. A happy and loving home can make a child feel safe and secure. This helps the child to grow up to be confident and positive. On the other hand, a home filled with anger and sadness can make a child feel scared and insecure. This might lead to problems in the child’s behavior and attitude in the future.

Importance of Family Traditions

Family traditions and rituals also help shape a child’s development. These traditions help a child understand their cultural and family history. This understanding creates a sense of belonging and identity in the child. It also helps them respect and value their family and culture.

In conclusion, family plays a vital role in a child’s development. It is the family that shapes a child’s personality, behavior, and attitude towards life. A child learns the most from their family. Therefore, it is important for families to provide a loving, happy, and positive environment for their children. This will help the children grow up to be kind, respectful, and confident individuals.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Impacts of family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement: The role of peer interaction quality and educational expectation gap

Associated data.

Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study, this original data can be found here: http://ceps.ruc.edu.cn .

The current study uses a two-wave longitudinal survey to explores the influence mechanism of the family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement. The family environment is measured by parents and children’s reports, including family atmosphere, parent–child interaction, and family rules, to reveal the mediating effect of adolescents’ positive or negative peers between the family environment and academic achievement, and whether the gap between self- and parental educational expectation plays a moderating effect. This study uses the data of the China Education Panel Study (CEPS); the survey samples include 9,449 eighth-grade students (M age = 13.55 years, SD = 0.70), establishing a multilevel moderated mediating effect model. The results showed (1) the family environment and peer interaction quality can positively predict adolescents’ academic achievement. (2) Using the KHB test, peer interaction quality plays a partial mediating role in the process of family environment positively affecting academic achievement, and the mediating ratio is 27.5%. (3) The educational expectation gap moderates the effect of the family environment on academic achievement and also on peer interaction quality. Therefore, from the perspective of environment and important others, to correctly grasp the academic achievement of junior high school students in the process of socialization, it is necessary to recognize that the family environment, peer interaction quality, and educational expectation gap play an important role.

Introduction

The salient characteristic feature of junior high school students’ academic achievement is the systematic study and participation in various comprehensive practical activities to improve their knowledge and skills in preparation for their future development, including the perception of both students’ self-competence (reading, spelling, language, arithmetic) and school performance (daily ability, writing ability, school satisfaction, calligraphy ability) ( Chapman, 1988 ). Academic achievement in a narrow sense refers to students’ academic performance and course acceptance in school, while academic achievement in a broad sense refers to the knowledge, skills, and cognitive abilities that students acquire through certain teaching and training, both of which reflect the overall learning status and development of students ( Sacco, 1997 ). As the main manifestation of adolescents’ achievements in receiving school education, it is the goal of adolescents’ development in the student period, which is related to the success of adolescents’ future career opportunities. Some scholars focus on adolescents’ cognitive ability and non-cognitive ability ( Adams, 2021 ), prosocial behavior and problem behavior ( Karmakar, 2017 ; Padilla et al., 2018 ), social development ( Walters, 2013 ), and academic achievement ( Zhang et al., 2020 ) issues; a study found that knowledgeable and successful families are conducive to children’s non-cognitive ability and social development, and a good family atmosphere and a parent–child relationship contribute to the development of physical and mental health ( Marcenaro and Lopez, 2017 ; Obimakinde et al., 2019 ). Parents who communicate with their children, visit museums, or record daily activities can cultivate children’s information literacy, improve math and reading scores, and directly stimulate cognitive development ( Sibley and Dearing, 2014 ; Choe, 2020 ). Moreover, family socioeconomic status (SES), related developmental resources (including parental support, expectations, and reading resources), and students’ individual reading motivation (including reading engagement and reading confidence) also affect adolescents’ learning outcomes (including academic achievement, school grades, and reading competence) ( Mudrak et al., 2020 ).

With the increase in communication time between adolescent students and their peers, they gradually break away from their families to participate in peer interaction; peers have become another major field affecting their development ( Criss et al., 2016 ). The interpersonal relationship established by teenagers in the school field plays an essential role in their behavior development, cognitive ability, and academic performance, especially adolescents’ academic engagement or learning performance is influenced by friendship quality ( Sebanc et al., 2016 ), friends’ gain and loss ( Lessard and Juvonen, 2018 ), and peer personality ( Golsteyn et al., 2021 ) factors in peer groups. Reviewing the research on the influence of family and important others on students’ achievement, there are two main points of view: On the one hand, according to American psychologist Harris’ group socialization development theory, parents and peers are the main objects for adolescents to realize social dependence, and they advocate that individual development (physical and mental development, and academic performance) is affected by the two ‘independent systems’ inside and outside the family ( Harris, 1995 ). On the other hand, some scholars expressed that the influence of family members and peer groups on adolescents’ academic achievement was a kind of ‘mutual compensation’ ( Fukuoka and Hashimoto, 1997 ). Although considerable research has involved single factors in the family environment (including socioeconomic status, parental autonomy support, and parental involvement in education) ( Joussemet et al., 2005 ; Vasquez et al., 2016 ; Froiland and Worrell, 2017 ; Mudrak et al., 2020 ), important others, including teacher autonomy support, learning competition among students, and positive or negative learning behaviors of classmates, affect academic achievement ( Diseth and Samdal, 2014 ; Li et al., 2022 ; Qiu and Chai, 2022 ). A small number of studies have also introduced emotion regulation, adaptive competencies, and sense of autonomy at the individual level as mediating variables, and these influencing processes are different due to different grades and genders ( Liew et al., 2014 ; Qiu and Chai, 2022 ). However, from the beginning of junior high school, parents pay more attention to students’ academic achievement, and the time of students getting along with their peers in school is also significantly increased; much less is known about the role of peer relationships in the impact of family environment on academic achievement, and at the middle school stage, differences in educational expectations between parents and adolescents are constantly changing, which is particularly reflected in Chinese students. Therefore, this study is based on the academic achievement of Chinese adolescents; it is necessary to further study the internal relationship between the family environment and academic achievement by introducing the quality of peer interaction as a mediator and the factors of the gap between self- and parental educational expectations. This study seeks intervention measures from the factors of the quality of peer interaction and educational expectation gap, which will provide new ideas for improving the academic achievement of Chinese adolescents.

Literature review and hypotheses

Family environment and academic achievement.

The family environment is the sum of physical and psychological conditions, which carries the development of individual personality and behavior, among which family relations and parent–child interaction are its important components, affecting children’s academic achievement, character quality, and the expression of psychological modeling functions ( Wilder, 2014 ; Krauss et al., 2020 ). According to the family systems theory, the family is composed of several subsystems, which are interconnected and mutually constrained to make the whole family function well, and the better the coordination of the family system, the better the psychological shape and academic performance of the members ( Miller et al., 1985 ). Leung and Shek (2016) divided family functioning into five dimensions: family members’ relationship, communication and adaptation, conflict and harmony, parental attention, and parental control; in other words, the more harmonious family functioning is, the higher the self-rated family environment score is, emphasizing that family cohesion and harmonious parent–child relationship can promote adolescents’ physical and mental development. Findings of related scholars’ research on the impact of parental participation on children’s academic performance, development skills, and social behavior are given as follows ( McCormick et al., 2013 ; Karmakar, 2017 ; Boonk et al., 2018 ): Parents’ educational level directly affects their children’s reading comprehension and math achievement; among them, the influence of mothers’ education level will be more lasting. Parents’ active participation in education has a significant effect on children’s academic achievement, educational achievement, and mental health, in particular parents’ support for the educational process, the cultivation of extracurricular interest, and the guidance of homework have a strong positive effect on the academic performance of adolescents ( Wang and Sheikh, 2014 ; Benner et al., 2016 ). The family investment theory explains the effect of the family socioeconomic status on academic achievement ( Duleep, 1998 ). Parents with high socioeconomic status will invest more in their children’s education (parents’ attention, support, and investment), and their children‘s academic achievement will be better ( Mudrak et al., 2020 ; Poon, 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2020 ). At the same time, perceived positive emotional expression in the family, daily communication, rule-making, and conflicting parental relationships have varying degrees of impact on adolescents’ behavioral tendencies (learning method and problem behavior) and academic achievement (social science, reading, language, and natural science scores) ( Ghazarian and Buehler, 2010 ; Veas et al., 2019 ). It can be seen that previous studies mainly focus on the influence of factors from one aspect: family on children’s academic achievement. In addition, while promoting the smooth development of family education, recognizing the characteristics of the cognitive level and social competence of students at the junior high school stage, students’ academic achievements in a broad sense are affected by factors such as family atmosphere, parent–child interaction, and family rules. As Bronfenbrenner emphasized family as a microsystem that directly affects individual development ( Bronfenbrenner, 1986 ), it serves as an educational ground for children’s symbolic values, sense of honor and disgrace, lifestyle, and various action strategies. It is further speculated that the score of the family environment generated by a family atmosphere, parent–child interaction, and family rules will have a direct effect on children’s academic achievement.

Peer interaction quality and academic achievement

Students in junior high school travel between home and school, with alternating contact with parents and peers, and it is a process of gradual stabilization and continuous cognitive reproduction. In a diverse school, students tend to view themselves by the preferences or standards of their peer group, which subconsciously affects the acquisition of social values and the completion of their studies. In Coleman’s book “ The Adolescent Society ,” he points out that “teens suffering from rejection from peers is almost equivalent to being rejected by their parents” ( Coleman, 1961 ). Combined with the peer group effect theory, peer group interaction conveys social norms, values, knowledge, and skills, and positive or negative peer relationships affect the learning attitude, self-expectation, and cognitive development of the participants ( Winkler, 1975 ). Academic interaction between students in the classroom and the average score are all related to learning performance (math scores); forming a learning group can increase the possibility of cooperating to complete homework and enhance learning interest ( Carman and Zhang, 2012 ). Comparing students in the classroom with their peers in the living environment and interaction with roommates in the informal environment have a stronger impact on academic performance ( Jain and Kapoor, 2015 ; Fang and Wan, 2020 ). In essence, the structure of the peer network (quality, scale, heterogeneity, and cohesion) and students’ learning behavior (positive and negative) have an effect on students’ academic achievement ( Berthelon et al., 2019 ; Qiu and Chai, 2022 ). For example, with diligent and dedicated classmates, the higher the quality of peer interaction (more positive peers and less negative peers in peer interaction), the better the results in subsequent learning ( Golsteyn et al., 2021 ). In addition, in a better school, this peer effect will be amplified accordingly, that is, in a better school environment, students can interact with better peers, and the quality of making friends will be higher. They supervise each other in learning, and their academic performance will be better ( Wang et al., 2021 ). Previous studies have not taken the quality of adolescents’ peer interaction as an important variable for research. Therefore, based on the quality of peer interaction in adolescents, that is, the “negative” or “positive” behavior of friends will affect their external performance and internal cognition, it is inferred that the more positive the quality of peer interaction, the more conducive to higher academic achievement.

Mediating effect of peer interaction quality

The social development of students in adolescence is crucial. As adolescents are gradually fleeing from getting along with their parents to making new friends, it is predicted that the effect of peers in the group on the social action or mentality structure of adolescents is increasing ( Brown et al., 1993 ); peers play an important role in academic achievement. Parents and peers are the main objects for adolescents to rely on and complain to, and both of them play an important role in the process of individual socialization. Sociologists Hartup and Stevens (1997) proposed two different types of interpersonal relationships, vertical and horizontal, for children. Vertical relationship refers to the relationship between children and adults, such as the parent–child relationship and teacher–student relationship, which are complementary and provide children with a safety guarantee and a learning environment. Horizontal relationship refers to the peer relationship with the level of self-development, which has the function of providing physical and mental development and interaction for children. Therefore, students lack the support of parents and peer friendship and are prone to depression, resulting in academic waste, and it is prone to depression, resulting in academic abandonment. Research on the family environment (family social capital and parenting style), peer interaction, and adolescents’ academic achievement, there are two types of views: First, family and peer influence on adolescents is “independent.” According to Harris’ group socialization development theory ( Harris, 1995 ): individuals acquire two independent behavioral systems inside and outside the family—the effect of family on children’s socialization is weakening, while the influence of peer groups in schools is increasing; for example, family education resources and parents’ SES have direct effects on adolescents’ math achievement and problem-solving ability ( Long and Pang, 2016 ; Wang et al., 2021 ), and peer friendship quality and friends’ gain and loss predict adolescents’ learning engagement and academic achievement ( Sebanc et al., 2016 ; Lessard and Juvonen, 2018 )—getting along with friends who study well and live actively influences their initial study and helps in getting better grades. Second, the influence of peers and family on adolescents is a “complementary” view ( Fukuoka and Hashimoto, 1997 ), that is, peer interaction transmits the effect of family environment on adolescents’ academic performance, compared with childhood, at the adolescent stage, parent education and parent-child interaction no longer meet their needs, but gradually extend to seeking support or help among peers, and peer interaction and family environment together influence adolescents’ growth. The family environment (parenting style, behavior supervision, and emotional intervention) plays a decisive role in the quality of peer interaction among adolescents; for example, parents supervise their children’s home time, places to go out, friend interactions, and homework completion, which would increase children’s exposure to peers with positive learning behaviors ( Deutsch et al., 2012 ; DeAnna, 2016 ), which indicates that parent–child communication and parental educational involvement influence children’s interpersonal interactions. At the same time, the peer network structure, friend quality, and personality orientation also affect students’ academic achievement ( Berthelon et al., 2019 ; Golsteyn et al., 2021 ). Based on the available research, a more superior family environment may have a positive effect on students’ academic achievement by increasing their peer interaction quality.

Moderating effect of educational expectation gap

Educational expectation is based on one’s cognitive ability, realistic conditions, and parents’ expectation of children or adolescents’ academic achievements in their future ( Wang and Benner, 2014 ). It belongs to a category of social cognition, including the sender and the expected. When the two are the same individual, it is called “self-education expectation,” and when the expectation is sender by parents and the expectation is expected by children, it is called “parental education expectation” ( Wang and Benner, 2014 ; Castro et al., 2015 ). The identity control theory points out ( Peter, 1991 ) that parental education expectation is seen as a reflective evaluation of important others, and it is an important type of social environment information input; self-education expectation is regarded as an individual’s identification standard of the current social role. When the two are inconsistent, individuals will have a sense of stress, which even leads to psychological distress and affects development, and is closely related to individual intrinsic motivation ( Moe, 2016 ). When parents’ educational expectation is moderate, it is conducive to the cultivation of children’s social value and the shaping of healthy personality, while when parents’ expectation is much higher than their children’s self-expectation, it will make the goal impossible to achieve, resulting in tense parent–child relationship and weariness of learning, which will harm academic achievement ( Marcenaro and Lopez, 2017 ; Lv et al., 2018 ). On the one hand, children’s reading and math scores are related to net household assets; the higher the SES of parents, the higher the educational expectation for their children, providing a quality educational environment to ensure that children have good supportive resources. Parents’ higher education expectation or lower self-education expectation moderates this effect ( Zhan, 2006 ; Zhang et al., 2011 ). The higher parental expectation and short-term educational expectation in junior high school have a lasting positive effect on children’s academic performance (school achievement, test scores, and academic completion) ( Yamamoto and Holloway, 2010 ). In fact, in the study of parents’ expectations and their children’s academic achievement (reading achievement and academic achievement), parents’ expectation of their children’s study is consistent with their expectation of self-education, which can better improve their social cognitive ability ( Phillipson and Phillipson, 2012 ; John and Bierman, 2017 ). It shows that the educational expectation gap between children and parents will moderate the impact of the family environment on academic achievement.

On the other hand, according to the analysis of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data, children grow up under the emotional education of their parents and have a better experience of happiness, making friends with active companions, less likely to fight, smoke, or take drugs ( Chan and Koo, 2011 ). In the study of 497 Dutch adolescents (13 years) from exposure to negative peers to crime, parents’ excessive restrictions on their children’s friends hinders their ability to develop autonomously and increases the risk of having bad peers ( Keijsers et al., 2012 ). Parents with higher SES have a higher expectation for their children, which accordingly enlarges the negative effects of problem peers. This process reflects that parents’ expectations, or parenting styles moderate the impact of family socioeconomic status on deviant peers ( Forgatch et al., 2016 ; Valdivia and Castello, 2020 ). Reviewing the research on the differences between children’s self-education expectation and perceived parents’ educational expectation, parents’ educational expectation is not always consistent with that of their offspring; both have different perceptions of future educational goals, which is universal ( Rutherford, 2015 ). When there is a large gap between parents’ educational expectation and self-educational expectation, the educational expectation gap affects the quality, scale, and structure of children’s peer relationship. Based on this, this study introduces the concept of the “educational expectation gap,” speculating that the intergenerational educational expectation gap plays a moderating role between the family environment, peer interaction quality, and academic achievement.

Present study and hypotheses

Previous studies reported the relationship between the family environment and academic achievement ( Benner et al., 2016 ; Boonk et al., 2018 ; Veas et al., 2019 ; Mudrak et al., 2020 ) and introduced the factors of parental education expectation, self-education expectation, and peer interaction ( Phillipson and Phillipson, 2012 ; Sebanc et al., 2016 ; Lessard and Juvonen, 2018 ; Qiu and Chai, 2022 ). Among them, most studies regard parental education expectation and self-education expectation as separate variables to examine the effect of the family environment on academic achievement ( Marcenaro and Lopez, 2017 ; Lv et al., 2018 ), and some scholars also studied the influence of the peer network structure, friendship quality, and personality orientation on adolescents’ academic achievement ( Berthelon et al., 2019 ; Golsteyn et al., 2021 ). Parents supervise their children’s home time, places to go out, friend interactions, and homework completion, which would increase children’s exposure to peers with positive learning behaviors, which may have a positive impact on children’s academic achievement ( Deutsch et al., 2012 ; DeAnna, 2016 ). However, few studies have emphasized the impact of the family environment and peer interaction quality on adolescents’ academic achievement and the role of the gap between parents’ and children’s educational expectations in this process, in particular the study of adolescents who are in the middle school stage and have high expectations for parental education and more contacts with peers. Therefore, according to the ecosystem theory ( Bronfenbrenner, 1986 ), the environment in which human beings live consists of four systems: microsystem, mesosystem, external system, and macrosystem, among which the microsystem refers to the way of activity, role patterns, and interpersonal relationship patterns of individuals in a particular environment; the way of behavior that promotes or inhibits individuals in that environment; and the interaction between individuals and that environment, which directly affects human cognitive ability, social development, and academic achievement; that is, the family environment and peer interactions are important microsystems of the individuals’ lives. This study constructs an analytical framework of significant others embedded in the family environment and then combines the peer group effect ( Winkler, 1975 ) and the identity control theory ( Peter, 1991 ), which emphasize the differences from significant others, self, and other identity criteria, to explore the role of the quality of peer interactions and educational expectation gap of adolescents in the microsystem in the impact of the family environment on academic achievement. Based on available research results, this study proposed the following hypotheses and a moderated mediation model (see Figure 1 ).

Moderated mediation model.

Hypothesis 1 (H1) : Family environment will have a direct effect on adolescents’ academic achievement.

Hypothesis 2 (H2) : Peer interaction quality will have a direct effect on adolescents’ academic achievement.

Hypothesis 3 (H3) : Peer interaction quality will play a mediating role between family environment and adolescents’ academic achievement.

Hypothesis 4a (H4a) : Educational expectation gap will moderate the effect of family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement.

Hypothesis 4b (H4b) : Educational expectation gap will moderate the effect of family environment and adolescents’ peer interaction quality.

Materials and methods

Research data.

The data for this study are from the nationally representative “China Education Panel Study” (CEPS) implemented by the China Survey and Data Center of the Renmin University of China. The survey involves students, schools, and districts of multilevel characteristic variables, using a stratified multistage, probability, and scale proportional (PPS) sampling method. A total of 438 classes were randomly selected from 112 schools of 28 county-level units, and all the students in the selected class were investigated, in the baseline survey in 2015. A total of 10,279 junior middle school seventh-grade students were present after data merging and missing values filling, and 9,449 eighth-grade students successfully tracked in the 2016 follow-up survey are used as effective samples.

Variables and measurements

Academic achievement.

Combining the narrow and broad definitions of academic achievement ( Sacco, 1997 ), it refers to students’ academic performance and course acceptance at school, as well as knowledge, skills, and cognitive abilities acquired through certain teaching and training. The academic achievement of this study is measured by three indicators: students’ cognitive ability, test scores, and the acceptance ability of the main courses (Chinese, Math, and English). The project team designed a cognitive ability scale, which includes 22 items in three dimensions of language, graphics, and computing and logic, to measure students’ logical thinking and problem-solving ability. Each student’s score is used to measure cognitive ability. Referring to the academic achievement index ( Li et al., 2022 ), test scores are the total scores of students’ Chinese, math, and English midterm examinations. The ability to accept the main course is measured by asking students whether “is it hard to learn at present?” in the three courses of Chinese, math, and English, and each question corresponds to four options, with 1 representing “special effort” and 4 representing “no effort.” The scores of the three question items were summed to generate a continuous variable with a value range of 3–12. The higher the score, the easier the learning process experience. Based on the fact that academic achievement in this study includes three dimensions of cognition, objectivity, and subjectivity; the common factors of these three dimensions are extracted through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The first factor is 1.63, and the second factor is 0.75 (1.63/0.75 = 2.17, 2.17 < 3), indicating that the constructed academic achievement is multidimensional. At the same time, considering that in the item response theory (IRT) model, the respondents’ response to the project (the probability of right answer) and their potential (psychological traits) have a certain connection and need to meet the measurement is a one-dimensional premise assumption ( Lord and Wingersky, 1984 ; Reise et al., 1993 ). Therefore, the method of dimension reduction of academic achievement by the EFA test is better. The results show that the cumulative variance contribution rate is 80.2%, the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) value is 0.714, and the Bartlett sphericity test is significant ( p < 0.05), and the constructed academic achievement index has less information loss and strong representativeness.

Family environment

Based on the Family Environment Scale ( Oliver et al., 1988 ), Family Environment Scale-Chinese Version is revised ( Ni et al., 2021 ), including intimacy, emotional expression, contradiction, independence, success, culture, entertainment, morality, organization, and control; Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of each dimension is between 0.68 and 0.87. Combining with the Effective Pre-school and Primary Education project (EPPE), the scale includes parents’ attitudes and interaction with parents ( Eisenstadt, 2010 ). In this study, 29 items of the family atmosphere (seven items), parent–child interaction (eleven items), and family rules (eleven items) in CEPS were selected to evaluate adolescents’ family environment, using a three-point Likert scale; the higher the total score, the better the family environment, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the questionnaire is 0.84.

Peer interaction quality

Using the Reference Friendship Quality Scale (FQS) ( Bukowski et al., 1994 ) and peer relationship measurement ( Martina et al., 2020 ), according to the items included in CEPS, positive peer interaction among students “friends with good grades, hard work, and want to go to college” (three items), and negative peer interaction “absence of class, violation of school discipline, fighting, smoking and drinking, Internet cafes or game hall, early love, dropout” negative peer interaction (seven items) were investigated. All were scored by a three-point Likert scale. Comparing the score of positive peer interaction with the total score of positive and negative peer interaction, the value is a continuous variable; the larger the value, the more positive the peer interaction and the higher the peer quality. We conduct confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on 10 items; the average variance extracted (AVE) of each second-order factor is between 0.570 and 0.594, which is greater than 0.50, and the composite reliability (CR) is between 0.798 and 0.910, which is greater than 0.70, indicating that the aggregation validity is high. The results of the model showed that Chisq = 1206.813, df = 34, Chisq/df = 35.494, RMSEA = 0.060, RMR = 0.006, GFI = 0.974, CFI = 0.976, TLI = 0.968, indicating that the results of CFA had good fitting indicators, and the resulting peer interaction quality had good stability and fitting degree.

Educational expectation gap

Based on the measurement of educational expectation ( Rutherford, 2015 ; Marcenaro and Lopez, 2017 ), since the general educational expectation of Chinese parents for their children is whether or not they can get into college, in this study, parental education expectation was measured by the parental question “what degree do you want your child to read?”; similarly, students’ self-education expectation was measured by the student question “what degree do you want yourself to read?.” Among the operationalized variables, parental education expectation was divided into two groups: parents want their children to go to college and not to have to go to college. Similarly, students’ self-education expectations were divided into two groups: students who wanted and did not want to get themselves into college. The difference between the former and the latter is used to generate the “educational expectation gap” variable; that is, parental education expectation below or equal to students’ self-expectation is labeled “low educational expectation,” and parental education expectation above students’ self-expectation is labeled “high educational expectation.” The educational expectation gap was converted into a dichotomous variable with a value of 0 or 1.

Analytical strategy

Considering the heterogeneity between different schools and relatively high homogeneity among students in the same school, we established a multilevel linear model to explore the relationship between adolescents’ academic achievement at the individual and school levels. We used Stata 15.1 software to transform the academic achievement (time 1 and time 2) into the range of 0∼100 by range normalization ( Hoffman, 2015 ; Maslowsky et al., 2015 ), that is, X’ = (X–X min )/(X max –X min ) × 100; eliminate the influence of variation dimension and variation range; and ensure that the estimated results can be compared under the same dimension: (1) Descriptive statistical results were presented, and 4,481 female students (47.4%) and 4,968 male students (52.6%) were included in the follow-up survey. The age ranged from 12 to 18 years old, M age = 13.55 years, SD = 0.70. There were 4,214 singleton students (44.6%) and 5,235 non-singleton students (55.4%). Table 1 . (2) The differences in the academic achievement of students with different family backgrounds and the correlation test of core variables were analyzed. (3) The influence of family environment and peer interaction quality in the base period survey (time 1) on the academic achievement tracked (time 2), and the role of educational expectation gap in it were also analyzed; if p < 0.05, regression is considered to be important. Academic achievement is measured by a lag phase of data, which can solve the endogenous problem and predict current academic achievement from the past environment or other factors. It has a clearer causal logic relationship ( Hoffman, 2015 ). The main study steps are as follows: First, a null model M0 with a random intercept but no explanatory variable is estimated to explore the total difference in academic achievement, which is decomposed into the difference between students and schools, and establish a school fixed effect model ( Bryk and Raudenbush, 1987 ). Second, model M1 tests the effect of the family environment. Third, model M2 tests explain differences in the peer interaction quality on academic achievement. Fourth, model M3 also adds the effects of the family environment and peer interaction quality prediction on academic achievement. Model M4 takes the sum of base period data and tracking data (academic achievement) as the dependent variable to test the robustness of the model. Finally, models M5, M6, and M7 are constructed to test whether peer interaction quality plays a mediating role between the family environment and academic achievement. The mediating effect test usually includes the Sobel (1982) test and stepwise method ( Baron and Kenny, 1986 ); these two methods require the assumption that the product term variables formed by the two methods have normal distribution, resulting in low test power on the test coefficient items in turn. In smaller samples, the bias-corrected bootstrap often reduces the error more than other methods ( Hayes and Scharkow, 2013 ). This study explores the effect of the family environment on academic achievement through mediating variables and uses KHB method to test the effect and size of mediation ( Kohler et al., 2011 ); the method can be any of Regress, Logit, Ologit, Probit, Oprobit, Cloglog, Slogit, Scobit, Rologit, Clogit, Mlogit, Xtlogit, or Xtprobit, and it can be extended to other models. At the same time, we also used the bootstrap repeated test results to further verify that peer interaction quality does play a mediating role. The models M5^ and M6^ are used to verify the moderating effect of the educational expectation gap; if the product of predictor (family environment) and moderator (educational expectation gap) has a significant effect on outcome variables (academic achievement and peer interaction quality) ( Baron and Kenny, 1986 ), it proves that the moderating variable plays a moderating role.

Variables of descriptive statistical results.

Brackets as the reference group. Academic achievement standardized to 0∼100.

Class differences, correlation, and fixed effect test of adolescents’ academic achievement

Analyzing the differences in adolescent academic achievement across family backgrounds (see Figure 2 ). Adolescents with high education-level parents, party membership, and household registration in urban areas have good academic achievements. In addition, in order to reveal the factors affecting adolescents’ academic achievement accurately, we tested the correlation of core variables. Academic achievement was positively correlated with the family environment ( r = 0.31, p < 0.05) and peer interaction quality ( r = 0.39, p < 0.05), and the family environment was positively correlated with peer interaction quality ( r = 0.28, p < 0.05). The educational expectation gap was negatively correlated with academic achievement ( r = −0.15, p < 0.05), family environment ( r = −0.07, p < 0.05), and peer interaction quality ( r = −0.13, p < 0.05). At the same time, we selected 20 schools as a small sample, aiming at determining the main effect of each school’s adolescents’ family environment on academic achievement, and measured the different intercepts and slopes in different schools, which confirmed the need to build a fixed effect model (see Figure 3 ).

Differences in adolescents’ academic achievement in different households.

Fixed effect test of different school academic achievements.

Multilevel regression estimation of adolescents’ academic achievement

As given in Table 2 , adolescent academic achievement was considered as the dependent variable and M0 as a null model, and the overall differences in academic achievement are broken down into differences between students and schools. The ICC between groups was 0.319, which shows that it is very suitable to use a multilevel regression model to control for heterogeneity factors between schools and to better estimate the net effect of family and peer-level factors on academic achievement. After M1 controls variables at the individual and school levels, the family environment has a positive impact on academic achievement (β = 0.26, p < 0.001); hence, H1 is verified. Similarly, in M2, peer interaction quality has a positive effect on academic achievement (β = 0.47, p < 0.001), that is, for every one-unit increase in the quality of peer interaction, adolescents’ academic achievement significantly increases by 47.0%; hence, H2 is verified. In M3, the family environment and peer interaction quality are added to confirm that the coefficients of the multilevel nested model have good stability, and it was found that the coefficient of family environment variables decreased from 26.0% to 19.0% after joining peer interaction quality, and it was still significant. It is necessary to further test the internal mechanism of the family environment and peer interaction quality affecting academic achievement. In M4, the mean value of the dependent variable (academic achievement) of the baseline survey and the follow-up survey is calculated. We built a full model, and the results are consistent with the influence coefficients in M3, showing that the whole research has good robustness.

Multilevel regression estimation results of adolescents’ academic achievement.

+ p < 0.1, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

Family environment, peer interaction quality, and academic achievement: Moderated mediation model test

Table 3 , in M5, academic achievement as the dependent variable, the total effect of the family environment on academic achievement is 26.0%. In M6, with peer interaction quality as the dependent variable, the effect of family environment on peer interaction quality is 17.0%. In M7, with academic achievement as the dependent variable, the direct effect of adolescents’ family environment on academic achievement is 22.0%, which was 4.0% lower than the total effect (0.26–0.22 = 0.04), and the peer interaction quality has a significant impact on academic achievement (β = 0.42, p < 0.001). It shows that peer interaction quality transmits the influence of the family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement, especially the KHB test shows that peer interaction quality plays a partial mediating role in the process of the family environment affecting academic achievement, and the mediating ratio is 27.5%; hence, H3 is verified. Meanwhile, in M5^, the interaction between the family environment and educational expectation gap has a negative significant effect on academic achievement (β = −0.24, p < 0.001), and peer interaction quality moderates the effect of the family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement; hence, H4a is verified. In M6^, the interaction between the family environment and educational expectation gap had a negative effect on peer interaction quality (β = −0.07, p < 0.01), and peer interaction quality moderates the effect of family environment on peer interaction quality of adolescents; hence, H4b is verified. It shows that in the case of different educational expectations, the influence of the family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement and peer interaction quality is different; compared with the high-education expectation group, the influence of the family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement (β = −0.24, p < 0.001) and peer interaction quality (β = −0.07, p < 0.01) was weaker than that of the low-education expectation group.

Peer interaction quality and educational expectation gap: Moderated mediation effect test.

+ p < 0.1, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

According to the estimation results of the models in Tables 2 , ​ ,3, 3 , we further draw the path diagram of the moderated mediation model. Figure 4 shows that the family environment and peer interaction quality have a significant positive effect on adolescents’ academic achievement of 0.26 and 0.47, respectively, which clearly verifies H1 and H2. Figure 5 shows the coefficients of the three paths of family environment → peer interaction quality, peer interaction quality → academic achievement, and family environment → academic achievement are 0.17, 0.42, and 0.22; it is measured that peer interaction quality transmits the effect of the family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement by 27.5% [(0.17 × 0.42)/0.26 = 0.275]. At the same time, bootstrap was used for the mediating test ( Hayes and Scharkow, 2013 ), and the mediating effect of peer interaction quality was tested by repeated sampling for 1000 times using the bootstrap method; the 95% confidence interval (CI) was [0.163, 0.196], which again verified that peer interaction quality plays a mediating role before family environment and academic achievement; hence, it supports H3. Figure 6 shows that the effect of interaction between the family environment and peer interaction quality on academic achievement is −0.24, and the effect of interaction between the family environment and educational expectation gap on peer interaction quality is −0.07, both of which indicate that the higher educational expectation gap will put adolescents’ academic achievement and peer interaction quality at a disadvantage, thus verifying H4a and H4b.

Moderated mediation model (H1 + H2). *** p < 0.001.

Moderated mediation model (H3). *** p < 0.001.

Moderated mediation model (H4a + H4b). ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

Students in the junior middle school stage are in puberty where their physical and mental development are not yet mature and are easily affected by important others and external environmental factors. Therefore, this study explores the relationship among the family environment, peer interaction quality, educational expectation gap, and adolescents’ academic achievement and further promotes the development of relevant theories. It also has important practical significance to improve adolescents’ academic achievement. On the one hand, this study is based on the ecosystem theory ( Bronfenbrenner, 1986 ), peer group effect theory ( Winkler, 1975 ), and identity control theory ( Peter, 1991 ). Placing adolescents’ academic achievement in a system influenced by the interaction of individual and environment, interactions between peer groups convey social norms and values, as well as parental education expectation is regarded as a reflective evaluation of important others, and there are differences between it and self-education expectation as the standard of individual’s current role orientation. Practical combined with theory, an analytical framework was constructed to study the academic achievement of adolescents, and it was verified that family environment and peer interaction quality play a positive role in academic achievement, which is basically consistent with previous research results ( Carman and Zhang, 2012 ; Boonk et al., 2018 ; Berthelon et al., 2019 ; Zhang et al., 2020 ), greatly expanded the Ecosystem Theory embedded in micro theory (Peer Group Effect, Identity Control) to study the academic achievement of adolescents.

On the other hand, this study also has important practical significance. It makes us understand the mediating role of peer interaction quality (from the influence of important others) between the family environment and academic achievement and enriches the research on the influence of the family environment and important others on academic achievement. It is necessary to pay attention to the influence of the family environment on children’s academic achievement in multiple ways, to create an active family atmosphere, frequent parent–child interaction, and strict family rules and to dynamically understand the quality of children’s peers. At the same time, the influence of peer interaction quality on academic achievement is a double-edged sword. When parents’ education expectation is higher than self-education expectation, it will not only negatively affect adolescents’ academic achievement but also lead to more negative peers; however, the gap between parents’ education expectation and self-education expectation is moderate, which plays a positive role in adolescents’ academic achievement ( Zhang et al., 2011 ; Marcenaro and Lopez, 2017 ). Therefore, we call on all sectors of society to pay attention to the moderate expectations of parents in the family for their children’s future roles or achievements and avoid pressure caused by too high or too low expectations. This plays an important role in children making positive peers and friends and achieving good academic achievements.

The mediating effect of peer interaction quality between family environment and academic achievement

The family environment is the external support resource to ensure adolescents’ academic success and the premise of various related factors in the teaching process. It is the initial field of children’s socialization and the carrier of shaping good academic achievements. Through the mediating effect test, the peer interaction quality of adolescents conveys the partial effect of the family environment on academic achievement. The empirical study dialogs with Harris’ group socialization theory and further verifies that peer interaction quality is the link between the family environment and children’s academic achievement ( Fukuoka and Hashimoto, 1997 ). The family environment directly affects the individual’s academic achievement, which is consistent with the results of studies indicating that family socioeconomic status, parents’ attention, support, and investment in children’s education affect their academic performance ( Poon, 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2020 ). At the same time, the family function also affects group selection and friend composition in individual peer interaction. Interaction with peers exerts a subtle influence on children’s academic achievement and personality shaping, which is consistent with previous studies ( Deutsch et al., 2012 ; DeAnna, 2016 ). In short, the present study introduced the mediating variable of peer interaction quality, which distinguished it from previous studies that commonly used learning anxiety, learning engagement, sense of autonomy, and parental involvement as mediating variables to build multiple or chained mediation models ( Li et al., 2022 ; Qiu and Chai, 2022 ), greatly enriches the research on academic achievement, putting children’s academic achievement in the symbolic social living space where the family field and peer network are nested, to form a dynamic field to assist children’s social development and renewal, through peer interaction quality (important others) indirectly affect individual academic achievement, this provides clues and support for further exploring the influence of peer groups on students’ academic achievement.

The moderating effect of educational expectation gap between family environment, academic achievement, and peer interaction quality

We propose a moderated mediation model based on relevant theories, by examining the role of the educational expectation gap within the family. Parents’ high educational expectations have a negative moderating effect on children’s academic achievement. That is, the model of ‘mother’s actual education wish >self-education wish’ negatively predicts academic performance, while the model of “mother’s actual education wish <self-education wish” positively predicts academic performance ( Wang and Benner, 2014 ). Differences in educational expectations similar to those between parents and children will hinder children’s reading, mathematics, language, and grade point average (GPA) ( Rutherford, 2015 ; Marcenaro and Lopez, 2017 ). The difference in educational expectations between parents and children is the product of the normal development process of an individual, and it is related to the pressure within the family (family function disintegration, poor family interaction, and poor family cohesion) that can make family members inconsistent ( Minuchin, 1985 ). It may also be the reason for the correlation between the intrinsic motivation of adolescents (including enthusiasm, pleasure, interest, enjoyment, and curiosity) and self-expectation ( Moe, 2016 ). This provides empirical support for the self-discrepancy theory, which points out that there are differences in real self, ideal self, and ought-to self, resulting in an unsatisfactory state, which may lead to depression and affect individual academic development ( Higgins, 1987 ). At the same time, the educational expectation gap moderates the effect of family environment on peer interaction quality, and it is consistent with previous studies which show that parents with low behavior control or high psychological supervision increase children’s chances of contacting poor peers. Peer transmission affects adolescents’ behavior development ( Forgatch et al., 2016 ; Valdivia and Castello, 2020 ). Based on this, for adolescents with a better family environment, a moderate educational expectation of parents and children can protect peer interaction quality and academic achievement, while excessive educational expectation gap between parents and children will increase the psychological burden of adolescents and have a negative impact on academic achievement. It expands the research of the educational expectation difference between parents and children in the field of individual academic achievement, taking into account the objective environmental factors of the family. We should also include the potential role of important others (parental expectations and peer interaction) in a diversified environment.

Limitations and future research directions

This study has some limitations and needs to be improved in future research: First, based on the theoretical basis, this work longitudinally studies the influence mechanism of the family environment on academic achievement, which provides empirical support for relevant theoretical viewpoints. However, the self-report in the tracking data may be biased, and experimental research will be used in the next step to obtain more reliable conclusions. Second, the data used are not designed to investigate students’ academic achievements. Future research will design a special questionnaire to collect data to ensure more accurate data information so as to monitor students’ academic development.

In conclusion, this study preliminarily verifies that peer interaction quality plays an intermediary role between the family environment and academic achievement. The educational expectation gap between parents and self within the family moderated the pathways of family environment → peer interaction quality (the first half path), and family environment → academic achievement (the direct path). Using the national-level survey data, rather than limited to a specific area of a small sample survey, a multi-country comparative study is planned for the next step. And further follow-up the factors of achievement motivation, emotional engagement and enthusiasm level of adolescents’ individual learning, the Structural Equation Model (SEM) or Chain Multi-mediary Model will be established to better capture adolescents’ academic achievement jointly from two dimensions: family microsystem and important others (peer interaction quality), enrich and extend the views of relevant theories, to provide practical enlightenment for a more scientific grasp of adolescents’ academic achievement.

This study uses longitudinal data from a survey of Chinese adolescents. So far, two waves of data have been collected. The research objects were 9,449 eighth-grade students who were successfully tracked, to explore the relationship between adolescents’ family environment (baseline survey) and academic achievement (follow-up survey), and pay special attention to the mediating effect of peer interaction quality between them, and the moderating effect of the gap between self- and parental educational expectations in this process. The results showed that first, the family environment and peer interaction quality can positively predict students’ academic achievement. Second, peer communication quality of adolescents plays a partial mediating role in the process of the family environment positively affecting academic achievement, with a mediating ratio of 27.5%. Third, the educational expectation gap not only moderates the path of the family environment directly influencing academic achievement but also moderates the first half path of the family environment influencing academic achievement through peer interaction quality; that is, the existence of a high educational expectation gap within the family will inhibit the positive effect of the family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement and peer interaction quality.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Renmin University of China. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author contributions

LZ: conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, data curation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, visualization, funding acquisition, and guidance—original draft. WZ: writing advice. Both authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Acknowledgments

We thank the National Survey and Data Center at the Renmin University of China for providing the data from CEPS-2016, and we thank the students and teachers who devoted time and support to this study.

This study was funded by the Guizhou Province Research Fund (No. KYJJ2017014) and Innovation Fund Project for Graduate Students (No. YAN2018005).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.911959/full#supplementary-material

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There’s a Reason They’re Called ‘Gut’ Feelings

I n the 1800s, a French Canadian named Alexis St. Martin was shot in the stomach while at a fur trading post, when someone’s musket accidentally fired at close range. He survived, but his injuries resulted in a hole in his stomach wall. This provided an early window—literally—into how our emotions and mental health affect the gut. Through careful experiments, the surgeon William Beaumont discovered that St. Martin’s mental state had direct physiological consequences on his stomach’s activity: when he felt irritable, for example, his digestion slowed. Somehow, his emotional states were manifest in the specific, local biology of his gut.

Most people have experienced the gut consequences of their emotional feelings. Nerves before an exam might lead you to feel nauseous or even vomit. Profound sadness might make you lose your appetite, or perhaps cause a hunger impossible to satiate. Gut symptoms are common in mental health conditions, from appetite changes in depression to debilitating “psychosomatic” stomach pains. Many of our feelings are gut feelings.

But the gut doesn’t just respond to emotional feelings: it influences them, too. Take disgust. Disgust is visceral. Our stomach, like our heart, has a regular electrical rhythm; even just seeing something disgusting causes disruptions, called “dysrhythmias,” in this electrical signalling. Although disgust is crucial for survival—helping us avoid disease and stay alive—in many mental health conditions disgust becomes pathological. In obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), for instance, dirt or germs can preoccupy someone’s thoughts, causing symptoms like compulsive hand-washing. Self-disgust is common in depression and eating disorders. And even post-traumatic disorder can be brought on by profoundly disgusting traumas.

Pathological disgust is particularly hard to treat : exposure therapy and other psychological approaches are much less effective than for fear-based mental health problems. A couple years ago, working as a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, I wondered if abnormal signals from the stomach could be causing disgust avoidance. I ran an experiment to test this hypothesis, and found that changing someone’s gut activity with a common anti-nausea drug reduced their disgust avoidance . This could represent a new way of treating pathological disgust in mental health disorders. For example, an anti-nausea drug could be administered just before exposure therapy, enabling patients to engage with therapy under a more optimal gut state.

Read More: How I Learned to Listen to What My Gut Was Telling Me

So gut feelings are not “all in your mind”—but they are not “all in your gut,” either. Sensations from the gut are transmitted to the brain via the vagus nerve, the primary channel of information sent from the body to the brain. A second route to target “gut feelings” is by electrically stimulating this nerve, which changes the electrical rhythm of the stomach . That said,  the idea is not new: vagus nerve stimulation for patients with major depression dates back to 2000 .

A new theory published in November 2023 proposes that vagus nerve stimulation amplifies signals from the internal body to the brain, which helps us adapt our behaviour to its current challenges and needs. That could explain why the effects of vagus nerve stimulation are so wide-reaching, altering learning, memory, and motivation. That means amplifying signals from the gut using vagus nerve stimulation might improve mental health in some cases, but in others could be ineffective or even detrimental. Ultimately, we need to consider the state and needs of someone’s internal body before amplifying the body’s influence on the brain.

But the importance of the vagus nerve extends to even more established treatments: evidence from mice suggests that the most common type of antidepressant drugs (SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) require the vagus nerve to work. This, too, could begin to provide clues why antidepressants do, or don’t, work for a given person, and even help us understand why they might cause side effects in some people.

If the vagus nerve’s role helps us adapt to our bodily needs, perhaps the most important internal need of all is energy. One function of the gut—together with other organs—is metabolism, converting food to energy the body can use. There are mysterious and wide-ranging connections between our metabolic system and mental health. For example, the prevalence of depression in people with diabetes is two or three times higher than in the general population. It’s not clear why: diabetes could increase depression risk, or vice versa. My lab is currently testing a third possibility: that common metabolic factors might increase your risk of both depression and diabetes because of interactions between the body and the brain. If we’re right, this could open up avenues toward metabolic interventions that improve both physical and mental health.

Our brain and wider nervous system adapts to its circumstances, including the body’s internal, metabolic needs, as well as our experience of the environment around us. Because of this, your gut-brain connection is not static, but rather changes and adapts over time. A fascinating study in 2021 discovered that brain cells can re-activate gut inflammation that an animal has previously experienced. The mere “memory” of gut inflammation, stored in cells in the brain, induced the physical state in the body. So sometimes a “gut feeling” actually originates from the brain. This role of the brain in “gut feelings” means our brain has the capacity to produce dysfunctional gut symptoms via brain changes alone. This ability of the brain could have upsides as well, perhaps explaining why psychological therapy—which causes brain changes —can also treat some gut conditions .

Gut feelings originate from many sources: directly through the gut, through channels of communication between gut and brain, or even through the brain itself. In neuroscience, as we unravel the dynamic communications between gut and brain, we can begin to understand how these processes helped our ancestors survive—and how we could better harness them to improve emotional and mental wellbeing. A gut feeling might have many possible causes, but each of these represent a potential solution for mental health.

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Pew Research Center conducted this survey to explore Americans’ attitudes about religion’s role in public life, including politics in a presidential election year.

For this report, we surveyed 12,693 respondents from Feb. 13 to 25, 2024. Most of the respondents (10,642) are members of the American Trends Panel, an online survey panel recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses, which gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection.

The remaining respondents (2,051) are members of three other panels, the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, the NORC Amerispeak panel and the SSRS opinion panel. All three are national survey panels recruited through random sampling (not “opt-in” polls). We used these additional panels to ensure that the survey would have enough Jewish and Muslim respondents to be able to report on their views.

The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, religious affiliation and other categories.

For more, refer to the ATP’s Methodology and the Methodology for this report. Read the questions used in this report .

A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 80% of U.S. adults say religion’s role in American life is shrinking – a percentage that’s as high as it’s ever been in our surveys.

Most Americans who say religion’s influence is shrinking are not happy about it. Overall, 49% of U.S. adults say both that religion is losing influence and that this is a bad thing. An additional 8% of U.S. adults think religion’s influence is growing and that this is a good thing.

Together, a combined 57% of U.S adults – a clear majority – express a positive view of religion’s influence on American life.

The survey also finds that about half of U.S. adults say it’s “very” or “somewhat” important to them to have a president who has strong religious beliefs, even if those beliefs are different from their own. But relatively few Americans view either of the leading presidential candidates as very religious: 13% of Americans say they think President Joe Biden is very religious, and just 4% say this about former President Donald Trump.

Overall, there are widespread signs of unease with religion’s trajectory in American life. This dissatisfaction is not just among religious Americans. Rather, many religious and nonreligious Americans say they feel that their religious beliefs put them at odds with mainstream culture, with the people around them and with the other side of the political spectrum. For example:

• 48% of U.S. adults say there’s “a great deal” of or “some” conflict between their religious beliefs and mainstream American culture, up from 42% in 2020.
• 29% say they think of themselves as religious minorities, up from 24% in 2020.
• 41% say it’s best to avoid discussing religion at all if someone disagrees with you, up from 33% in 2019.
• 72% of religiously unaffiliated adults – those who identify, religiously, as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – say conservative Christians have gone too far in trying to control religion in the government and public schools; 63% of Christians say the same about secular liberals.

These are among the key findings of a new Pew Research Center survey, conducted Feb. 13-25, 2024, among a nationally representative sample of 12,693 U.S. adults.

This report examines:

• Religion’s role in public life
• U.S. presidential candidates and their religious engagement
• Christianity’s place in politics, and “Christian nationalism”

The survey also finds wide partisan gaps on questions about the proper role for religion in society, with Republicans more likely than Democrats to favor religious influence in governance and public life. For instance:

• 42% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that when the Bible and the will of the people conflict, the Bible should have more influence on U.S. laws than the will of the people. Just 16% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say this.
• 21% of Republicans and GOP leaners say the federal government should declare Christianity the official religion of the United States, compared with 7% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

Moral and religious qualities in a president

Almost all Americans (94%) say it is “very” or “somewhat” important to have a president who personally lives a moral and ethical life. And a majority (64%) say it’s important to have a president who stands up for people with their religious beliefs.

About half of U.S. adults (48%) say it is important for the president to hold strong religious beliefs. Fewer (37%) say it’s important for the president to have the same religious beliefs as their own.

Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to value religious qualities in a president, and Christians are more likely than the religiously unaffiliated to do so. For example:

• Republicans and GOP leaners are twice as likely as Democrats and Democratic leaners to say it is important to have a president who has the same religious beliefs they do (51% vs. 25%).
• 70% of White evangelical Protestants say it is important to have a president who shares their religious beliefs. Just 11% of religiously unaffiliated Americans say this.

Views of Biden, Trump and their religious engagement

Relatively few Americans think of Biden or Trump as “very” religious. Indeed, even most Republicans don’t think Trump is very religious, and even most Democrats don’t think Biden is very religious.

• 6% of Republicans and GOP leaners say Trump is very religious, while 44% say he is “somewhat” religious. Nearly half (48%) say he is “not too” or “not at all” religious.
• 23% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say Biden is very religious, while 55% say he is somewhat religious. And 21% say he is not too or not at all religious.

Though they don’t think Trump is very religious himself, most Republicans and people in religious groups that tend to favor the Republican Party do think he stands up at least to some extent for people with their religious beliefs. Two-thirds of Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP (67%) say Trump stands up for people with their religious beliefs “a great deal,” “quite a bit” or “some.” About the same share of White evangelical Protestants (69%) say this about Trump.

Similarly, 60% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, as well as 73% of Jewish Americans and 60% of Black Protestants, say Biden stands up for people with their religious beliefs a great deal, quite a bit or some.

Overall, views of both Trump and Biden are generally unfavorable.

• White evangelical Protestants – a largely Republican group – stand out as having particularly favorable views of Trump (67%) and unfavorable views of Biden (86%).
• Black Protestants and Jewish Americans – largely Democratic groups – stand out for having favorable views of Biden and unfavorable views of Trump.

Views on trying to control religious values in the government and schools

Americans are almost equally split on whether conservative Christians have gone too far in trying to push their religious values in the government and public schools, as well as on whether secular liberals have gone too far in trying to keep religious values out of these institutions.

Most religiously unaffiliated Americans (72%) and Democrats (72%) say conservative Christians have gone too far. And most Christians (63%) and Republicans (76%) say secular liberals have gone too far.

Christianity’s place in politics, and Christian nationalism

In recent years, “Christian nationalism” has received a great deal of attention as an ideology that some critics have said could threaten American democracy .

Despite growing news coverage of Christian nationalism – including reports of political leaders who seem to endorse the concept – the new survey shows that there has been no change in the share of Americans who have heard of Christian nationalism over the past year and a half. Similarly, the new survey finds no change in how favorably U.S. adults view Christian nationalism.

Overall, 45% say they have heard or read about Christian nationalism, including 25% who also have an unfavorable view of it and 5% who have a favorable view of it. Meanwhile, 54% of Americans say they haven’t heard of Christian nationalism at all.

One element often associated with Christian nationalism is the idea that church and state should not be separated, despite the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The survey finds that about half of Americans (49%) say the Bible should have “a great deal” of or “some” influence on U.S. laws, while another half (51%) say it should have “not much” or “no influence.” And 28% of U.S. adults say the Bible should have more influence than the will of the people if the two conflict. These numbers have remained virtually unchanged over the past four years.

In the new survey, 16% of U.S. adults say the government should stop enforcing the separation of church and state. This is little changed since 2021.

In response to a separate question, 13% of U.S. adults say the federal government should declare Christianity the official religion of the U.S., and 44% say the government should not declare the country a Christian nation but should promote Christian moral values. Meanwhile, 39% say the government should not elevate Christianity in either way. 1

Overall, 3% of U.S. adults say the Bible should have more influence on U.S. laws than the will of the people; and that the government should stop enforcing separation of church and state; and that Christianity should be declared the country’s official religion. And 13% of U.S. adults endorse two of these three statements. Roughly one-fifth of the public (22%) expresses one of these three views that are often associated with Christian nationalism. The majority (62%) expresses none.

Guide to this report

The remainder of this report describes these findings in additional detail.  Chapter 1  focuses on the public’s perceptions of religion’s role in public life. Chapter 2  examines views of presidential candidates and their religious engagement. And  Chapter 3  focuses on Christian nationalism and views of the U.S. as a Christian nation.

• The share saying that the government should declare Christianity the official national religion (13%) is almost identical to the share who said the government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation in a March 2021 survey that asked a similar question (15%). ↩

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

I Hope You All Feel Terrible Now

How the internet—and Stephen Colbert—hounded Kate Middleton into revealing her diagnosis

Updated at 4:04 p.m ET on March 22, 2024

For many years, the most-complained-about cover of the British satirical magazine Private Eye was the one it published in the week after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. At the time, many people in Britain were loudly revolted by the tabloid newspapers that had hounded Diana after her divorce from Charles, and by the paparazzi whose quest for profitable pictures of the princess ended in an underpass in Paris.

Under the headline “Media to Blame,” the Eye cover carried a photograph of a crowd outside Buckingham Palace, with three speech bubbles. The first was: “The papers are a disgrace.” The next two said: “Yeah, I couldn’t get one anywhere” and “Borrow mine, it’s got a picture of the car.” People were furious. Sacks of angry, defensive mail arrived for days afterward, and several outlets withdrew the magazine from sale. (I am an Eye contributor, and these events have passed into office legend.) But with the benefit of hindsight, the implication was accurate: Intruding on the private lives of the royals is close to a British tradition. We Britons might have the occasional fit of remorse, but that doesn’t stop us. And now, because of the internet, everyone else can join in too.

Read: Just asking questions about Kate Middleton

That cover instantly sprang to mind when, earlier today, the current Princess of Wales announced that she has cancer. In a video recorded on Wednesday in Windsor, the former Kate Middleton outlined her diagnosis in order to put an end to weeks of speculation, largely incubated online but amplified and echoed by mainstream media outlets, about the state of her health and marriage.

Kate has effectively been bullied into this statement, because the alternative—a wildfire of gossip and conspiracy theories—was worse. So please, let’s not immediately switch into maudlin recriminations about how this happened. It happened because people felt they had the right to know Kate’s private medical information. The culprits may include three staff members at the London hospital that treated her, who have been accused of accessing her medical records, perhaps driven by the same curiosity that has lit up my WhatsApp inbox for weeks. Everyone hates the tabloid papers, until they become them.

In her statement, Kate said that after her abdominal surgery earlier in the year, which the press was told at the time was “planned”—a word designed to minimize its seriousness—later tests revealed an unspecified cancer. She is now undergoing “preventative chemotherapy,” but has not revealed the progression of the disease, or her exact prognosis. “I am well,” she said, promising that she is getting stronger every day. “I hope you will understand that as a family, we now need some time, space and privacy while I complete my treatment.”

This news will surely make many people feel bad. The massive online guessing game about the reasons for Kate’s invisibility seems far less fun now. Stephen Colbert’s “spilling the tea” monologue , which declared open season on the princess’s marriage, should probably be quietly interred somewhere. The sad simplicity of today’s statement, filmed on a bench with Kate in casual jeans and a striped sweater, certainly gave me pause. She mentioned the difficulty of having to “process” the news, as well as explaining her condition to her three young children in terms they could understand. The reference to the importance of “having William by my side” was pointed, given how much of the speculation has gleefully dwelt on the possibility that she was leaving him or vice versa.

Read: The eternal scrutiny of Kate Middleton

However, the statement also reveals that the online commentators who suggested that the royal household was keeping something from the public weren’t entirely wrong. Kate’s condition was described as noncancerous when her break from public life was announced in late January . The updated diagnosis appears to have been delivered in February, around the time her husband, Prince William, abruptly pulled out of speaking at a memorial service for the former king of Greece. Today’s statement represents a failure of Kensington Palace to control the narrative: first, by publishing a photograph of Kate and her children that was so obviously edited that photo agencies retracted it, and second, by giving its implicit permission for the publication of a grainy video of the couple shopping in Windsor over the weekend. Neither of those decisions quenched the inferno raging online—in fact, they fed it.

Some will say that Kate has finally done what she should have done much earlier: directly address the rumors in an official video, rather than drip-feed images that raised more questions than they answered. King Charles III has taken a different approach to his own (also unspecified) cancer, allowing footage to be filmed of him working from home. But then again, Kate has cancer at 42, is having chemo, and has three young children. Do you really have it in you to grade her media strategy and find it wanting?

Ironically, Britain’s tabloid papers have shown remarkable restraint; as I wrote earlier this month , they declined to publish the first paparazzi pictures of Kate taken after her withdrawal from public life. They have weighted their decisions toward respect and dignity—more so than the Meghan stans, royal tea-spillers, and KateGate theorists, who have generated such an unstoppable wave of interest in this story that its final destination was a woman with cancer being forced to reveal her diagnosis. If you ever wanted proof that the “mainstream media” are less powerful than ever before, this video of Kate Middleton sitting on a bench is it.

Hearing Advisory: Oversight Committee to Hold Hearing Examining Joe Biden’s Role in His Family’s Influence Peddling

WASHINGTON—On March 20, 2024, at 10:00am ET, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability will hold a hearing titled, “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office. ” Following the impeachment inquiry’s interview and deposition phase, this hearing will examine evidence confirming Joe Biden lied to the American people about his family’s business dealings and in fact attended meetings, spoke on speakerphone, dined, and had coffee with his son’s foreign business associates who were collectively funneling the Bidens millions of dollars. The hearing will also examine discrepancies between Hunter Biden’s testimony and the testimonies of his business associates.

WHAT: Hearing titled “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office”

DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 2024

TIME: 10:00AM ET

LOCATION: 2154 Rayburn House Office Building

INVITED WITNESSES:

• Mr. Robert Hunter Biden
• Mr. Devon Archer
• Mr. Tony Bobulinski
• Mr. Jason Galanis

WATCH : The hearing will be open to the public and press and will be livestreamed online at https://oversight.house.gov/.

RSVP: Media must be congressionally credentialed and RSVP by Tuesday, March 19 at 5:00 PM ET.

Comer: The House Oversight Committee Has Called Hunter Biden’s Bluff

Comer Invites Hunter Biden & His Business Associates to Testify at a Hearing Examining Joe Biden’s Role in His Family’s Influence Peddling

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Guest Essay

Jack Smith and Robert Hur Are the Latest Examples of a Failed Institution

By Jack Goldsmith

Mr. Goldsmith was an assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration and is a co-author of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.”

On Tuesday, when the special counsel Robert Hur testifies before Congress, it will be high presidential-year political theater. This is just the latest example of the inversion of the aims of the special counsel office.

A special counsel is supposed to ensure that the Justice Department can credibly conduct sensitive investigations that are and that appear to be fair and apolitical. Yet special counsels (and their precursors) have for decades failed to achieve this goal — a failure that has now reached a peak with two special counsels having an extraordinary impact on a presidential election.

It is time to kill the special counsel institution.

Special counsels have had different labels over the years. They were first institutionalized when a post-Watergate statute created what came to be called an “independent counsel” appointed by a federal court upon application of the attorney general and removable by the attorney general or Congress only in extreme cases. This was the statute under which Lawrence Walsh investigated the Iran-contra scandal and Kenneth Starr investigated Whitewater and President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Both men — in calmer political times than today — drew sharp partisan attacks because of the political stakes and in response to what some said was norm-breaking behavior. Their principal decisions were perceived by different parts of the country to be wildly unfair for (in the case of Mr. Walsh) giving credence to unproven facts and allegations against people not charged or for (in the case of Mr. Starr) including salacious and politically damaging but legally irrelevant details in a referral to Congress that laid out grounds for Mr. Clinton’s possible impeachment.

Neither party shed a tear when the independent counsel statute lapsed in 1999. One consensus point at the time was that prosecutorial independence from the attorney general did nothing to arrest the perceived partisanship of the investigation but often did lead to over-investigation, undue commentary about targets and other instances of prosecutorial zeal. The supposed virtue of prosecutorial independence was viewed as a debilitating lack of political accountability.

The main aim of the 1999 regulations that govern special counsels today was to center accountability for sensitive investigations more firmly with the attorney general. The regulations gave the attorney general power to reverse a special counsel decision “so inappropriate or unwarranted under established departmental practices that it should not be pursued” and contemplated special counsel explanations of prosecutorial or declination decisions in a confidential report that the attorney general had discretion to disclose if in the “public interest.”

As Attorney General Janet Reno testified a few months before her department issued the regulations, centralizing accountability in the attorney general for high-profile decisions “goes to the very heart of our constitutional scheme” and is vital so that the blame for prosecutorial decisions can be assigned to someone who can be punished — the attorney general.

But the regulations have failed to accomplish this goal. They deny the attorney general “ day-to-day supervision ” of a special counsel. And attorneys general tend not to want the ultimate responsibility that Ms. Reno envisioned because it puts them more centrally in political cross hairs, which is contrary to the department’s ethos to appear apolitical. Checking special counsels’ excesses or failing to publish their reports invariably seems like political meddling or cover-up.

Attorney General William Barr, for example, believed that Robert Mueller’s report on Donald Trump departed from the department’s policy and legal views (part of their disagreement was about the special counsel’s need to make a “prosecution or declination decision”). But though he was not shy about taking politically controversial actions, he did not exercise his power to alter Mr. Mueller’s actions or keep the report confidential (with exceptions for redactions required by law and by continuing law enforcement interests).

Special counsels hold the real power in the relationship. This power — along with their singular focus on one matter, the extraordinary resources they are given and the special need to justify the intense investigation — leads them to make highly controversial decisions, often at the edges of propriety.

In a report after his investigation of Mr. Trump, Mr. Mueller drew justified criticism when he departed from the special counsel regulations by refusing to decide whether Mr. Trump had committed prosecutable crimes while commenting that his report did not “exonerate” him. The special counsel John Durham, appointed by Mr. Barr to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia inquiry, drew justified condemnation when his final report contained wide-ranging criticism of former officials beyond his remit to determine criminality.

The excesses in the Mueller and Durham reports deepened the perceived politicization of the Justice Department by different halves of the country — again, the opposite of the goal of the special counsel regulations. And then Congress churned the politics of the investigations when each party used testimonial appearances by Mr. Mueller and Mr. Durham to further its political narratives.

The same pattern with a potentially even bigger political impact is unfolding with two special counsels appointed by Mr. Garland — Jack Smith, to investigate Mr. Trump in connection with the events of Jan. 6 and classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, and Robert Hur, to investigate Mr. Biden’s possible mishandling of classified documents. Mr. Smith and Mr. Hur have both made controversial decisions that, once again, different halves of the country believe, with some basis, violate department norms.

Mr. Smith has sought to fast-track Mr. Trump’s trial related to the events of Jan. 6 in ways that Mr. Trump’s lawyers and others view as having a purpose of affecting the presidential election in violation of Justice Department rules .

Mr. Hur’s final report concluded that Mr. Biden did not commit a crime, but it made pejorative comments about uncharged conduct and the president’s “poor memory” and “diminished faculties” that the president’s attorneys, among many others, said “violate Department of Justice policy and practice.”

Perhaps public confidence in these investigations would have been no different, or perhaps worse, if the department through normal channels and under the direct supervision of Mr. Garland had handled them.

But we must consider the view that Mr. Garland most likely would have taken a more temperate approach to both matters. Political accountability in this context helps to ensure that a wide range of interests and values are considered. If Mr. Garland were fully and transparently in charge, he may have been less likely to have publicly justified Mr. Biden’s nonculpability in the harsh, unflattering terms that Mr. Hur used. And he may have been less likely to have rushed a trial of Mr. Trump that so clearly appears to help his boss, Mr. Biden, politically.

Law enforcement against current and former senior public officials should not be removed from politics in this sense. Political accountability and political judgment, as Janet Reno realized, are crucial to the vindication of the rule of law and the Justice Department’s integrity in high-profile investigations.

Ms. Reno’s proposition is about to be further tested under great pressure. The Supreme Court has delayed Mr. Trump’s trial for the events of Jan. 6 until it decides his claim to presidential immunity. If the court denies that claim, as most commentators predict, Mr. Smith can proceed to trial, perhaps even in the fall, in the heat of the presidential campaign.

Should the Biden Justice Department subject Mr. Biden’s opponent in the presidential race to a lengthy and damning trial just before the election?

Some will argue yes, on the grounds that the allegations against Mr. Trump go to the heart of American democracy and should be resolved in due course, regardless of the political implications.

Others will argue no, on the grounds that it is an irreversible catastrophe for American democracy, as well as the Justice Department, for one presidential administration to use criminal law to attack the president’s opponent in a campaign. That’s especially true since the president’s central campaign theme (Mr. Trump’s threat to democracy) will dovetail with and find everyday support in Mr. Smith’s courtroom presentation.

Whether to allow Mr. Trump’s trial to proceed during the campaign, should the Supreme Court deny Mr. Trump’s immunity, is a decision with grave, crosscutting, long-term but hard-to-fathom consequences for the election, for the norm of prosecutorial noninterference in elections, for our broader politics, for the possibility of evenhanded justice and for the reputation of the Justice Department.

This monumental decision turns in part on the proper application of the Justice Department norm about avoiding prosecutorial interference in elections. The department’s inspector general has described this norm as “not written or described in any Department policy or regulation” and has indicated that its contours are uncertain. But the special counsel’s lawyers recently claimed, in the classified documents case, that the norm did not apply to the selection of a trial date in the shadow of the election.

The decision about the proper interpretation of this obscure rule, especially its application to a presidential election, can and should be made openly and with express responsibility by Mr. Garland, the person nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and not by Mr. Smith, an attorney who lacks democratic pedigree. On this call, Mr. Garland should not hide behind his special counsel. He needs to own it, one way or the other.

Jack Goldsmith ( @jacklgoldsmith ) is a law professor at Harvard, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former assistant attorney general. He is a co-author of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.”

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