The human world has always been a place of struggle – the struggle of those whose instincts tell them what to do, come what may, and those striving for the respect going both ways. This has formed the societies all around the world, different yet rather similar in their core, looking for tolerance, respect and equity. They passed laws regulating social relationships; they had unwritten laws, too. But this was never enough. Until the people at last found the perfect means of translating the global values into every Everyman.
Family. Family – a primary social group consisting of parents and their offspring, the principal function of which is provision for its members; it is also a group of persons living together in one household. Thus 99% of all human beings are born, raised and live most of their lives in the families, families form the coming to the world new people’s (children’s) ideas of good and evil, right and wrong, which makes it vital to influence the whole families instead of the individual beings.
And if tolerance, respect and equity are the family values, the offspring tend to be then tolerant, respectful and just in their future lives, just like when among the family values prevail intolerance and disregard, the offspring tend to develop into ill-mannered, malfunctioning members of the society.
Another good point about the families is that their members, especially children, kind of absorb the values predominant in their family imbibing them with the mother’s milk, not learn them as a specific and boring set of judgments godsent for the god-knows-which sins they have committed, which makes it much easier and more natural for them to get and follow them. All in all, I do think the quote given in the headline is right, that is why I tried to prove it in the passages above.
Yet, this is mostly true for the younger children. Most people of pre-puberty age onwards are much more influenced by the society and its institutes, rather than their families, so when we speak of raising tolerant, respectful and just people we mainly speak of the upbringing of the younger children, not the adults and especially adolescents. Anyway, the method discussed is probably the most effective and useful, and I vote for it with both hands.
