You Have Never Seen Family Values Like This Before

Nine care visionaries explore non-patriarchal, expansive, inclusive visions for a pro-all-kinds-of-families, joyful and abundant future

Over the past month or so, there has been a lot of dissecting and refuting a certain politician’s comments on what family life should look like in America.

Throughout this conversation, to which I have contributed, I’ve often observed that the left is mostly playing defense. We respond, we negate, we say that’s not true, that this certain person got this wrong and that wrong, and how that vision of family values is sexist, heteronormative, racist, etc., etc. What I am not seeing enough of, and to go all the way with this sports metaphor here, is the left playing offense.

And yet, we actually have a lot to say when it comes to a substantial vision of family values. 

My recent book, “When You Care,” doesn’t just include my ideas about what it would mean to really value care without reverting back to the patriarchal days of yore when women felt compelled to care, and care came at a huge cost. It is chock full of big thinkers on care, including economists, philosophers, theologians and more, who have their own beautiful, expansive, forward-facing ideas about family values. There is so much BIG CARE ENERGY on the left, and yet we too infrequently say it out loud, directly, in big, bold terms.

With this in mind, I asked some of my favorite care thinkers to share a definition of family values with me. None of these are intended to be all-encompassing visions, but rather offerings from multiple perspectives that, together, will help inform our definition of family values for the 21st century.

Recently in the New Yorker, Jay Caspian King wrote: “... can middle-class liberals describe their family values?” This post is an affirmative, declarative answer to that question. Yes, we can. 

Here are eight of some of my favorite care thinkers on FAMILY VALUES, plus me to start:

Real family values means we are able to provide good care for the people who depend on us, and have the necessary support to do so. Real family values is making sure we, as a society, care for caregivers too, because when someone is dependent on us, we ourselves are no longer independent and need more help. Lastly, real family values means we are committed to creating a world in which caregivers are best positioned to find meaning, self-worth and even, sometimes, joy in the care experience. We give through care and we get from care—but not when we are overwhelmed by it.

Me, Elissa, author of “When You Care” and also a hard +1 to everything below. Follow me on Instagram here. 

Real family values are rooted in fairness, ownership and partnership. Those who hold these family values center the family as their most important organization and recognize that everyone benefits when care is shared by all. 

Eve Rodsky, author of “Fair Play.” Follow her on Instagram. 

As a mother of four, raising my children to be kind, responsible, and compassionate individuals who will one day grow into remarkable partners, parents, and professionals contributing positively to their communities, family values hold a deeply personal meaning for me. Family values are about the core of who we are—our beliefs, our truths, and the principles that guide us, not just for our own lives but for the world we wish to shape. These values are the compass that directs our decisions and actions, influencing how we approach personal challenges, professional ambitions, the way we parent, and how we show up for others.

Family values should not be a political weapon, wielded to divide or to claim moral high ground. Instead, they should reflect a commitment to love, empathy, and the well-being of all families, regardless of background or circumstance. To me, protecting families means creating a society where every child has the opportunity to thrive, where parents are supported in their roles, and where our collective decisions, including those at the ballot box, are driven by a genuine care for the future of all families, not just our own.

Blessing Oyeleye Adesiyan, CEO + Founder, Mother Honestly Group Inc. The Care Gap | Caring Blocks | Caring Africa. Follow her here on Substack and here on Instagram.

For me, real family values means that we are ensuring every family has that most American of values: the freedom of self-determination. Families should not have to choose where to live or how many children to have due to the availability and affordability of a child care slot. Families should be able to spend quality time together, and pass down traditions and stories, instead of being utterly exhausted from working staggered shifts because there is no national paid family leave law in this country. We are a stronger, healthier country with stronger, healthier communities when we have strong, healthy families; that means that we need to be coming together—and rolling up our tax dollars—to support family flourishing for all.

Elliot Haspel, author and Senior Fellow at the family policy think tank Capita. Follow him on Twitter here. 

For me *real* family values boils down to embracing and accepting our differences — in all the ways they show up whether it’s race or religion or who makes up a family. I’d also throw in encouraging the development of individuality within a family, and orientating one’s behaviors toward an internal value system (eg. an intrinsic sense of self worth) as opposed to external validation or superficial notions of success. And maybe a couple more — respect for nature and the animal world, appreciation for different cultures, and a curiosity for understanding others points of view.

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin MD, author of “Real Self Care.” Follow her on Substack here, and Instagram here.

Real family values are about understanding that what matters most in life is how we show up for the people we love, and that to do that, we need systems and spaces that enable us to be our most interdependent, inevitably disabled, creative, committed selves.

Courtney Martin, author of many great books. Follow her on Substack here. 

If you value families, you must value one of the most important parts of family life— the health and wellbeing of EVERYONE in the family. Real Family Values means supporting structures and systems and cultural shifts aiming to relieve the weight of the health-affecting stress load that our modern society piles onto parents, especially mothers.

Molly Dickens, stress psychologist and maternal health advocate. Follow her on Substack here.

Family values stretch beyond any bounds of prescriptive family structures. To believe in family values is to believe all people deserve care, not only if it can prove their worthiness, but because we are all inherently worthy of having our needs met. Family values are values of collective care. They are acknowledgements of our interconnectedness and responsibility for one another. A future founded on true family values is one that provides for the needs of all people.

Laura Danger, educator and creator. Follow her on Instagram here, and TikTok here. Check out her podcast here.

When I think about family values, I start at the beginning, the very beginning. Human beings have only ever been able to survive, learn, progress, and build wondrous civilizations because we helped each other. Academics credit early human survival to the fact that we are what they call “cooperative breeders.” Early humans lived in small bands and worked together to find food, to construct houses, and, most importantly, to care for each other. It wasn’t just parents, but everyone else—“alloparents” — who loved and looked after children, the disabled, infirm, and elderly. Grandmothers and their labor may have been the deciding factor in whether people needing care lived or died.

So when I think of “family values,” my vision is so much different than the conservative pinched and constrained breadwinner-homemaker heterosexual cis-gendered couple living on their own in the suburbs with a handful of well-mannered kids. My vision is big, wonderful, messy, exuberant, and complicated. To truly value families is, at its most basic level, to honor human freedom and respect the choices each individual, each family chooses. Valuing families means celebrating and supporting our deepest human desire for love, connection and belonging, and the bonds that tie us together, however they be constituted, through love, blood, choice, or circumstance. The writer Andrew Solomon once told me of a man whose heart was bursting he yearned so much to be a father and part of a family. Given his circumstances, his children were born of sperm and egg donors and delivered via surrogate. “How can you be our father?” his children asked. His answer? “You were my idea.” And that is enough.

Brigid Schulte, director of the Better Life Lab and author of the upcoming book “Over Work:Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life.”

Last but not least, I recently read two great pieces on Family Values: this one, from Haley Swenson, and this one, from Reshma Saujani of Moms First.

Have a vision for REAL FAMILY VALUES? Share it in the comments below.

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Thanks for reading MADE W/ CARE. If you like the above please share, like, comment and subscribe! The conversation about how to really value care and support caregivers has really, historically, speaking, just begun. We need all the bright, creative minds we can get. And if you are looking for a deep dive into how we left care out of the human story and what it would look like to place it at the center, where it belongs!, check out my new book “When You Care.”