Family values
sociological concept
Family values, sometimes referred to as familial values, are traditional or cultural values that pertain to the family's structure, function, roles, beliefs, attitudes, and ideals. Additionally, the concept of family values may be understood as a reflection of the degree to which familial relationships are valued within an individual's life.
In the social sciences and American political discourse, the conventional term "traditional family" describes the nuclear family: a child-rearing environment composed of a leading father, a homemaking mother, and their nominally biological children. A family deviating from this model is considered a non-traditional family.
Definition
Several online dictionaries define "family values" as the following:
"the moral and ethical principles traditionally upheld and passed on within a family, as fidelity, honesty, truth, and faith."
"values especially of a traditional or conservative kind which are held to promote the sound functioning of the family and to strengthen the fabric of society."
"values held to be traditionally taught or reinforced within a family, such as those of high moral standards and discipline."
In politics
Familialism or familism is the ideology that puts priority on family and family values. Familialism advocates for a welfare system where families, rather than the government, take responsibility for the care of their members.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, the banner of family values has been used by rightward political coalitions to express opposition to abortion, birth control, environmentalism, feminism, pornography, comprehensive sex education, divorce, LGBTQ, same-sex marriage, civil unions, so-called "gender ideology", secularism, and atheism. American conservative and nationalist groups have made inroads promoting these policies in Africa since the early 1990s, describing them as African family values.
The phrase family values originated with the 1992 Republican National Convention, for their "Family Values Night", featuring Barbara Bush as the keynote speaker. In the short term the phrase was widely panned, and at the time the staying power of the idea was underestimated.
“Family values” enters the record as sociological concept. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Family, values and sociological can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1811480. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Family values” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.