Beliefs about Families by Mary Pipher

In this essay the author Mary Pipher describes her perception of family in addition to how it applies to success in our modern day society in terms of material and moral fulfillment. She mentions that her idea of family is a group of people that stick together and are supportive in the best ways they know how, to help one strive in life. She details different types of families as being Biologically Nuclear, Foster, or certain organizations that allow those from dysfuntional families to join together as their own family. Mary Pipher also mentions how there may be two types of families: One is the Idealized version. Where families are well oriented, and all loving/supporting. Two is the Dysfunctional version of family. Where the people in it are often more individual achievers and less family oriented. She mentions how the Dysfunctional version of family is more abundant in the U.S. and how its less driven towards moral fulfillment and more towards stale material gain. She mentions how we are sold the idea that happiness can be bought, but that its not the case at all.

I enjoyed this essay because it brought multiple valid reasons of affect that families have on modern day individuals. It showed me how much impact a dysfunctional family can have. Personally I think its true that we are manipulated into believing in the idea that family's get in the way of our individual success. I believe this because it makes sense to get the people of our country less tied up with family and more involved in work that contributes to the country and makes it more progressed and better as a whole. The issue is that countries are mean't to be homes for people and not places of work. Work is rather a choice people make in their life to contribute to the country in anyway through which the country contributes back to them in a specific way. However work may bring material success, but such success is not fulfilling. The desire to have more is the definition of desire. We as human beings have an inevitable desire to have more and better of what we already have. The very Greeks that the author reffers to as having valued individuality, is a perfect example of my point. At first in Greek art, the artists valued sculpting and realism. They strived for centuries to sculpt a realistic figure, with perfectly porportiante body parts and gesture/facial expression. Once they achieved this, they decided that they weren't satisfied, and stopped making that kind of sculpting. After that, they started making what we now know as Classic Greek art, where the sculptor makes a human body with unrealistic emphasized body parts. They supersize the perfection of peaked human conditons with detailed abbs, large pecks, etc. Altogether desire will be desire and so for happiness and fulfillment we should turn an eye to other things that aren't temporary or material, such as family or morals, and beliefs that satisfy the mentality of a person.