John Witte | Michael Welker | Stephen Pickard (Eds.): The Impact of the Family (Leseprobe)

John Witte, Jr. 

Michael Welker 

Stephen Pickard 

(Eds.) 

THE IMPACT 

of the FAMILY 

on Character Formation, Ethical Education, 

and the Communication of Values 

in Late Modern Pluralistic Societies

Contents 

Acknowledgments ....................................... 9 

Preface to the Series ...................................... 11 

Part One: The Place of the Family in Modern Society 

John Witte Jr. 

“It Takes aSociety to Raise aFamily”: The Multidimensional 

Family Sphere ............................................ 17 

Robert N. Bellah 

The Family in the Matrix of Habit and History ................ 43 

Part Two: The Role of the Family in Child 

Development and Moral Character Formation 

Sabina Pauen 

The Beginnings of Norm and Value Formation in Human 

Ontogeny and the Role of the Family ....................... 59 

Robyn Fivush 

Family Storytelling and the Communication of Values ......... 75 

Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore 

Children, Chores, and Character Formation: AChild-Centered 

Perspective .............................................. 89 

Marcia J. Bunge 

Communicating Values by Honoring Families and the Full 

Humanity of Children: Lessons from Robust Theologies and 

Detrimental Developments among Protestants ............... 105 

Stephen G. Post 

Love Begets Love, and It Starts in the Family ................. 127

6 Contents 

Margaret F. Brinig 

Imitation and Value Formation within the Family ............. 139 

Eugene C. Roehlkepartain 

Empty Vessels or Active Agents? Amplifying Young People’s 

Agency in Character Development in their Families ........... 147 

Andreas Kruse 

Old Age within the Polyphony of Sensations, Experiences, and 

Commitments in Favor of the Neighbor ..................... 163 

Michael J.Broyde 

“Hearts Will Never Be Practical until They Can Be Made 

Unbreakable”: What Does Parental Love Really Mean in Hard 

Cases in the Jewish Tradition? ............................. 179 

Part Three: Family Changes and Challenges and Their 

Impact on Character Formation 

Jean Bethke Elshtain 

The Heart of the Matter: The Family as the Site of Fundamental 

Ethical Struggle .......................................... 197 

Patrick Parkinson 

The Role of Public Policy in Supporting Safe, Stable, and 

Nurturing Families inLate Modern Societies ................. 211 

Gordon S. Mikoski 

“The Times They Are A-Changin’”: Shifting Patterns of 

Partnering and Parenting in the United States and Implications 

for Religious Transmission and Theology .................... 223 

Enola G. Aird 

Toward aRenaissance for the African American Family: 

Confronting the Lie of Black Inferiority ...................... 233 

Stephen L. Carter 

Religion, Education, and the Primacy ofthe Family ........... 247

Contents 7 

Patrick Hornbeck 

Religious Liberty and Family Diversity: The Legal and 

Theological Disputes ...................................... 255 

Helen Alvaré 

Equality Alongside Diversity to Build aStronger Union: The 

Role of the Family in the Melting Pot ....................... 275 

Katja Patzel-Mattern and Sabina Pauen 

Family Structures and Values in Postwar German Society ...... 291 

Nadia Marais 

“A Most Sacred Covenant”? John Calvin’s Rhetoric of Marriage 

and Its Implications for Transmitting Values in South Africa .... 313 

Thomas Xutong Qu 

ARenaissance of the Confucian Family? APreliminary 

Observation upon Current Discourses about Family in 

Contemporary China ...................................... 333 

Contributors ............................................. 345

Acknowledgments 

This volume was made possible by generousgrants from the Karl-Schlecht Foundation 

and the University of Heidelberg. We express our deep thanks to Professor 

Karl Schlecht and the university administration. 

We thank Georgetown University Press and the Emory Center for the Study 

of Law and Religion for permission to repurpose portions of the chapters by the 

late Professors Robert Bellah and Jean Bethke Elshtain, and to the Emory Law 

Journal and the Center for permission to include revised versions of the chapters 

by Enola Aird and Stephen Carter. 

We are grateful to our colleagues at the Forschungszentrum Internationale 

und Interdisziplinäre Theologie (FIIT) in Heidelberg for their leadership of this 

volume and the broader project of which is it is part. Our deep thanks as well to 

Dr. Gary S. Hauk, senior editor, and Ms. Amy Wheeler, chief of staff, in the Center 

for the Study of Law and ReligionatEmory University for their hard work on 

this volume. It was aprivilege to learn from each of our chapter authors, and to 

work with our editorial friends atEvangelischen Verlagsanstalt in Leipzig to 

bring this volume to press.

Preface to the Series 

Five hundred years ago, Protestant reformerMartin Luther argued that “threeestates” 

(drei Stände) lie at the foundation of ajust and orderly society – marital 

families, religious communities, and political authorities. Parents in the home; 

pastors in the church;magistrates in the state – these, said Luther, are the three 

authorities whom God appointed to represent divine justice and mercy in the 

world, to protect peace and liberty in earthly life. Household, church, and state 

– these are the three institutional pillars on which to build social systems of education 

and schooling, charity and social welfare, economy and architecture, art 

and publication.Family, faith, and freedom – these are the three things that people 

will die for. 

In the half millennium sinceLuther, historians have uncovered various classical 

and Christian antecedents to these early Protestant views. Numerous later 

theorists have propounded all manner of variations and applications of this threeestates 

theory, many increasingly abstracted from Luther’s overtly Christian 

worldview. Early modern covenant theologians, both Christian and Jewish, described 

the marital, confessional, and political covenants that God calls human 

beings to form, each directed to interrelated personal and public ends. Social-contract 

theorists differentiated the three contracts that humans enter as they move 

from the state of nature to an organizedsociety protective of theirnatural rights – 

the marital contract of husband and wife; the government contract of rulers and 

citizens;and, for some, the religious contractsofpreachers and parishioners. Early 

anthropologists positedthree stages of development of civilization – from family-basedtribes 

and clans, to priest-run theocracies, to fully organizedstates that 

embraced all three institutions. Sociologists distinguished three main forms of 

authority in an organized community –“traditional” authority that begins in the 

home, “charismatic” authority that is exemplified in the church, and “legal” authority 

that is rooted in the state. Legal historians outlined threestages of development 

of legal norms – from the habits and rules of the family, to the customs 

and canons of religion, to the statutes and codes of the state.

12 Preface to the Series 

Already acentury ago, however, scholars in different fieldsbegan to flatten out 

this hierarchicaltheory of social institutions andtoemphasize the foundational role 

of othersocialinstitutions alongside thefamily, church, andstate in shaping private 

andpublic life and character. Sociologists like Max Weber andTalcott Parsons emphasized 

theshaping powers of “technical rationality” exemplifiedespeciallyinnew 

industry, scientific education, and market economies. Legal scholars like Otto von 

Gierke and F. W. Maitland emphasized the critical roles ofnonstate legal associations 

(Genossenschaften) inmaintaining ajust social, political, and legal order historicallyand 

today.Catholic subsidiarity theoriesofPopesLeo XIIIand Pius XI emphasized 

the essential task of mediating social unitsbetween the individual and the 

state to cater to the full range ofneeds, interests, rights, and duties of individuals. 

Protestant theoriesofsphere sovereignty, inspired by Abraham Kuyper, argued that 

not only churches, states, and families but alsothe social spheres of art,labor, education, 

economics, agriculture, recreation, and more should enjoy alevel of independence 

fromothers, especiallyanoverreaching churchorstate.Varioustheories 

of social or structuralpluralism, civilsociety, voluntary associations, the independentsector, 

multiculturalism, multinormativity,and other such labels have now come 

to the fore in theensuing decades – both liberaland conservative,religious andsecular, 

and featuring all manner ofmethods and logics. 

Pluralism of all sorts is now acommonplace of late modern societies. At minimum, 

this means amultitude of free and equal individuals and amultitude of 

groups and institutions, each with very different political, moral, religious, and 

professional interests and orientations. It includes the sundry associations, interest 

groups, parties, lobbies, and social movements that often rapidly flourishand 

fade around acommon cause, especially when aided by modern technology and 

various social media. Some see in this texture of plurality an enormous potential 

for colorful and creative development and arobust expression of human and cultural 

freedom. Others see achaotic individualism and radical relativism that endanger 

normativeeducation, moral character formation, and effective cultivation 

of enduring values or virtues. 

Pluralism viewed as vague plurality, however, focuses on only one aspect of 

late modern societies – the equality of individuals, and their almost unlimited 

freedom to participate peaceably at any time asarespected voice in the moral 

reasoning and civil interactions of asociety. But this view does not adequately 

recognize that, beneath the shifting cacophony of social forms and norms that 

constitute modernity, pluralistic societies have heavy normative codes that shape 

their individual and collective values, morals, preferences, and prejudices. 

The sources of much of this normative coding and moral education in late 

modern pluralistic societies are the deep and powerful socialsystems that are the 

pillars of every advanced culture. The most powerful and pervasive of these are 

the social systems of law, religion, politics, science/academy, market, media, family, 

education, medicine, and national defense. The actual empirical forms of each

Preface to the Series 13 

of these powerful social systems can and do vary greatly, even inthe relatively 

homogeneous societies of the late modern West. But these deeper socialsystems 

in one form or another are structurally essential and often normatively decisive in 

individual and communal lives. 

Every advanced society has acomprehensive legal system of justice and order, 

religious systems of ritual and doctrine, afamily system of procreation and 

love, an economic system of trade and value, amedia system of communication 

and dissemination of news and information, and an educational system of preservation, 

application, and creationofknowledge and scientific advance. Many advanced 

societies also have massive systems of science, technology, health care, 

and national defense with vast influence over and through all of these other social 

systems. These pervasive social systems lie at the foundation of modern advanced 

societies, and they anchor the vast pluralities of associations and social interactions 

that might happen to exist at any given time. 

Each of these social systems has internal value systems, institutionalized rationalities, 

and normative expectations that together help to shape each individual’smorality 

and character. Each of these social spheres, moreover, has its own 

professionals and experts who shape and implement its internal structures and 

processes. The normative network created by these socialspheres is often harder 

to grasp today, since late modern pluralistic societies usually do not bring these 

different value systems to light under the dominance of just one organization, institution,and 

power. This normative network has also become more shifting and 

fragile, especially since traditional social systems like religion and the family 

have eroded in theirdurabilityand power, and other social systems like science, 

the market, health care, defense, and the media have become more powerful. 

The aim of this project on “CharacterFormation and Moral EducationinLate 

Modern Pluralistic Societies” is to identify the realities and potentials of these 

core social systems to provide moral orientation and character formation in our 

day. What can and should these social spheres, separately and together, do in 

shaping the moral character oflate modern individuals who, by nature, culture, 

and constitutional norms, are free and equalindignity and rights?What are and 

should be the core educational functions and moral responsibilities of each of 

these socialspheres?How can we better understand and better influence the complex 

interactions among individualism, the normative binding powers of these 

social systems, and the creativity of civil groups and institutions? How can we 

map and measure the different hierarchies of values that govern each of these 

social systems, and that are also interwoven and interconnected in various ways 

in shaping late modern understandings of the common good? How do we negotiate 

the boundaries and conflicts between and among these social systems when 

one encroaches on the other, or imposesits values and rationalities on individuals 

at the cost of the other social spheres or of the common good?What and where are

14 Preface to the Series 

the intrinsic strengths of each social sphere that should be made more overt in 

character formation, public education, and the shapingofminds and mentalities? 

These are some of the guiding questions at work in this project and in this 

volume. Our project aims to provide asystematicaccount of the role of these powerful 

normativecodesoperating in the socialspheresoflaw, religion, the family, 

the market, the media, science and technology, the academy, health care, and defense 

in the late modern liberal West. Our focus is on selected examples and case 

studies drawnfrom Western Europe, North America, South Africa, and Australia, 

which together provide just enough diversity to test out broader theories of character 

formation and moral education. Our scholars are drawn from across the 

academy, with representative voices from the humanities, social sciences, and 

natural sciences as well as the professions of theology, law, business, medicine, 

and more. While most of our scholars come from the Protestant and Catholic 

worlds, our endeavor is to offer comparative insights that will help scholars from 

any profession or confession. While our laboratory is principally Western liberal 

societies, the modern forces of globalizationwill soon make these issues of moral 

character formation aconcern for every culture and region of the world – given 

the power of global socialmedia, entertainment, and sports; the pervasiveness of 

global finance, business, trade, and law; and the perennial global worries over 

food, health care, environmental degradation, and natural disasters. 

This volume focuses on the impact of the family on character formation, ethical 

education,and thecommunicationofvalues in late modern pluralisticsocieties.The 

familyishumanity’soldestand most basicsocialinstitution, buttoday it is fragile, 

fractured, andfraughtinmanyliberallands.Inthis volume scholarsfromsociology, 

psychology,history, religion,ethics, law,and medicine analyze the complex nature 

andplace of thefamilyincharacter formationand human flourishing. The chapters 

study theimpactofcatechesis, schooling,work, and discipline on thedevelopment 

of individual moral agency and responsibility. They document the critical roles of 

familylove, trust,fidelity, and storytelling in shaping themoral character of allfamily 

membersfrom infancytoold age. They describeeffective strategies of resistance, 

resilience, andrenewal forfamilymembers whoface abuse,divorce,death, chauvinism, 

racism, and homophobia. And several chapters challenge modern arguments 

andpoliciesthatflattenorabolish the maritalfamily, even whileseveralauthorscall 

for family lawreforms in their homecountriesofthe United States,Germany, South 

Africa, Australia, and China. While the marital household may no longer be the 

“foundation of the polis,” or the “cornerstone of civilization,” it remains aunique 

and essential institution for character formation that church, state, economy, and 

society alike should support and strengthen. 

John Witte Jr., Emory University 

Michael Welker, University of Heidelberg 

Stephen Pickard, Charles Sturt University

Part One: 

The Place of the Family in 

Modern Society

“It Takes aSociety to Raise aFamily”: 

The Multidimensional Family Sphere 

John Witte Jr. 1 

This volume on the family, along with the others in this book series, exploresthe 

role of sundry social systems, separately and together, in shaping individual character 

and collective values in late modern liberal societies. Historically in the 

West, the marital family was regarded as the cornerstone ofcharacter formation 

and social organization. Aristotle and the Roman Stoics called the union of husband 

and wife, and parentand child, the “foundation of the polis” and “the private 

font of public virtue.” The church fathers and medieval Catholics called the monogamous 

marital household the “seedbed” of the city, “the sacramentalforce that 

welds Christiansocietytogether.” Early modern Protestant theologians,common 

law jurists, and utilitarian philosophers alike called the marital household, a “little 

church” and a “little commonwealth,” the first school of love and justice, nurture 

and education, charity and citizenship, discipline and production. Echoing 

these traditional insights, evolutionary scientists now argue that humans have 

developed enduring pair-bonding strategies of reproduction as the fittest means 

for long-term survivaland success as aspecies. Modern social scientists and public-health 

experts have pointed to the stable marital household as acritical source 

of happiness and flourishing for men, women, and children. The tradition has 

long taught that while the maritalfamily is neither good for everyone nor always 

good, it offers essentialprivate goods to most couples and children and vital public 

goods to church, state, economy, and society. 2 

Today, however, the marital family has become more fragmented and fragile 

in liberal societies. Many states now offer several off-the-rack legal models of 

straight and same-sex marriage, civil union, and domestic partnership with 

1 

2 

This chapter is adapted from my Church, State, and Family: Reconciling Traditional Teachings 

and Modern Liberties (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), chap. 7, which 

provides more detailed analysis and references, hereafter CSF. 

See detailed sources in ibid. and in my From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, 

and Law in the Western Tradition, 2nd. ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 

2012), hereafter FSC.

18 John Witte Jr. 

shrinking formal and functional distinctions between these domestic forms and 

simple nonmarital cohabitation. Strong privacy laws protect all manner of voluntary 

sexual interactions among consenting adults, and rapidly growing portions 

of the population are “drifting into sex and parenthood without marriage.” 3 To be 

sure, some 90 percent of American citizens with college educations and sufficient 

means now form stable marital families and rear and form their childreninintact 

homes – markedly stronger numbers than thirty years ago at the height of the 

sexual revolution and with its 50 percent divorce rate. 4 But persons with fewer 

means and less education today “have all but given up on marriage,” June Carbone 

and Naomi Cahn report in asoberingcomprehensive study. “For the majority 

of Americans who haven’tgraduated from college, marriage rates are low, divorce 

rates are high, and afirst child is more likely to be born to parents who are 

single than to parents who are married.” 5 And the rates of nonmarital cohabitation 

and procreation are considerably higher in most parts of Western Europe, 

even while many European nations are losingthe cultural cohesion, political will, 

and economic capitalneeded to maintain the modern welfare state that absorbed 

many of the responsibilities historically discharged by the church and family. As 

the late great Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, put it: 

Sex has become, for the first time since the conversion to Christianity of the Roman 

Emperor Constantine, an almost value-free zone. Whatever happens between two consenting 

adults in private is, most people now believe, entirely amatter for them. The 

law may not intervene; neither may social sanction. It is simply not other people’s 

business. Together with awhole series of other changes, the result has been that what 

marriage brought together has now split apart. There has been adivorce between sex 

and love, love and marriage, marriage and reproduction, reproduction and education 

and nurture. Sex is for pleasure. Love is afeeling, not acommitment. Marriage is now 

deeply unfashionable. Nurture has been outsourced to specialized child carers. Education 

is the responsibility of the state. And the consequences of failure are delegated 

to social workers. 6 

3 

4 

5 

6 

Isabel V. Sawhill, Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage 

(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2014). 

See detailed annual statistics and analysis by the National Marriage Project at the University 

of Virginia http://nationalmarriageproject.org/ and the Institute for American 

Values, http://www.americanvalues.org/. 

June Carbone and Naomi Cahn, Marriage Matters: How Inequality Is Remaking the American 

Family (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 19–20. 

Jonathan Sacks, The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society (London: Continuum, 

2007), 210.

The Multidimensional Family Sphere 19 

It is easy to lament the breakdown of the modern family and the seeming slide 

into asexual state of nature where life is “nasty, brutish,and short,” particularly 

for women, children, the elderly and the disabled bereft ofreliable kin altruism, 

diaconal care, or socialwelfare. But happily, in recent years anumber of leading 

scholars, advocates, and religious, cultural, political, and public-health leaders 

have responded decisively in leading apowerful new “marriage movement.” This 

movement combines traditional teachings and modern social science and publichealth 

findings to advocatefor stablemarital families,responsible sex and parentage, 

and proper family planning as essentialfor private flourishing and socialstability. 

And this movement has pressed for robust new church,state, and economic 

policies in support of the stable marital family – including, notably, same-sex families. 

Part of this profamily movement, Isubmit, requires us to rethink the place 

and role of the maritalfamily in late modern liberal societies and the interaction 

of the family withother powerful social systems. Perhaps the maritalfamily is no 

longer the “foundation of the polis,” as Aristotle wrote, or “the cornerstone of 

Western civilization,” as the United States Supreme Court confidently 

pronounced. 7 But the family remains an essential institution in late modern liberal 

societies that still does and should shape our public and private lives, characters, 

and value formation, even if it is now more interwoven with andnewly dependentonother 

social institutions. This is the flip side of the traditional Western 

teaching that the stable family is the foundation of awell-ordered society: awellordered 

society is just as much the foundation of astable family. Without strong 

social and institutional supports, the marital family is “pitifully vulnerable,” the 

late great sociologist Robert Bellah reminded us. Just as “it takes avillage to raise 

achild, … it takes asociety toraise afamily.” 8 

To make this claim,Ipresent themodernmarital family as asphere, or aglobe 

– with anatural pole on the bottom, aspiritual pole on top, and various social, 

economic, communicative, and contractual dimensions radiating between them. 

At the bottom of this sphere is (1) a natural pole that anchors the natural goods of 

marriage and the inherent human inclinations, appetites, capacities, and imperatives 

for sex, marriage, and family life. Radiating up from this natural pole are: 

(2) a social dimension that articulates the public communal functions and goods 

of marriage and the family, and that recognizes the complex groups of institutions 

and professions that support and interact with the domestic household and its 

members; (3) an economic dimension that reflects the union of properties, labor, 

and entitlements by marriage, the ongoing material rights and duties of spouses, 

7 

8 

Aristotle, Politics, 1.1.1; Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145, 164–66 (1879). 

Robert Bellah, “Epilogue: It Takes aSociety to Raise aFamily,” in Steven M. Tipton and 

John Witte Jr., eds., Family Transformed: Religion, Values, and Society in American Life 

(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 286–98.


parents, and children during and after amarriage, and the channeling, expressive, 

and signaling functions of modern family law; (4) a communicative dimension, 

expressed in the public liturgies, celebrations, and symbols that mark the 

formation of amarriage and the birth or confirmation of achild as well as in the 

vital private daily communications among spouses, children, and household dependents 

concerning sex, finance, labor, nurture, formation, social responsibilities, 

and more; and (5) a contractual dimension, expressed in the complexformal 

promises and provisions that form amarriage and household, and the ongoing 

obligations that attach to the relationships of husband and wife, parent and child, 

family and society. At the top of the sphere is (6) a spiritual polethat helps binds 

together the natural, social, economic, communicative, and contractual dimensions 

of the marital family around sacramental, covenantal, or other transcendent 

ideals, and stipulates the spiritual inspirations and aspirationsthat marriageand 

family life provide for husbands and wives, parents and children, and broader 

communities. 

Social theorists talk alot about “social spheres” –spheres of justice, liberty, 

love, governance,morality, education, and so on. 9 At minimum, this language is 

descriptive of the distinct institutions or sectors of modern differentiated societies 

and their respective contributions to private and public life. But talk of spheres is 

also prescriptive for many theorists who aim to define and defend more clearly 

the naturalorvoluntary associations that buffer the individual from the state and 

other dominating institutions. Given the long and cruel experiences with political 

tyranny and totalitarianism in the West, many writers press for the separation, 

independence, freedom, autonomy, or even sovereignty of the spheresoffamily, 

church, academy, media, market, and other institutions, both from each other and 

from the state. Various theories of social or structural pluralism, civil society, subsidiarity, 

sphere sovereignty, voluntary associations, the independent sector, 

multiculturalism, multinormativity, and other such labels are now crowding the 

bookshelves – both liberal and conservative, religious and secular, and featuring 

all manner of methods and logics. 

This chapter draws on some of this literature to describe briefly the six dimensions 

of the marital family sphere as historically constructed and potentially reconstructed 

for our modern day – the natural, social, economic, communicative, 

contractual, and spiritual dimensions. This sphere metaphor is aheuristic device 

– apicturetodescribe the various modes of family life, the different disciplinary 

9 

See, for example, Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: ADefense of Pluralism and Equality 

(New York: Basic Books, 2010); Michael G. Kammen, Spheres of Liberty (1985; repr., Jackson: 

University of Mississippi Press, 2011); Stephen B. Post, Spheres of Love: Toward a 

New Ethics of the Family (Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994); Harvey 

Lazar and Christian Leuprecht, eds., Spheres of Governance (Montreal/Kingston, ON: 

McGill-Queens University Press, 2007).

The Multidimensional Family Sphere 21 

perspectivesonthe family, and the range of institutions and professions in which 

the family is now embedded. But in stressing the multidimensionality of the marital 

family sphere, Iamalso pushingagainst theorists and trends that have sought 

to flatten the maritalfamily into one or two dimensions, or to abolish it altogether 

as adistinct and necessary social institution. 

The Nature ofthe Marital Family 

The Western tradition has long treated the marital family as a “natural” association. 

The ancient Greekstaught that “marriagewas created by Nature immediately 

after the dispersal of Chaos,” as one Greek liturgist put it. “The ordering of the 

universe took place because of Marriage and perhaps … Love too was created 

then.” Marriage helped “to create man, and contrived tomake him virtually immortal, 

furnishing successive generations to accompany the passage of time.” 10 

Moreover, thought the ancient Greeks, marriage helped to complete aperson’s 

life. “Love is born into every human being,” Plato wrote famously; “it calls back 

the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal 

the wound of human nature.” 11 In his Laws,Plato thus advised young men to marry 

“for the city’sgood” and to restrict “procreative intercourse to its natural function,” 

for such “moderation” will bring “untold good. It is dictated, to begin with, 

by nature’s own voice … and wins men to affection of their wedded wives. There 

are also numerous other blessings which will follow.” 12 

The Bible taught that God created humans as “male and female,” called them 

to join together as “two in one flesh,” and commanded them to “be fruitful and 

multiply” and to fill the earth. 13 God created and inclined the first man and woman 

to find completion in each other: “This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my 

flesh,” Adam said on first meeting Eve. 14 God endowedhumans with the physical 

capacity to join together and beget children. The Judeo-Christian tradition taught 

that these natural qualities and duties continued after the fall into sin and the 

expulsion of humans from Paradise. But marriage also served as aremedy to allay 

sexual sin. Rather than allow sinful people toburn with lust, God provided the 

institution of marriage so that couples could direct their natural drives and desires 

toward the service of each other, their children, their kin, and their broader 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

Menander Rhetor, trans. and ed. D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University 

Press, 1981), 136–39. 

Plato: Symposium, trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff (Indianapolis: Hackett 

Publishing Co., 1989), 25–31. 

Plato, Laws, VI.773b; VIII.839a–b. 

Genesis 1:26–28. 

Genesis 2:23–24.


communities. Scores ofvariations on these stories aboutthe mythical or natural 

origins of the marital family have echoed in the history of Western thought. 

Many Western liberals have been brought up on asocial-contract variation of 

this same idea. In moving from a “state of nature” to an organized society, the first 

contract humans formed was the marital contract between afree and equal man 

and woman. This contract came before social, political, ecclesiastical, and other 

private contracts and provided the most basic protection of the natural rights and 

liberties of men, women, and children. As the first and most fundamental contract, 

the marital family demandedthe support and protection of all other contractual 

associations, including the church, state, society, and economy. 

The Western tradition has long taught not only that the marital family has its 

origins in nature but also that family members get guidance from natural law. 

This law is, most basically as the Roman jurists put it, “the law that nature has 

taught all animals,” giving them “natural inclinations” to protect, preserve, and 

perpetuate themselves through natural procreative means. 15 Natural law also 

consists of the “natural instincts” or “intuitions” that are unique to humans and 

the “common customs” and “conventions” that have emerged among humans 

over time. 16 These distinctly human qualities of natural law are known, refined, 

and applied in human societies through the exercise of reason and conscience, 

medieval and early modern writers emphasized. Many animals, driven only by 

their natural instincts for self-preservation, kill and eat each otherand take each 

other’shomes, food, mates, and offspring. Rational humans, by contrast, have declared 

these to be crimes of homicide, theft, adultery, and infanticide and have set 

up laws to deter and punish such harms. Many male animals engage in violent 

sex, keep harems, and often abandon theirmates and offspring. Rational humans, 

however, have learned to prohibit and punish these acts as crimes of rape, polygamy, 

and desertion,which defythe natural justice owed to the victim and the community. 

Furthermore,humans have learned that exclusive and enduringpair-bonding 

strategiesofmarital procreation are the best way to ensure paternal certainty and 

joint parental investment in their children. This stability is crucial since human 

babies, unlike the young of most other animals, are born tiny, vulnerable, and 

utterly dependent on their parents’ care for avery long time. Moreover, stable 

marriages are the best way to ensure that men and women are treated withequal 

dignity and respect, and that husbandsand wives, parents and children, provide 

each other with support, protection, and edification throughout their lifetimes. 

15 

16 

Justinian’sInstitutes,trans. Peter Birks and Grant McLeod (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University 

Press, 1987), I.1.2; The Digest of Justinian,ed. Theodor Mommsen and Paul Krüger, trans. 

Alan Watson, 4vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), I.1.3. 

Decretum Magistri Gratiani, ed. Emil Friedberg; repr. ed. (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. 

Verlagsanstalt, 1959), Dist. 1, c. 7.

The Family in the Matrix of Habit 

and History 

Robert N. Bellah 1 

In the debate over the family in recent years, the question has been raised as to 

whether the family is asacred institution or an obsolete tyranny.Even those of us 

who are not prepared to think of marriage as tyranny are probably not entirely 

happy to think of it as an institution either. As my coauthors and Ipointed out 

in The Good Society, Americans do not really much like the idea of institutions, 

and this for two reasons. First, institutions come down from the past, are based 

on largely unexamined traditions and habits, and therefore probably do not really 

fit our current needs. Second, institutions are oppressive – at the extreme, one 

thinks of prisons and mental asylums – and they limit our free individual choice. 

Actually, this way of thinking about institutions is modern, though it has been 

around for awhile; it is, if Imay put it this way, part of the tradition of modernity. 

One of the earliest thinkers to express the modern criticism of inherited institutions 

was René Descartes, in the seventeenth century. At the beginningofthe second 

part of one of the founding documents of modernity, The Discourse on 

Method, 2 Descartes describes the typical European town ofhis day. Such atown 

is simply ahodgepodge, ajumble of buildings from different eras, in different 

styles, of different forms and shapes, and the streets on which they are situated 

are often crooked, narrow, and inconvenient. How much better, says Descartes, if 

we could just tear the whole thing down and start over, putting up orderly buildings 

on straight streets withproper rightangles. In other words, Descartes’sidea 

of an ideal town is not one inherited from the past, but one designed anew from a 

rational blueprint. For Descartes, the town was ametaphor for our inherited institutionsand 

ways of thought. (In the twentieth century, though, the Romanian 

1 

2 

This chapter was first presented as alecture for the Center of the Study of Law and Religion 

in 2003, and then published in Steven M. Tipton and John Witte Jr., eds., Family 

Transformed: Religion, Values, and Society in American Life (Washington, DC: Georgetown 

University Press, 2005), 21–33, and is reproduced here, with cosmetic editing, with the 

permission of the publisher and the Center. 

René Descartes, Discours de la Méthode [1637] (Paris: Larousse, 1934), 21–23.

44 Robert N. Bellah 

dictator Nicolae Ceau escu actually did pull down much ofold Bucharest and 

erect “orderly” buildings in its place, with aresult that was not charming atall.) 

Then Descartes makesaneven more remarkable move. He regrets that duringthe 

early years of his life, his mind was filled with opinions, stories, and baseless information, 

entirely unexamined by reason, and he wishes that he might have been 

born at the age of twenty with his mind unclutteredbysomuch useless material. I 

do not even want to think of what kind of monster an unsocialized infant of twenty 

might be! 

So let me sayrightoff that although everyimaginable criticism of institutions, 

including the institutions of marriage and the family, has some basis, without institutionswewould 

not be free – we would be dead. In every aspect of our lives, we 

depend on the relationships that institutions make possible. This is not in the 

least to say that they are perfect or that they do not need continuous reform and 

improvement; only that doing away with them altogether is amonstrousidea, as 

attested by the actions of those in the twentieth centurywho have tried it, such as 

Ceau escu and Pol Pot, though Ithink some of our rational-choice theorists are, in 

their own way, trying to do something quite similar. 

Aristotle can help us understand why Descartes’swish to be born at the age of 

twenty is not agood idea either. For Aristotle,habitisanimportant starting point. 

In his Ethics,virtue – his fundamental ethical term – is, he says, ahabit (in Greek a 

hexis), that is, a “formed state of character” which is in control of our emotions. 3 

We are judged, therefore, not by our emotions but by the settled dispositions, the 

habits, which control our emotions. Aristotledraws from this definition aconclusion 

that may surprise us or even offend us: he says that the young are not fit 

students for ethical philosophy, for they are too apttobeled by their feelings, and 

they have not yet developed the habits which would allow them to appreciate ethical 

reflection. Ethics, as he says, is, after all, not an exact science, and its object is 

not knowledge but action. 4 So bright young people might well studymodern moral 

philosophy – Kant’s categorical imperative,for example, or Bentham’s greatest 

good of the greatest number – for these are purely theoretical ideas, and the 

young can be quite good at theory. But little good it would do them ethically, Aristotle 

would say, if they do not already havethe habits required for living an ethical 

life. 

Of course, Aristotleisquick to add, the matter is not one of chronological age, 

for there are some who are forever too “young” to understand ethics, and some 

relatively young people might already have acquired virtuous habits. Still, it is 

worth considering the fact that Aristotle, who wrote voluminous critical treatises 

on just abouteverythingand was willing to discourse at great length on all man- 

3 

4 

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Oswald (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 

1962), 1105b–1106a. 

Ibid., 1095a.

The Family in the Matrix of Habit and History 45 

ner of ethical problems,beginsnot with talk but with habit, and says in effect that 

without habit, talk about ethics is worthless. What is shocking to us about this is 

that Aristotle seems to be overriding individual freedom – worse yet, the individual 

freedom of the young – and insisting in an utterlyauthoritarian manner that 

he will not even teach them about ethics until they have learned proper habits. 

Socrates famously questioned whether it is possible to teach virtue, and Aristotle’sargument 

here helps us understand why. Philosophical teaching is, after 

all, always amatter of discursive, analytical talk. Habit is clearlysomething else. 

What is that something else?Tounderstand the difference between these two approaches, 

Iwant to turn to Mary Douglas’s remarkable book Natural Symbols, 

which Ihavereread carefully several times in my life, each time withincreasing 

profit. 5 Douglas takes some interesting observations of Basil Bernstein’s about 

London families in the mid-twentieth century and uses them to construct ageneral 

theory of the relation between social control and symbolic codes, atheory that 

Ithink sheds agreat deal of light on our problem of habit and the relation of habits 

to institutions. Bernstein noted that therewere two rather different forms of family 

in his sample and that these two forms differed by class. Working-class families 

used what he called positional control systems and restricted speech codes, 

while middle-class families used personal control systems and elaborated speech 

codes. Because the word “restricted” is invidious in away that Ithink neither 

Bernstein nor Douglas intends, Iwill henceforth speakof “condensed” rather than 

“restricted” speech codes in contrast to elaborated ones, and will make this terminological 

change even when quoting them. 

Douglas describes the condensed speech code that is generated in the positional 

family: 

The child in this family is controlled by the continual building up of asense of social 

pattern: of ascribed role categories. If he asks “Why must Idothis?” the answer is in 

terms of relative position. Because Isaid so (hierarchy). Because you are aboy (sex 

role). Because children always do (age status). Because you are the oldest (seniority). 

As he grows, his experience flows into agrid of role categories; right and wrong are 

learnt in terms of given structure; he himself is seen only in relation to that structure. 6 

Douglas notes that this pattern can be found in some aristocratic as well as working-class 

families. In any case,what Iwant to emphasize is that condensedcode is 

based on the taken-for-grantedness of institutions: that is what it means to call it 

positional. There is areal social world there, and we understand each other and 

ourselves only in relation to it. 

5 

6 

Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 

1973). 

Ibid., 24.


Douglas then describes the other form: 

By contrast, in the family system which Professor Bernstein calls personal afixed pattern 

of roles is not celebrated, but rather the autonomy and unique value of the individual. 

When the child asks aquestion the mother feels bound to answer it by as full 

an explanation as she knows. The curiosity of the child is used to increase his verbal 

control, to elucidate causal relations, to teach him to assess the consequences of his 

acts. Above all his behaviour is made sensitive to the personal feelings of others, by 

inspecting his own feelings. Why can’tIdo it?Because your father’sfeeling worried; 

because Ihave got aheadache. How would you like it if you were adog? 

Douglas quotes Bernstein to the effect that in the middle-class family, the child is 

being regulated by the feelings of the regulator: “‘Daddy will be pleased, hurt, disappointed, 

angry, ecstatic if you go on doing this.’ …Control is effected through 

either the verbalmanipulation of feelings or through the establishment of reasons 

which link the child to his acts.” 7 

But let me back up astep with an example. Afriend of mine was waiting for an 

elevator in his apartmentbuilding and overheard aconversationbetween amother 

and asmall child. The child was whining about something or other most persistently, 

and the mother was calmly and extensively explaining why the child 

could not have what she wanted. The child persisted with rising whiny tones, and 

the mother continuedtoreiterate all the reasons why not. My friend was becoming 

increasingly uncomfortable with this apparently interminable palaver when 

the mother finally said quite firmly and briefly: “Because I’m the mother and 

you’re the child, that’s why.” What this mother had done was to shift rather 

abruptly from the elaborated code to the condensed code.This example suggests 

that Bernstein’stwo codes are not mutually exclusive,and that all of us use both of 

them at least some of the time. 

Let me use this example to link back the two codes to the idea of institutions. 

Condensed code is always institutionally rooted. When the motherfinally invokes 

the mother-child relation, she is invoking awhole institutional context, aset of 

habits if you will, that requires parents to care for children and childrentogrow 

up and flourish under that care. Elaborated code floats free from institutions and 

is rooted more in the ideas and feelings of individuals. It may be used to criticize 

institutions, but it can never float entirely free of them, for it takes them for granted 

as the very basis from which criticism is possible. 

Iwould arguefor the priority of institutions, and the condensed code that expresses 

them, in part because no one ever starts with the elaborated code. All children 

begin with positional control and the condensedlanguage code because personal 

control and the elaborated code require skills that no newborn has. The 

7 

Ibid., 26.


relation between mother and child, or perhaps we should better saybetween parent 

and child, is necessarily positional – that is, institutional – because highly 

asymmetrical: an infant needs to be held, cared for, talked to, or sung to but cannot 

be addressed with elaborate appeals to feelings or reasons, at least not for 

quite awhile. In fact, interaction with an infant looks suspiciously like habit or 

its close relation, ritual. Linguists have discovered that in all cultures, parents 

speak to infants in something they call “motherese,” akind of simplified, highly 

repetitive, singsong, partly nonsense kind of language, one that communicates 

feeling rather than information. Each languagehas its own version of motherese, 

to be sure, but the basic characteristics seem to be universal.Nonverbal communication 

with an infant is probably even more important. Erik Erikson suggested 

that the “greeting ceremonial” between mother and child, marking the beginning 

of the infant’s day, is the root of all subsequent ritualization. 8 

Infants become human because of habitual, nondiscursive, verbal, and nonverbal 

interaction with adults, which is, in Basil Bernstein’s terms, necessarily 

positional in control and condensed inspeech code. The function ofthis kind of 

interaction is to position children, to give them an identity relative to others, to 

provide them asocial, an institutional, location. 

So far, Ihave been trying to insist, because of the low esteem we have these 

days for thingslike habit and ritual, let alone institutions, that positional control 

and condensed code are rather basic to our humanity and cannot really be dispensed 

with. So why did we then develop personal control and the elaborated 

code?Incontemporary society, Douglaslinks them to the division of labor, which 

differentially impacts working-class and middle-class families: 

It is essential to realize that the elaborated code is aproduct of the division of labour. 

The more highly differentiated the social system, the more specialised the decisionmaking 

roles – then the more the pressure for explicit channels of communication 

concerning awide range of policies and their consequences. The demands of the industrial 

system are pressing hard now upon education to produce more and more verbally 

articulate people who will be promoted to entrepreneurial roles. By inference the 

condensed code will be found where these pressures are weakest [that is to say among 

people whose jobs are both routine and require little verbal facility]. 9 

Although Douglas finds the social basis for positional control and condensed code 

in some modern professions – the military, for example – most of the professions 

that increasingly dominate the higher echelons of our occupationalworld require 

people well versed inpersonal control and elaborated speech. The symbolic an- 

8 

9 

Erik H. Erikson, “The Development of Ritualization,” in The Religious Situation 1968,ed. 

Donald R. Cutler (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 711–33. 

Douglas, Natural Symbols, 21.


alysts, as Robert Reich characterizes our top professionals, are critical by their 

very job description. Douglas characterizes them asfollows: 

Here are the people who live by using elaborated speech to review and revise existing 

categories of thought. To challenge received ideas is their very bread and butter. They 

(or should Isay we?) practise aprofessional detachment toward any given pattern of 

experience. The more boldly and comprehensively they apply their minds to rethinking, 

the better their chances of professional success. Thus the value of their radical 

habit of thought is socially confirmed, and reinforced. For with the rise to professional 

eminence comes the geographical and social mobility that detaches them from their 

original community. With such validation, they are likely to raise their children in the 

habit of intellectual challenge and not to impose apositional control pattern. 

Indeed, she goes on to say, they are likely to prefer personal forms of control and 

to focus on feelings rather than rules in child-rearing. As aresult, “ideas about 

morality and the self get detached from the social structure.” 10 It is not that children 

raised in such amilieulack ethical ideas; sensitivity to the feelings of others 

can arouse strong ethical passions when others are observed to be suffering. The 

problem is that without some positional sense of institutional membership and 

without strong condensed symbols, ethical sensitivities may simply dissipate into 

good intentions without leading to sustained moral commitments. 

Douglas is very even-handed in her sense that we need both modes of relating. 

She affirms “the duty of everyone to preserve theirvision from the constraints of 

the condensed code when judging any social situation. … [W]e must recognise 

that the value of particular social forms can only be judged objectively by the analytic 

power of the elaborated code.” 11 She is well aware that condensed codes in 

the context of institutional authority can be bothauthoritarian and unjust. “Do it 

because Isaid so” is an example of condensed code that carries the implication of 

some, perhaps quite unpleasant, nonverbal sanction that will follow if the recipient 

of the command rejects it. Except under conditions of extreme emergency,an 

elaborated request for reasons is justified. Similarly, the condensed statement 

“Little girls don’t dothat” is open to challenge with respect tothe whole takenfor-granted 

definition of gender. These are the kinds ofreflection that lead “us” 

to presume that personal control and elaborated code are always preferable to the 

alternative. Yet Douglas warns us against precisely that conclusion: 

There is no person whose life does not need to unfold in acoherent symbolic system. 

The less organized the way of life, the less articulated the symbolic system may be. But 

social responsibility is no substitute for symbolic forms and indeed depends upon 

10 

11 

Ibid., 31. 

Ibid., 166.


them. When ritualism is openly despised the philanthropic impulse is in danger of 

defeating itself. For it is an illusion to suppose that there can be organisation without 

symbolic expression. … Those who despise ritual, even at its most magical, are cherishing 

in the name of reason avery irrational concept of communication. 12 

So where does Douglasleave us, including her?She is not asking us, as some converts 

to various forms of fundamentalism are, to abandon our personal and elaborated 

selves and jump back into the positional box. No, she is asking us with all 

our critical rationality to see that we need both forms of control and both codes. 

She writes: 

In the long run, the argument of this book is that the elaborated code challenges its 

users to turn round on themselves and inspect their values, to reject some of them, and 

to resolve to cherish positional forms of control and communication wherever these 

are available. … No one would deliberately choose the elaborated code and the personal 

control system who is aware of the seeds of alienation it contains. 13 

But the question remains, in what sense can we, products of personal families and 

modern educational and occupational systems, “deliberately choose” aspects of 

positional control and condensedcode?Iwill argue that some dialectic, some complementarity, 

must be sought, because giving upeither alternative would exact 

too high aprice. Ithink we know the price of going back into the box of some kind 

of closed traditionalism. Can we explore further the implications of Douglas’s 

warning about trying to live in the elaborated code alone? 

If we see that trying to live in the elaborated code alone would mean that we 

would have to make up our lives as we go along, that we could take nothing for 

granted – because we would havenoinstitutional context to tell us where we are – 

we can begin to see that it is not only undesirable but impossible. Douglas’s dichotomy 

may be too stark, for even the citadel of criticalreason, the modern university, 

is an institution, with the habits and rituals that institutions always entail. 

What Idid in delivering this paper, giving alecture, is aritual, one we are so habituated 

to that we hardly recognize it as aritual, even though it is afairly complex 

one. 

But, we might ask, are not some institutions in modern society based entirely 

on elaborated codes – are they not purely rational?Economic institutions, for example? 

Yet, in recent years, economists have been rediscovering what was once 

called institutional economics. The economist Geoffrey Hodgson suggests why institutions 

are as essential in the economy as anywhere else in our social life: 

12 

13 

Ibid., 50. 

Ibid., 157.

Part Two: 

The Role of the Family in 

Child Development and 

Moral Character Formation

The Beginnings of Norm and Value 

Formation in Human Ontogeny and 

the Role of the Family 

Sabina Pauen 

Most of us share the intuition that family life shapes the basic norms and values 

that guide our social behavior as adults. At the same time, we should not forget 

that young children face hugevariability in socialstandards.For example, different 

rules apply at home, in school, and on the playground. Withinthe family, caregivers 

may promote diverging values and standards. They may tolerate certain 

behaviors in infants but not in older siblings, and they may be less strict on holidays 

than duringthe week. And children may meet different standards when interacting 

with their siblings or other peers than when interacting with their parents 

or other adults. How do children cope with this complexity? How do they 

find out which values or norms apply independent of the social setting and which 

are context- or situation-specific?This chapter addresses these questions by taking 

acloser look at the mechanisms that guide social learning throughout early 

childhood and reflectingupon the role that families play in developing norms and 

values. 

Infancy 

Establishing Social Relatedness and Forming Basic Trust 

Humans are social beings who need the presence of otherpeople in order to survive 

– at least during the first yearsoflife. 1 Only if infants experience that other 

people take care of their physical and psychological needs will they appreciate 

social bonds and become motivated to learn about the norms and values of the 

community they are growing upin. 

1 

R. Spitz, “Hospitalism: An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early 

Childhood,” in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child,vol. 1, ed. O. Fenichel, P. Greenacre, 

and H. Harmann (New York: International Universities Press, 1945).

60 Sabina Pauen 

Infants communicate their needs via facial expressions, vocal sounds, body 

movements, and gestures. Evolution prepared human caregivers to decode these 

signals properly and to respond to themadequately. 2 Even without any previous 

experience, we can distinguish acry of pain from acry of hunger. Whenever we 

hear acorresponding sound, stress hormones are released, and we typically feel 

the urge to approach the baby and to establish bodily contact. We will rock the 

baby gently, speak slowly with many repetitions and in amelodicfriendly voice, 

while keeping close face-to-face contact and exploring potential reasons for discomfort. 

All these activities belong toour natural and universal behavioral repertoire, 

called intuitive parenting. Even our hormone system is designed to experience 

positive exchanges with ababy as highly rewarding. 3 Hence, we come 

equipped with the ability to take care of human infants and to relate to them socially. 

Sensitivity to infants’ signals, as well as reliability, consistency, and appropriateness 

of responses, characterize caregiving behavior that supports bonding 

– the nucleusofsocialrelatedness. 4 Breastfeeding plays akey role in this context, 

as it nurtures the baby in multiple ways, providing not only food but also skin 

contact and social exchange. Importantly, bonding is not restricted to the mother 

or biological family members. The numberofpeopletobond with may be limited 

because young children still have difficulties recognizing individuals. Nonetheless, 

it should be noted that any person who spends time with ababy can become 

abonding partner. Parents, siblings, and neighbors can play this role equally 

well. If only one or two people spend time with the baby, he or she will develop 

astrong bond with these individuals but remainskeptical when meeting nonfamily 

members. If multiple caregivers serve as bonding partners (for example, when 

achild is raised in alarge family or spends time in ahigh-quality day care setting 

with stability in caregivers), basic trust is likely to generalize more broadly. 

It is not only the durationand frequency of contactbut also the quality of the 

relational experience that counts when it comes tobonding: neglect or negative 

caregiving (involving passive, hostile, or aggressive behaviors as well as inconsistent 

and inappropriate handling) can prevent the child from developing basic 

trust. We know that the first year is critical for this development. Children who 

do not receive appropriate care duringthe first few months of their life are likely 

to show impaired brain development and behavioral problems later in life, no 

2 

3 

4 

H. Papou⇥ek and M. Papou⇥ek, “Intuitive Parenting,” in Handbook of Parenting, Vol. 2, 

Biology and Ecology of Parenting, ed. M. H. Bornstein (Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum 

Associates, 1995), 117–36. 

R. Feldman and M. J. Bakermans-Kranenburg, “Oxytocin: AParenting Hormone,” Current 

Opinions in Psychology 15 (2017): 13–18, doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.02.011. 

J. Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health,World Health Organization Monograph, Serial 

No. 2(Geneva: WHO, 1951).

The Beginnings of Norm and Value Formation in Human Ontogeny 61 

matter how well they are treated afterwards. 5 Bonding teaches the child its first 

main lesson regarding human values: “We are taking care of one another,” and “I 

am being loved.” Without this basic insight, the openness to share norms, rituals, 

customs, and values with fellow human beings and the development of prosocial 

behavior are likely to be limited. Individuals who do not have the chance to develop 

basic trust may also show inappropriate behavior when interacting with 

their own offspring later in life, simply because their intuitive parenting skills 

got overruled by bad experiences during early childhood. 

In sum, we can conclude that multiple caregivers who (a) are in contact with 

the child on aregular basis for longer periods of time duringthe day, (b) offer the 

child predictability in terms of when and how they are emotionally available, and 

(c) respond reliably, appropriately, and warmly to the needsofthe infant provide 

the best conditions for developing basic trust. In positive interactions, the child 

can learn how to communicate and understand his or her own needs, intentions, 

and feelings. This understanding isaprerequisite for sharing values and norms 

with others. In that respect, well-functioning families combined with high-quality 

day care provide an ideal environment to acquire basic trust and to promote social 

relatedness. 

Understanding Intentions and Distinguishing between Good and 

Bad Behavior 

Modern infant research suggests that we are all born with an intentional stance. 6 

This meansthat we interpret the behavior of humans and animals as beinggoaldirected 

and driven by intentions. When observing the behavior of otherpeople, 

infants automatically try to understand the motivation of the actions they perceive. 

This is important for becoming aware of social rules. 

Babies as young as threetosix months of age have been found to distinguish 

alreadybetween actions that are friendly and those that are hostile, thussuggesting 

that we may be born with some general standards for evaluating human behavior. 

To demonstrate this, Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom 7 ran the following experimentwith 

five-month-old infants.Three hand puppets were interacting on a 

small stage. Puppet Atried to open abox. While puppet Bkeptjumping on the lid, 

5 

6 

7 

C. A. Nelson, N. A. Fox, and C. H. Zeanah, Romania′s Abandoned Children: Deprivation, 

Brain Development, and the Struggle for Recovery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 

Press, 2014). 

G. Gergely et al., “Taking the Intentional Stance at 12 Months of Age,” Cognition 56, no. 2 

(1995): 165–93, https://doi.org/10.1016/0010–0277(95)00661-H. 

K. Wynn and P. Bloom, “The Moral Baby,” in Handbook of Moral Development,ed. M. Killen 

and J. G. Smetana (New York: Psychology Press, 2014), 435–53.


thus hindering puppet Afrom opening it, puppet Csupported puppet Ainpushing 

the lid upward. Followingthis scene, infants were shown puppets Band C. An 

analysis of their viewing time revealed that they preferred to look at puppet C(the 

helper); furthermore, they were more willing to share areward with this puppet 

than with puppet B(the hinderer). In afurther step, puppets Band Ceach tried to 

open the box themselves, and two new charactersserved as helper or hinderer in 

each case.Now, infants preferred to see puppet Bbeing punished by ahinderer, 

and puppet Cbeing rewarded by ahelper (as evidenced by acorresponding viewing 

preference for the puppet playing each role). Infants less than half ayear of 

age thus developed ageneral attitude toward puppets based on how each behaved 

in asituation. Infants not only liked the helper more than the hinderer but also 

preferred to see the helper being rewarded and the hinderer being punished socially. 

Today, developmental psychologists discuss whether infants are born with 

the ability to distinguish between bad (antisocial) and good (prosocial)behavior, 

with some expectation that each type of behavior should lead to different social 

responses. 

This distinction between prosocial and antisocial behavior can be strengthened 

or weakened through observational learning. Reward and punishment do 

not need to be experienced personally but are equally effective when the child 

observes someone else being rewarded or punished, as in the puppet study. In 

fact, observational learning may sometimes be even more effective, as the child 

is not directly involved in the given situation and has free mental capacity to think 

about the event. If young children repeatedly observe that antisocial behavior is 

being rewarded, they adapt to these standards and learn that it is socially acceptable 

to behave this way. But if young children repeatedly see that other people 

disapprove of antisocial behavior, they will infer that acting in similar ways is 

likely to have negative consequences. Developmental research thus suggests that 

infants expect people to be held responsible for their actions toward others. Observational 

learning will lead them either to strengthen their apriori beliefsorto 

revise them and adapt to new standards. 

As this type of learning takes place very early in life, when children still 

spend most of their time at home, we can assume that the way family members 

interact has ahugeimpact on the development of abasic understanding of values 

and norms. Importantly, it is not only the behavior toward the child that affects 

this development but also the exchange between other family members (that is, 

between caregivers, between siblings) that shapes children’svalue and norm system.


Sharing Emotions and Evaluations with Others 

Young infants are able to feel with others, aphenomenon called emotional contagion. 

Adults show emotional contagion, for instance, when identifying with the 

protagonist of amovie. This type of emotional identification with another person 

may also help to explain the evaluative response of infants in the puppet study 

mentioned above. When the baby watches puppet Atrying to open the box, she 

identifies with this puppet and thus “feels” how it would feel to be treated ina 

hostile way by puppet Borinafriendly way by puppet C. 

Rather than simply crying with someonewho is in tears, we might also try to 

understand the potential reasons for that person’s emotion as away of seeing 

what the other person actually needs. If sadness is the reason for crying, we might 

provide consolation; if pain leads to tears, we might look foradoctor or medicine; 

if anger or frustration motivates the emotional expression, we might try to help 

reevaluate the situation. Empathy differs from emotional contagion in that it includes 

thoughts about the potential reasons forthe emotions observed, and it results 

in behavior that aims at supporting others rather than just sharing theirfeelings. 

Infants are not yet capable of empathy because they still lack the ability to 

represent the mental state of someone else. But even before their first birthday, 

they attain an important skill that serves as aprerequisite for developing empathy. 

It all starts with following the attentional focus of other people bytrying to 

figure out where they look or what they point to. Whereas young infants can focus 

only on either the person who is pointing or on the target pointed at, nine-totwelve-month-olds 

are able to keep in mind both aspects in parallel. This is called 

joint attention. 8 Joint attention marks avery important milestoneinsociocognitive 

development, as it reflects the achievement of sharing amind state withsomeone 

else. At around the same time that infants acquire joint attention, they also begin 

to show social and emotional referencing: when the child is together with his mother, 

and astranger enters the room, the child might look at his or her mother to see 

how she responds emotionally. If the mother staysrelaxed and in apositive mood, 

the child is more likely to show approach behavior, but if the mother feels tense 

and reveals anegative expression, the infant is more likely to withdraw. Similarly, 

we can often observe that achild who starts to do something that is clearly 

forbidden (for example, picking up his father’s mobile phone) first looks to his 

caregiver’sface to see whether he can risk going ahead without receiving aclear 

stop signal. By one year of age, infants are capable of sharing mental states and 

social-emotional evaluations with their bonding partners. This is essential for 

transmission of values and norms. 

8 

M. Tomasello, Becoming Human (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).


If atrusted caregiveracts in aprosocial way toward someoneelse, this elicits 

positive feelings in the young child observing the scene, because the child identifies 

withthe other person. But if the very same caregiver treats someone else in 

an antisocial way and the child does not understand why, the child is likely to 

experience aconflict between her natural tendencytocondemn antisocial actions 

and her basic trust that leads to emotional referencing. This conflict may result 

either in weakening the bond between the caregiver and child or in identifying 

with the caregiverand responding in ahostile way toward the other person. This 

example illustrates that bad role models can easily leadyoung childrentodevelop 

negative feelings toward other persons, even though those persons never behave 

in an antisocial way. Thus, being able to show emotional or social referencing is 

by no means aguarantee ofdeveloping prosocial behavior. Rather, we need to 

keep in mind that young children tend to refer to the emotional and social responsesoftheir 

caregivers, and that they are likely to develop similar preferences 

and attitudes. Again, we can assume that family members are likely to serve as 

important reference figures in this regard. 

Toddlerhood 

Cooperation and Spontaneous Helping 

During their second year of life, childrenare no longer just recipients or observers 

of social actions but rather come to take amore active role in exchanges with other 

people. Simple give-and-take routines are well established already. By two years 

of age, children have also learned which behaviors elicit positive or negative responses 

intheir caregiver. Basic trust and social relatedness will increase children’swillingness 

to please their caregiver. Being able to move around and to grasp 

objects, to show joint attention and to infer intentions from actions, toddlers now 

become prosocialintheiractions; they may pick up an object accidently dropped 

by their caregiver, they may help to get access to objects out of reach, or they may 

open adoor for their parents if they are carrying things and need afree hand. 9 

This is true of interactions not only with primary caregivers but also with other 

people. 

Recent studies demonstrate that spontaneous helping is more likely to occur 

when it is obvious to the child that another person actually needs assistance. If the 

other person lets an object drop on purpose, the child will not pick it up. If the 

9 

F. Warneken and M. Tomasello, “The Developmental and Evolutionary Origins of Human 

Helping and Sharing,” in The Oxford Handbook of Prosocial Behavior,ed. D. A. Schroeder 

and W. G. Graziano (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/ 

9780195399813.013.00.


other person can reach for agiven object without difficulty, the child will also hesitate 

to provide support. Hence, the helping behavior of toddlers results from a 

careful analysis of the intentions and needs ofthe interactive partner. However, 

caregivers often experiencesituations in which an explicit request for help is ignored 

by the child (especially when it comes to doing unpleasant things, like tidying 

up the room). Young toddlers engage in prosocial actions because they want 

to affiliate and share positive feelings with others, not because they feel amoral 

call to help. 

Caregivers nurture the very beginnings of helping behavior most efficiently if 

they (a) communicate their needs but do not expect the child to help, (b) give the 

child the chance to infer the caregiver’sintentionsand to plan ahelping action by 

leaving some time before solving the problem on their own, (c) remain patient if 

the child’sattempt to help does not lead to immediate success, and (d) praisethe 

child for his or her engagement independent of the result. If parents observe attempts 

by atoddler to help asibling, they should not intervenebut should reward 

the child for the effort. Professional caregivers are trained to support the development 

of social helping behavior in young children. In preschool or kindergarten, 

young children frequently observe peers being praised for helping behavior, 

which further increases their own motivation to behave accordingly. 

Dealing with Conflicts of Interest and Sharing Goods with Others 

The limitations of toddlers’ moral understanding also become evident in situations 

involving conflicts of interest. Just imagine sitting in asand pit with several 

two-to-three-year-old children. Toddlers easily become upset when someone takes 

away atoy, destroys something they built, or hurts them (even by accident). At the 

same time, they may not hesitate to show corresponding behavior toward playmates. 

It seems to be perfectly all right for two-to-three-year-olds toapply different 

standards to themselves than to others, as they still need to develop asense of 

justice that applies to everyone. Most toddlers,when asked to share sweets with 

playmates or siblings, will not split the treats evenly but will keep the larger proportion 

for themselves. Alternatively, they may also give away all of it – depending 

on what seems relevant to them in the situation: to get as muchaspossible or 

to affiliate and make friends. Some children may offer their toys to others quite 

generously, while others do not want to share them at all. Children who do not feel 

aneed to make friends, or who fear not gettingenough, tend to be more defensive 

and less sharing, whereas children who enjoy being with peers and are very keen 

on affiliating with others are typicallymore generous. It is important for caregivers 

to understand the motivation driving children’s behavior in such situations 

and to realize that it is quite demanding to find the right balance between defending 

one’s own interests and accepting the interests ofothers. In any case, we


should keep in mind that toddlers do not evaluate theirown behavior according to 

the same standards as they view the behavior of others, and they thus still lack a 

true sense of fairness. 

Within families,siblings often compete for resources like food, toys, or caregiver 

attention. This can be quite challenging for parents, but it also provides a 

great training environment for moral development. Agood way to deal with conflicts 

among siblings is to guard and guide the children. Explaining to young children 

why it is important to share, and praising them for acting accordingly, will 

increase the likelihood of theirshowingthis type of behavior.And demonstrating 

the same behavior will lead to positive interactive exchanges, promoting the insight 

that sharing has social benefits. Again, it seems important to note that children 

will closely observe how parents and siblings deal with situations that call 

for sharing, and that these experiences will also contribute to their own understanding 

of values and norms. 

What It Takes to Develop aTrue Sense of Morality in Toddlerhood 

In order to develop atrue sense of fairness and moral understanding, young children 

need to develop self-regulation skills – especially impulse control. Impulse 

regulation leaves them time for remembering social rules or becoming aware of 

the needs of their interactive partner before responding in agiven situation. Children 

also develop a concept of the self,asthis allows them to take an external perspective 

on their own behavior and to understand that moral standards apply to 

everyone,including themselves. Complex self-related emotions,like shame, pride, 

and guilt, which first emerge around three years of age, reveal that the individual 

has started to take this external perspective. In addition, words referring to internal 

(mental) states need to be acquired to promote mind talk, since the development 

of moral standards requires an understanding of the cognitive,motivational, 

and emotional states that underlie people’s behavior and feelings. The larger 

the mental vocabulary of agiven child to describe these internal states, the more 

she or he will be able to perceive and think about differentiated intentions. In the 

following paragraphs, the development of each of these aspects is explained in 

more detail. Most skills start todevelop intoddlerhood, but progress continues 

far beyond early childhood. 

In general, self-regulation undergoes major changes between the ages of two 

and four years. Younger toddlers still find it hard tofollow instructions or to accept 

that they are not allowed to show certain behaviors, especially when external 

demands keep them from realizing their ownplans. They also find it hard to deal 

with frustration or othernegative feelings. Their lack of impulse control and emotion 

regulation has to do with the fact that certain brain areas responsible for selfregulation 

(for example, the orbitofrontal cortex) mature between ages threeand


five. It is thus not by chance, nor by bad intention, that two-to-three-year-olds often 

experience tantrums. When toddlers do not get their way, they often protest 

loudly, usually causingcaregivers to insist on beingobeyed. Children may experience 

this situation as threatening to their emerging sense of autonomy or to 

their emotional bond with the caregiver, thus intensifying their attempts to communicate 

their need. Caregivers then feel provoked by signs of disobedience and 

become angry. Unfortunately, showing negative emotions makes things even 

worse, as theyfuel toddlers’ arousal and anxiety. This is likely to end in atantrum 

because childrenare unable to self-regulate and calm down; rather, they get overwhelmed 

by their own negative feelings. In such situations, it is important to help 

the child relax before discussingthe issue and trying to negotiate asolution. Managing 

conflicts of interest is highly challenging and stressful for children as well 

as caregivers, but correspondingsituations play akey role when it comestopromoting 

social behavior in the long run. It pays off for parents to remainpatient but 

clear about consequences, and to justifytheir ownposition by explaining the rationale 

underlyingtheirdecisions. High arousal blocks reasoningskills and will 

not help the child to gain insights into the need to accept agiven social norm. 

In situations of conflict, young toddlers realize differences between themselves 

and their caregivers in evaluating agiven situation. One good thing about 

this is that it contributes to developing autonomy and asense of the self. As suggested 

by the so-called Rouge test, aconscious self-concept first emerges during 

the second year of life: When an adult casually places avisible mark on the face of 

the child, and the child later sees herself in the mirror, she may either touch the 

mark on her face because she already knows that the image refers to herself, or 

she may touch the mark on the face in the mirror because she still lacks the ability 

to recognize herself. Looking at themselves from an external perspective helps 

young toddlers to consciously reflect how others perceive and evaluate their behavior. 

Feelings of shame and pride also emerge between two and three years of age, 

as they are related to this increasing awareness of the self. One experiences 

shame when one feels uncomfortable being evaluated by others, and pride when 

one feels good because others evaluate aspects of their personality positively. 

Both feelings imply ageneral understanding that (a) each person has attributes 

characterizing his or her personality, (b) social evaluation matters for one’s own 

well-being, and (c) the child can be the object of social evaluation. Among the 

three emotions just mentioned, guilt is probably the one most closely linked to 

moral development. Originally, the nonacceptance of acertain behavior is communicated 

by others, and the child receives direct negative feedback when acting 

that way. Repeated experiences of this kind lead the child to expect social punishment 

if he or she shows certain behaviors, and this expectation usually leads to 

impulse control in the presence of others. The expectation of negative consequences 

is later internalized and prevents the child from showing the nonacceptable


behavior even without others being present. Feelings of shame or guilt mark an 

important milestone inmoral development, but they can also reduce spontaneous, 

authentic, and explorative behavior. Caregivers should thus carefully consider 

the behaviors for which they induce feelings of pride, shame, or guilt. 

Because childrendonot yet fully understand moral standards at ages two to 

three, they mainly refrain from showing certain behaviors in order to avoid social 

punishment, and they show other behaviors more often if they are socially rewarded. 

If social feedback does not have much value for achild, however, or if 

the child is used to being treated harshly anyway, showing disapproval may not 

have much of an effect. This is often the problem in families that use punishment 

frequently. 

If acaregiver wants to supportthe formation of values and norms in achild, it 

is insufficient to just provide negative feedback for antisocialbehavior; rather, the 

child needs some explanation why abehavior is not acceptable. That way, the 

child also increases his or her vocabulary to describe emotions, thoughts, or motivational 

states, thus promoting mind talk,which helps the child understand the 

meaning of social values and norms. By pointingout how others are affected if a 

given social rule is ignored,caregivers teach childrentoimaginethe consequences 

of behavior for themselves and to simulate the associated feelings, thus acquiring 

adeeper understanding ofwhy they should follow the rule. Verbal communication 

thus helps the child to abstract, memorize, and understand social 

rules. 

In sum, toddlers are still in aprocess of learning how to control theirimpulses 

and their emotions and how to talk about mental states. Furthermore, their developing 

of self-awareness helps them to look at their own actions from adifferent 

perspective,toidentifywith specific values, and to experience shame, pride, and 

guilt when their behavior does not match social standards, thus showingthe first 

signs of internalizing values and norms. Talking about conflicts and the rules for 

resolving them supports this process in important ways. 

Early Childhood 

Apart from learning by reward and verbal explanations, observational learning 

has already been identified as acrucial mechanism for transmitting values and 

norms that starts already in infancy but becomes more and more important with 

age.

Family Storytelling and the 

Communication of Values 

Robyn Fivush 

Human beings are storytellers. Whether telling tales of mythic adventures, folk 

heroes, or family members, humans understand and communicate about their 

world, the people in it, and what it all means through stories. 1 Moreover, stories 

always have apoint, amoral, avalue. Stories are compelling illustrations of what 

it meanstobeaperson, of how to live alife, and how to relate to others. Through 

stories we construct shared understandings of the world and how to be apart of it. 

And we do this all the time. Certainly, we tell the big stories at holidays and ritual 

celebrations, at weddings, births, and funerals, in political and religious observances; 

we tell the stories of our family, of our community, of our people. But we 

also tell small stories; every day we share the minutiae of our lives, what we did at 

work or school, with friends and family, over the dinner table, over the phone, or 

over the internet. Estimates indicate that these kinds of stories emerge in everyday 

conversations about once every five minutes. 2 That we tell stories is unquestionable; 

how and why we tell stories is amore interesting story! 

In this chapter, Ireview research my colleagues and Ihave conducted over 

the past three decades examining the processes and outcomes of family 

storytelling. 3 How do families create shared stories that reverberate through the 

generations, and how might these stories influence developmental outcome? I 

show how family storytelling passes on not just family knowledge and traditions 

but also family values, an understanding ofwhat it means to be part of afamily 

and to share commitments, values, and ideals. To lay the foundation for this argument, 

Ifirst provide amore overarching theoretical frame for examining how stories 

both create and are created within broad social and cultural interactions. 

1 

2 

3 

J. Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). 

J. G. Bohanek et al., “Narrative Interaction in Family Dinnertime Conversations,” Merrill- 

Palmer Quarterly 55, no. 4(Oct. 2009): 488–515, https://doi.org/10.1353/mpq.0.0031. 

See R. Fivush, Family Narratives and the Development of an Autobiographical Self: Social 

and Cultural Perspectives on Autobiographical Memory (New York: Routledge, 2019).

76 Robyn Fivush 

Family Storytelling in Sociocultural Context 

Anarrative, orstory, carves the unending flow of experience into discrete units 

with beginnings, middles, and ends. 4 All known human cultures tell stories, 5 and, 

although the form of the narrative might vary, all stories integrate what Jerome 

Bruner has called the landscape of action – the external world of objects, actions, 

and people – with the landscape of consciousness – the internal world of 

thoughts, emotions, and reflections. 6 In this way, stories become more than recounting 

what happened and include information about why things unfolded as 

they did, about intentions and motivations, as well as about consequences,reactions, 

and ramifications, telling adrama ripe with human emotion and interpretation. 

In this sense, all stories are forms of morality tales; they are told for areason, 

to make apoint, to draw alesson about how alife should be lived. 

Infants are embedded within stories from the moment of birth. Parents and 

grandparents whisper stories into infants’ ears, telling them fairy tales, nursery 

rhymes, and, importantly, stories of this family of which they have become apart. 

As infants develop into toddlers, they are drawn into storytelling, participating 

both in reading storybooks by pointing and gesturing, and in co-narrating stories 

of their own experiences. Being able to tell one’s story is acritical cultural skill. 

Adept cultural members are expected to be able to present acoherent story of self, 

whether on acollege essay, in ajob interview, or while meeting apossible romantic 

partner. Each of us must be able to explain who we are, how we became this 

way, and what we plan to be in the future as acoherent and compelling narrative 

of self. 7 Children begin to learn these skills within the family, as parents, grandparents, 

and siblings draw children into participating in co-narrating the stories 

of their lives. 

These family stories are created within cultural contexts that provide the tools 

for story making; cultures provide life scripts that define the typical life course – 

childhood, schooling, romance, marriage, parenting, and, finally, retirement – 

and the kinds of events expected to occurateach of these time periods. 8 In addition 

to the overall structure of alife, cultures provide templates, or master narratives, 

that provide acanonical shape to life-defining events, the narrative arc of 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

P. Ricoeur, “Life in Quest of Narrative,” in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, 

ed. D. Wood (London: Routledge Press, 1991), 20–33. 

N. Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, vol. 51 (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1978). 

Bruner, Acts of Meaning. 

D. P. McAdams, “The Psychology of Life Stories,” Review of General Psychology no. 5 

(2001): 100–22. 

D. Bernsten and A. Bohn, “Cultural Life Scripts and Individual Life Stories,” in Memory in 

Mind and Culture, ed. P. Boyer and J. Wertsch, 130–47 (New York: Cambridge University 

Press, 2010).

Family Storytelling and the Communication of Values 77 

our experience. For example, Dan McAdams defines the redemptive life narrative 

as the core U.S. master narrative, the story of rising up from nothing, of overcoming 

hardship through perseverance and grit, and of “making good,” both materially 

and personally. 9 This redemptive narrative arc is the story of the country’s 

founding, of the Pilgrims and the Revolution,the immigrantstory of rags to riches, 

of being born into poverty and becoming an American icon, as exemplified 

today by Oprah and Dolly Parton. Master narratives carry cultural values, defining 

success and “the good life” within specific parameters. 

Culturallycanonical master narratives seep into our national and local institutions, 

into our schools, and into our homes. The ways in which families as a 

whole, and each individual family member, tell their stories are influenced by 

these overarching cultural frames that allow for certain ways of understanding 

how the world works. Even if stories do not conform to the master narrative, that 

narrative provides the backdrop against which individual stories are told,ifnot as 

confirmations, then as negations, contestations, or upheavals. Thus, adialectical 

relation unfolds. Cultural narratives provide forms forour individual and family 

stories, but our individual and family stories also influence the evolution of the 

cultural narratives. Perhaps the best example of this is the emerging U.S. cultural 

narratives about race and racism, as we see the role that cultural narratives and 

counternarratives have played and continue to play in the quest for social 

justice. 10 

Both cultural and family narratives also change within more local contexts, as 

we tell our stories to and with others. As we tell both our small stories of everyday 

happenings and big stories of momentous events, we tell them to people who react, 

express concern or joy, comfortorcelebrate with us, or provide theirown interpterionofwhat 

happened. Listeners influence how we tell our story in the moment 

and how we will tell it in the future. 11 When we reminisce about experiences 

that we sharedtogether, each participant in the conversation adds their own bits 

and pieces, confirming, expanding, negotiating what happened in the construction 

of ajointtapestry that becomes the basis of how this story will continue to be 

told in the future. Thus, our stories are not static; like our memories themselves, 

stories are reconstructed over timeand through multiple sharings and are shaped 

9 

10 

11 

D. P. McAdams, “The Redemptive Self: Narrative Identity in America Today,” in The Self 

and Memory, ed. D. R. Beike, J. M. Lampinen, and D. A. Behrend, 95–116 (New York: Psychology 

Press, 2004). 

P. Cumberbath and N. Trujillo-Pagán, “Hashtag Activism and Why #BlackLivesMatter in 

(and to) the Classroom,” Radical Teacher 106 (2016), https://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/radicalteacher/article/view/302. 

M. Pasupathi and J. Billitteri, “Being and Becoming through Being Heard: Listener Effects 

on Stories and Selves,” International Journal of Listening 29 (2015): 67–84, https:// 

doi.org/10.1080/10904018.2015.1029363.


by evolving cultural and personal evaluations of what events were aboutand what 

they mean. Moreover, stories of self are intricately interwoven with stories of family 

members, both in how children come to tell their own personal stories and how 

they come to understand themselves as part of afamily. 

The Cultural Ecology of Family Storytelling 

Adapting Urie Bronfenbrenner’secological model of child development, 12 my colleagues 

and Ideveloped amodel of how individual life stories are culturally embedded 

within the family, the community, and the broader sociohistorical 

context. 13 As depicted in Figure 1, the child at the center of this complex interactive 

system is an active participant in their own developmental process, and individual 

characteristics, such as gender, age, and temperament, are critical components, 

both in how children interact with others and in how they form their 

personal stories. The child is immediatelyencircled within the family and participates 

in both hearing family stories and beginning to constructtheir ownstories 

of self through parentally structured narrative interactions. At this level, the stories 

focus on the child’sown lived experiences, events that they recall to and with 

others. At the next level out are generational family stories. These are stories that 

the child has not personally experienced but only knows through the storytelling. 

These include stories of the parents’ lives both outside the current home,such as 

at work, and before the child was born, especially stories parents tell of their own 

childhood experiences, what are called intergenerational narratives. Finally, at 

the outer layer are sociohistorical stories, both the master narratives that provide 

the culturally canonical myths and narrative arcs, as well as family history, stories 

about generations past (great-grandparents and beyond), and tales of how 

this family has evolved and emerged across the generations. 

As depicted by the bidirectional arrows, all levels are always in dynamic interaction;all 

of these kinds of stories occur everyday;inatypical family dinner 

conversation, stories emerge every five minutes. 14 Many of these stories are the 

child recountingtheir day at school, often in response to parental questioning, or 

stories hearkening back to ashared family event, such as last summer at the 

beach or visiting Grandma for the holidays. Family stories centered around the 

child’sdirect experiences account for about halfofall stories told around atypical 

12 

13 

14 

U. Brofenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design 

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979). 

R. Fivush and N. Merrill, “An Ecological Systems Approach to Family Narratives,” Memory 

Studies 9, no. 3(2016): 305–14; K. McLean, The Co-Authored Self (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 2015). 

Bohanek et al., “Narrative Interaction.”

Family Storytelling and the Communication of Values 79 

Figure 1. The cultural ecology of family storytelling 

dinner table. But the other half do not feature the child as one of the characters. 

Generational storytelling, such as parents talking about their day at work, occur 

as frequently as children telling about their day at school, and almost all families 

will sprinkle in astory or two that tells aboutthe parents’ childhood experiences 

or even more remote family history. These stories create shared histories and 

shared understandingofeach other’sworld among family members and help the 

developing child evaluate and express their own personal experiences as part of 

larger family and community frameworks that provide aset of beliefs and values 

to live by. In the remainder of this chapter, Idelineate each of these layers of family 

storytelling.


Shared Family Stories 

Early in development, parents and other family members help children express 

their personal experiences in coherent evaluative narrative frameworks.Children 

begin referencing their personal past almost as soon as they begin talking, at 

about sixteen to eighteen months of age, but at this early stage, their references 

are fleeting and often confusing. Parents and other family members draw out 

these responses, interpreting and elaborating on minimal expressions from the 

child, often just yes/no responses, head nods, and assents as parents tell them 

what fun they had at the playground, orhow delicious Grandma’s cookies were. 

The preschool years are particularly important in this developmental process, 

as this is the period of development when memory and language skills are becoming 

consolidated, and children begin to be able to participate more fully in these 

reminiscing conversations, as illustrated by the following narrative shared between 

amother and her four-year-old daughter, Andrea. 15 The mother asks why 

Andrea was angry at her friend at school, and Andrea responds: 

Andrea: She pinched me. 

Mother: What did you do when she did that? 

Andrea: Istarted crying. 

Mother: And then what did you do? You went and told the teacher? 

Andrea: Yeah, Iwent to her. 

Mother: And then what happened. 

Andrea: And then Ihad to go out the hallway and when the other teacher came I 

had to go out to the hallway with her and then Ms. X, Ms. X, she had to 

stay in the class with the otherchildren and then Ihad to sit down in her 

chair with my back 

Mother: But you didn’tget hurt real bad, right?Ithurt when it first happened, but 

it didn’t really last long, right? 

Andrea: Ididn’t – Iwent to Ms. Xshe told us (not) to fight and then 

the boys were supposed to be on this side and the girls were supposedto 

be in back the girls were supposedtobeinthe front of the 

office and then so … 

Mother: But then after you got through, what happened with you and (friend)? 

Did you all talk again? 

Andrea: No, she said sorry, but she had to get in trouble. 

Mother: She apologized, right? Did you accept her apology? Did you say okay? 

Andrea: Yeah. 

Mother: You all still talk, right? You kind of made up? You’re still friends? 

15 

This and all examples are from Fivush, Family Narratives. All conversations were audiotaped 

and transcribed verbatim. All names are pseudonyms.

The project and the publication were supported by the 

Karl-Schlecht Stiftung and the University of Heidelberg. 

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek 

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; 

detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. 

© 2022 by Evangelische Verlagsanstalt GmbH · Leipzig 

Printed in Germany 

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