Do We Share The Same American Values

“If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything” (unknown). This quote implies that a person must have a belief in something to govern themselves. We all must have something to follow something to guide us. We all at some point are influenced by parents, religious framework, or an influential person. In this essay I will define what are values and why all Americans do not share the same American values.
Identification. Divide between a social control and an individual is observed throughout society. Gender roles are taught to us during our childhood youth years. These teaching are implemented to prepare individuals, within a social society, with some helpful tools to interact with others. Parents raising their male child to open

One would like to believe we all need something to guide us, something to live by that could be considered a blueprint for life. Values are defined as, “the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something; a person’s principles or standards of behavior; one’s judgment of what is important in life.” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2018). Research by L. Robert Kohls (1984) summarized, in his article The Values Americans Live By, although Americans are influenced by different conditions, we all share the same basic values. Kohls further describe those values as “Personal control over the environment, change, time & its control, equality, individualism/privacy, self-help, competition, future orientation, action/work orientation, informality, directness/openness/honest, practicality/efficiency, and materialism/acquisitiveness.” These values are believed to be what all Americans hold great importance and is their standard reasoning for their

Ultimately Americans do all want the same things out of life; however, that does not translate as having the same values. A person’s standards of behavior are dependent upon variables that not all Americans are subjected to. Your definition of American values stems from your upbringing and visual environments. Seeing an adult male doing manual and physical labor would lead one to believe that the American dream consist of strength. If everyone shared the same values, there would be much stagnant society with no room for growth.
Developed Values. Values are learned from parents and authority figures. We are taught values with a religion framework. Values are defined and understood by different sources such as the bible, family customs, and powerful leaders. While values can be learned through ones parents they are often times tainted because of personal experiences of the parents. When a person grows into adulthood they begin to have their own set of experiences and their parents’ teaching will not always satisfy the situations and the outcome will be different. Which then cause an individual to develop a new set of