Do liberals value the TRADITIONAL FAMILY or is it ANYTHING GOES?

Question

I personally value the traditional family unit - Dad, Mom, and kids and teach my kids that this is what to shoot for.
Don't liberals want their kids happily married, white picket fence, and all that? It sure doesn't seem like they do...

Answer 1

How could you possibly come to that conclusion? I'm sorry, but that is a weak, weak attempt to discredit Liberals---again!

Just like Conservatives, Liberals come in all shapes and sizes--gay and straight, family-oriented or not, etc. etc. (It isn't even worth going into...you seem to have your "mind" [??] made up!)

As a very liberal Liberal, I want my kids to be HAPPY! I'd like to see my kids SMART! I'd like to see my kids QUESTION EVERYTHING! I'd like to see my kids compassionate, giving, loving, tender, successful, married if they want to be, etc.

I LOVE family gatherings, especially Christmas, Thanksgiving, and 4th of July! I LOVE my children and grandchildren! I was happily married for over 20 years. (and, as a bi-racial couple, both quite liberal, we were the "straightest" people on the block when it came to "traditional values")

Now, I'm tired of having to justify myself to conservatives who want to make me look like a "bad" person.

Oh yeah, and I hate abortion, too. AND I'm a rabid feminist.

You figure it out; hint: I'm a real person and an INDIVIDUAL!!!

Answer 2

I don't hate traditional family values but they do have their faults. I have often found that a lot of places where family values are practices ad nauseum are very cold and insolent to people who, for a variety of reasons, do not have so much family. I can't sympathize with every single mom but being single can be scorned in such a society. Liberalism of family values has both helped and hurt. Nowhere are family values more cherished than in Utah. However among Mormons, being single is borderline sinful. Just about anywhere, a single person has an uphill battle to prove he is sane, not dangerous to kids and responsible.

Answer 3

Yes they do for the most part. I personally never wanted kids (and had none) and didn't care if I got married (but I did!) but the white picket fence thing is seriously outdated. I think if I did have kids I'd want them to learn to think for themselves and make good choices. If that meant they were happy gays who worked in a circus and lived in an Airstream, that's okay with me. Or they could get married and have 2.5 children and have their own white picket fence and work 40 hours a week in an office. Whatever works for them. As long as they can think for themselves and can manage their own lives and support their lifestyle, great! If that means anything goes then I guess you must think your kids should think just like you and want what you want and live like you live and believe what you believe? I hope that's not what you mean!

Answer 4

It would help if you read a lot of books and learned a lot about other cultures. It will really change your perspective and help you understand the value of diversity. Your definition of "traditional" is unique to your own culture and represents to you the ideal family. However, in other cultures, like for example unlike the American nuclear family, the extended family is considered the ideal family system, wherein the grandparents are the authority and the system is hierarchical. Also, just because people are not divorced and live in white picket fenced houses, doesn't mean they don't have extra-marital affairs, declare bankruptcy, drink, beat their wives, etc. As a matter of fact, the number one leader of the Christian Right is Prez Bush who is the number one war-mongerer.

Answer 5

Tradition is a JOKE to our leaders. example... G. Bush "the Constitution is just a G D piece of paper". The Supreme Court throws out the ten Commandments, the list goes on and on, this wasn't perpetrated by liberals alone. absolute power corrupts absolutely. Mom and apple pie is only for the highest bidder these days. Tradition is just that, tradition, without it we as Americans have no identity and will fall for ANYTHING no matter what the cost including domesticated slavery. The most Valuable thing we claim to have is freedom, we sacrifice our children for and to that idea and all government says is that we must give up freedom for security, and when you do that, you have neither and our tradition is LOST and it is sad that revolution is the only way to get it back.

Answer 6

You don't seem to know a single liberal, let alone how they feel about anything. From reading your questions, it seems like you need to go back to that stage of being silent, but this time not while listening to Fox News or Limbaugh or whomever is teaching you to chant these really silly lame ideas.

Or, at least, please elucidate how you arrived at your premise that liberals don't want their children happily married.

The difference you can't seem to get is that liberals say - hey, if you don't want to get married and have kids, don't. hey, if you're gay, fine. What we want for ourselves and our children is one thing - we don't desire to criminalize, marginalize, closetize, second-class-citizen-ize people who are different from us and want different things.

Since the dozens of families in our unschooling homeschool group are liberal, since we spend our lives surrounded by these people for whom family is everything, your whole premise is laughable. Except it is heartbreaking when I think of the recent loss of my precious precious father, a strong liberal and devoted American to whom family was everything and I have to realize that there are still people, like you, who are susceptible to this kind of hate speech you're taught, akin to the Europeans believing Jews made matzohs from the blood of gentile children.

Perhaps you are really just a 15 year old trying out an identity here on Yahoo. Or, you've never been outside your little hometown.

Answer 7

I want my children to be happy and healthy. I know enough to know that isn't just a one-size-fits-all image. Sure, it's quite possible they'll enter into a heterosexual marriage and have kids (though I would cringe at the white picket fence...it's a bit much). So no, I don't value it above any and all other lifestyles. If being with someone of the same gender, or living with someone without being married, or simply being single, or raising goats on a hippie commune is what they feel is right for them, then I'll support them.

Answer 8

If I have to choose between a 1) TRADITIONAL FAMILY and 2) ANYTHING GOES, I pick Door Number 2. I grew up in a "traditional" family and unlike them with their wonderful "Christian" traditions, I don't yell, taunt, bully, mock, slap, kick, beat or rape children. Unlike many of the "traditional" familes that I've been around, I do my best to protect, respect, and love the people I now call my "family". I want my chosen family to be happy, but I don't care if they do anything remotely traditional, as long as they are peaceful, loving, and responsible.

Answer 9

Everyone would like the Leave it to Beaver family. But life happens!! It has nothing to do with values. Just look at most of the so called political leaders who supposedly had values and were all in the closet. For instance Ted Hagard!! GAY!! Newt divorced his wife on her death bed. There is a long list. People are people and to judge another is not a very good value to have. As a matter of fact it is one of the 10 commandments. I suggest you read up on them and learn some real values.

Answer 10

I think they do... it doesn't always happen that way though...

you always seem so detached and it seems that you think all poor people are liberals... which this really does come down to a poverty issue, since those in poverty are many times more likely to both, be from a non-traditional family, and form one themselves...

I come from an area with many nontraditional families... poverty and it's conservative for the most part...

now, just because they all don't have traditional families, it doesn't mean they aren't valued...

it always seemed to me that the pressures and pit falls of poverty are much harder on marriage... and those in poverty just don't have the same family base...

this goes for conservatives and liberals...

I think everyone wants the American dream... but it's thousands of times more complicated than just "working hard" when you're on the other side of the fence...