Tan Wen Rui/ Are Asian family values the future?

So, are Asian family values the future for the entire world’

I feel that Asian family values are not the future for the entire world.

Firstly, Asian family values such as different generations living together are changing too, especially in Britain. Research shows that the number of elderly relatives living with their children in Britain is reducing rapidly. Thus, how can a rapidly changing Asian family values be the future for the entire world? These values would no longer be the same in years to come and can these new values be the future for the entire world?

Secondly, the values are not only belonging to Asian families, families in Britain also do share similar views. Thus the values of ‘ older ones nurturing the new ones, with the young in turn caring for the elders’ are not classified as only the Asian family values as the Western families do value them too. Therefore, these values are not Asian in nature but universal hence I do not agree that Asian family values only are the future for the entire world.

Thirdly, both Asian and Western families did share these similar values. For example, in 1950s, people in Britain did live by these values and that there were many’ life term marriages between couples living with their children, possibly accompanies by one set of grandparents and very low divorce rates’. However, these ‘traditional’ white family structures have changed swiftly, and in fact, more rapidly than the Asian families and they no longer practised such values. Thus, I do not agree that Asian family values are the future for the entire world. If they were the future for the entire world, families in Britain that hold on to these same set of values in the 1950s would not have been influenced and changed.

Lastly, the ‘traditional nuclear family is the ideal family for a stable society’, whereby a traditional nuclear family is where a wife, husband, and their two or three children serenely under one roof. The values of a traditional nuclear family are also the future for the entire world, not just the Asian family values.