What I Believe: About Family Culture

Good parents want to  see their children exceed them. They want to see them attain heights they never reached. This is natural. It’s DNA. And it’s the impulse that creates what is often derisively referred to as “family values.” Parents sacrificing for their children and children reciprocating by caring for their parents when they are old is the core ethic of family-based cultures. It is also the reason some cultures have more success. It’s why Asians and Jews, to name two ethnic/cultural groups, outperform other groups in every category: education, longevity of family relationships, income, savings, and net worth. It is also why, where family culture is weak, those same measures of social success plummet. And it is why institutional attempts at “affirmative action” that ignore family culture generally make matters worse.