MODULE 10 & 11

A NATION-STATE
A NATION-STATE VALUE ASYSTEM:
VALUE SYSTEM: A
CULTURAL
HERITAGE
CULTURAL HERITAGE

The Family: A strong Tradition

- The Filipino family reflects a strong tradition, the intense family tie. For the Filipino
family gives its members much more than food, clothing, and shelter.
- It gives security and a sense of belonging and love and affection manifested in the honor
and respect given to parents and elders, in the care given to children, in generosity
towards relatives in need and in the sacrifices endured for the family’s sake.
- The family helps its members grow healthy minds and bodies and teachers them to
know the right from wrong.
- Filipino family may have changed with the onslaught of modernity but many of its
traditions are still with us, some worth keeping, others deserving of reassessment.

The Extended Family

- Is still with us.

- Grandparents stay with their children except a few who choose not to be a burden to
their and thus have homes of their own, but the “closeness” remains.

Changes in Family Life

- The industrial revolution in the west gradually ushered in a new age for many countries ,
including the Philippines. The people got “citified.”
- They got attracted to industrial jobs in the city.

Microcosm of Society

- As a microcosm of society, we can think of the family in four general concepts: a

decision-making body; an economic group; a social unit ; and an anthropological unit.
(Senesh, 1971)

Decision-Making Body

- Life for parents certainly is simpler when they make all the decisions.
- But unless children get practice in making simple decisions, they will never learn to make
the big ones.

Independence Rest on a foundation of skills that parents must help their children practice every day
(Kersey, 1986)
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1. Mastering Tasks
- The “I can do it’ attitude can be fostered by providing opportunities wherein the learning
process is more important than the activity itself.
2. Making Decisions
- Decisions theory states that everybody what he thinks best at the time.
3. Working within limits
- A world without boundaries is a scary place; so with a home where anything goes.

Some suggestions to parents are the following:

a. Decide whether your children need physical or spoken limits;
b. Let your children participate in the setting of limits ;
c. Reward staying within limits; don’t just punish transgressions.
4. Doing a job
- Having a job, especially one that is paid for in gratitude, is a well-worn road to
independence.
5. Influencing Others
- We all carry in our heads
- In large part, this image is a reflection of how others treat us.
- Parents can help their children develop a positive self-image by treating them as people
worthy of their respect.

An economic Group

- The family is a producing, distributing and consuming body of goods and services.
- The wage earner is usually the father.
- His compensation usually depends on his occupation, experience and further training.

The pattern of expenditure depends on prioritization of needs as follows:

a. Food
b. Fuel
c. Light and water
d. Medical care
e. Education
f. Clothing
g. Personal care
h. Household furnishing
i. Equipment

To live satisfactorily with money, every family member need recognize that:

1. An understanding of our personal attitude helps us to manage money

2. Decisions about spending call for thought, planning and care.
3. Problems with money occur when our attitudes toward it are not realistic;
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4. Thinking of money as a ticket to uncontrolled freedom and license can be degrading and self
–defeating.

Economic behavior of families

- Can contribute to the strength and well-being of the nation because economy looks to
the family as a market for is goods and services and a source of capital for not only
business enterprise but also government programs and services.

Income level and occupation are important social-class determinants. Using these two
criteria, it is possible to identify three classes with each divided in to two, as follows (Hunt
and Metcalf, 1995)

UPPER = Upper-upper class

=Lower-upper class

Middle= Upper-middle class

=Lower-middle class

Lower =Upper-lower class

=lower-lower class

The division in the upper class exists because there is an old aristocracy, the upper-uppers
which have both ancestral lineage and wealth and there is the “new rich, the lower-uppers’
which may even have more money than the “old rich.”

Upper-middle subclass- consists of successful persons in business and the professions who
are prosperous but not wealthy, the mainstay of the community.

Lower-middle subclass- is chiefly made up of persons with white-collar jobs who do not
make much money: clerks, salesmen, stenographers and farmers of moderate means.

Upper-lowers- are mainly skilled and semiskilled workmen who work manually but are
thought to be respectable. They may earn more than lower middles.

Lower-lower subclass -consists of unskilled or semiskilled workers who are unschooled.

Warner and associates (1953) – refer to the upper class and the upper middle subclass as
the “level above the common man” the lower-middle and the upper-lower subclasses as the
“common man level” and the lower-lower subclass as the “level below the common man.

Burgis (bourgeoisie)

- is not quit the upper-upper class since we have no castles, no royalty, no aristocrat
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- it is more the lower-upper and the upper-middle who have the trappings of the
aristocracy-accumulation of things and property.
- As a class which was a product of a new economic mode- mercantilism and the new
industrial dispensation-the bourgeoisie lacked high culture and the refinement of the
aristocrat.

Masa (proletariat )

- The catchwords of a Filipino subculture, the parliament of the streets.

- is comprised by the lower-middle and the lower class, the populace of job seekers, workers
and the peasantry.

Social Unit

- we all want democratic families, families where each member respects the rights and
opinions of all other members, families where the members work together “one for all
and all for one.”

To understand the internal dynamics of this social unit there are three main dyadic
relationships.
a. Husband-wife/father-mother
- Is of course the marriage relationship.
- This union will always be there till death unlike parent-child relationship which changes
when children form families of their own.
b. Parent child
- Training the child to conform to the ways of the adults, is the responsibility of both the
father and mother although older members of the family participate in many ways to
achieve it.
c. Siblings-sibling
- The ties that bind siblings to each other revolve about the common saying, “blood is
thicker than water.”
- Brothers and sisters help one another, protect each other and work together for the
happiness of the family.

Extended Family: Grandparent-grandchild, husband-mother-in-law, aunt-nephew and so

on.

An anthropological Unit

- One family differs from another since each family is guided by different ideas and
customs as it develops from a conjugal pair, expanding with the birth of children,
narrowing as they are married off and finally dissolving as the original pair age and die.
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- There are big families and small families depending on attitudes towards family
pplannpalnning. Big families
Planning.
- Big families are an economic potential.
- Small families can be given the advantage of health and education.
- There are the slum dwellers that are hostile and uncharitable.
- There is the middle class home secure in its well-being.
- There are urban and rural families with their geographical location affecting their
mobility ,economic activity, settlement pattern and social relationship.

There are different national families Different religious families

- American - Muslim
- Japanese - Christian
- Indian -Buddhist

*there are authoritarian, egalitarian and permissive families depending on the

personality development of the family heads.

Postscript to the Adolescent Family Member

- Let us look at the teenager as a member of the family with his second lessons in
citizenship ( the first ones are those in childhood).
- You are no longer children. But the home is still one of the most powerful influences on
your life.
- And you are now old enough to practice your citizenship in the home in many interesting
ways:
a. You can help with the family finances even if you do nothing more than understand
about them and be careful with money.
b. You can help spruce up the home and the yard, see to it that you room is orderly.
c. And you can take in family decisions by expressing you opinion and listening to the
arguments of the others and going along with the decision of the group.

Sharing

- To get more to the meaning of home life.

- Sharing the family income, the family time, and the family effort fairly is a give and take
affair.

Getting along with parents

- Your parents were teenagers once.

- They faced with their own parents the same problems you face with your parents.
- Now they look at life with grown-up eyes. They understand you better than you may
think.
- When they deal with you and your problems, they are thinking of the years ahead when
you will be taking your own place in a world of grow-ups.
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Getting along with Brothers and sisters

- Often brothers and sisters fight like cats and dogs. But when someone else brothers any
one of these brothers and sisters, they’ll gang up on this someone else and make him
pay for his sin.
- Growing up with brothers and sisters is not always a happy experience. It’s perfectly
normal.
- It happens in the best of adjusted families. Bad feelings do develop and the important
thing is to get rid of these feelings as quickly as possible. Holding on to bad feelings can
ruin growing-up lives. Enjoy your brothers and sisters. Getting along with them helps you
get along with others.

Establishing friendships outside the family

- You want to be liked. We all do. We want friends. Much of our happiness depends on
how well we have built friendships, something we have worked for.
- There no way to tell exactly how to become likable. But here are some principles to
think about:
a. Build friendship with a few people whose interests are closest to your own. Branch
out from there. If you plant the seeds of friendships well, they will grow.
b. Be cheerful and even-handed. Keep your troubles and grumbles to yourself. Gripes
won’t build friendships for you, but a happy disposition will.
c. Be kind and considerate to others. Bring those who are short of friends into your
group. Help make life satisfying for them.

Parents and dates

- As you build friendships, you are still a member of your family. Your parents take an
interest in your friends.
- And it is natural that they will be interested in your dates.

Courtship and Marriage

- It may interest you to know more about courtship and marriage among the different
peoples of the world and of different climes, historically.

Self-discipline in Home Democracy

- The only really worthwhile discipline is the kind you learn to impose on yourself-self-
discipline.
- Whether it is a question about money or about dating or a question that concerns all of
you in the family, the democratic way is talk it over with your parenst.
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ACTIVITY

Direction: Answer the following questions.

1. How many children would you like to have?

2. Do you think your parents were good parents?
3. What are some things that your parents did that you would never do?
4. Would you like to raise your children in the way that you were raised?
5. What qualities would you like to have as father / mother?
6. Do you help your children with homework?
7. Do you think that children should help with chores around the house?
8. What would you do if your son or daughter gets a tattoo?
9. What are some things that your children aren’t allowed to do?
10.Do you often read to your children? / Did you often read to your children?
11.Do you think you spoil your children?
12.Should people get married in their early 20’s?
13.Do you prefer spending time with your family or friends?
14.What’s the best age to get married? Why?
15.Which is better: being married or being single? Why?