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For most of American history, putting family first was not just a private choice; it was a deep expression of American identity. The story we told ourselves about success and the good life centered on raising happy and healthy families.
But that story is unraveling. A new dataset of over 90,000 respondents from New York University’s Stern School of Business revealed that prioritizing one’s family is no longer a core American value. NYU researchers, using a data collection tool called the Values Bridge, found that only 48% of Americans ranked family as a top-five value in their lives, and only 11% ranked family as their top priority. Family was a bottom-five value for nearly 1 in 5 respondents.
Meanwhile, the vast majority ranked values centered on the self as their priority. Whereas past generations lived by the creed “family first,” Americans put themselves first today.
Across nearly every demographic, the study, conducted over six months, found that two self-focused values consistently ranked near the top of the modern value system. The first was “eudemonia,” a Greek term that encompasses things that feel good, including self-care, leisure, and pleasure. Nearly two-thirds ranked “eudemonia” as a top-five value, with younger generations giving it particular priority.
The second was “voice,” a term that captures the desire for authentic and individualistic self-expression, especially the freedom “to be oneself” without being judged by others. This value, too, ranked as particularly important for younger generations.
The study suggests what many have long suspected: People today are increasingly less interested in negotiating life with a spouse and children. Instead, they value the sense of personal liberation that results from uncompromising individuality. Put bluntly, modern Americans would rather be uncompromising and alone than compromising and surrounded by family.
It’s impossible to say for certain whether the rise of the self-focused value system has been gradual or sudden due to a lack of data over time. Yet, it’s easy to see how several mutually reinforcing cultural trends reflect the shift in recent decades.
Reasons for the shift
On the economic front, skyrocketing housing costs and crushing student debt have made financial independence feel impossible for millions of young adults, delaying family formation. For young people in today’s gig economy, whose six-figure college educations bring diminishing returns, work is primarily a matter of individual survival, not a launchpad for starting a family.
Meanwhile, American culture has become increasingly defined by the promotion of self-focused values. Virtues commonly associated with family life, such as self-sacrifice, responsibility, and fidelity, have been deemphasized in favor of virtues associated with modern culture: self-knowledge, self-care, and self-expression. Radical independence has replaced interdependence, and a moral relativism that stresses living “your truth” has usurped the timeless truths of tradition.
The adults of today were exposed to a relentless barrage of self-focused programming in their formative years. Beginning in the early 2000s, popular music and media aimed at tweens and teenagers relentlessly championed radical self-acceptance with almost no caveats. The era’s preeminent message of “you’re perfect just the way you are” emphasized self-acceptance and self-love as the primary keys to fulfillment, replacing the traditional virtues necessary for cohesive family life, such as character development and self-denial.
The radical shift toward individual self-actualization was also reflected in the narratives of Hollywood. Beginning around the same time, popular movies abandoned the traditional hero’s journey of personal transformation through struggle and sacrifice in favor of character arcs that stressed the discovery of one’s own voice and unconditional self-acceptance. Whereas Hollywood characters historically strove to overcome flaws that kept them from living as a part of a greater whole, contemporary protagonists now routinely shed family bonds and obligations in the service of self-discovery and authenticity.
These are only some of the mutually reinforcing trends that likely caused the American value system to prioritize the self over the family. Others include ubiquitous screens that isolate family members from one another, eroding bonds slowly over time; the rise of hookup culture that provides the sexual rewards of marriage without any of the responsibility; and the collapse of multigenerational homes. It isn’t obvious, though, if any of these are causes or symptoms of the shift.
A culture turned inward
The result is a culture filled with people increasingly turned inward, focused on acquiring and maintaining internal comfort, curating a desired self-image, and seeking truth and meaning inside themselves and not in their external worlds. And the first casualty of such a turn inward is, necessarily, the people closest to us: our family.
This state of cultural affairs is understood by many, perhaps including many who responded to the Values Bridge survey, as deeply unfortunate. But despite the shift in values recorded in the dataset, it’s difficult to imagine many celebrating the disintegration of family bonds. Everyone has a mother, after all.
One person who would have celebrated the development is 20th-century French existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. For Sartre, the Values Bridge data would represent more than a positive cultural transformation; it would represent the culmination of his life’s work.
Sartre, the dominant philosophical voice of Europe in the postwar era, famously argued that “existence precedes essence,” meaning that humans are born without a predetermined nature, role, or purpose. We exist first, in his view, and through our own choices, we define ourselves from the bottom up. We create meaning entirely for ourselves, and the unquestioned adherence to the obligations of tradition can become an obstacle to discovering our authentic selves, which, for Sartre, is the path to freedom. To hide behind social roles and predetermined “essences,” such as the roles we play within our families, is to deny our freedom and live in “bad faith.”
Our culture’s turn toward prioritizing the self by embracing “eudemonia” and “voice” over family aligns perfectly with the radical self-creation Sartre championed.
What’s more, the immensely influential academic would have relished that his cultural victory came at the expense of his greatest nemesis: Christianity. For Sartre, the existence of God was the fundamental impediment to personal freedom. The externally imposed moral codes and traditions of the faith were shackles that prevented the journey of self-creation. Since God provides humanity with a fixed definition, or “essence,” His existence nullifies the radical freedom and self-creation. For Sartre, God’s existence makes freedom impossible.
The role of faith
As Christianity’s cultural authority waned, Sartre’s philosophy of radical independence rose to prominence, effectively usurping the traditional place of familial duty with the pursuit of individual self-fulfillment. To grasp the significance of the shift, one only needs to consider Christianity’s main symbol, the cross of Jesus, from the Christian and Sartrean perspectives.
For Sartre, the cross represented the ultimate denial of radical human freedom because it symbolized the fulfillment of a divine plan carried out by an external savior. This meant that humans have a fixed purpose as well as an external moral code to follow, both of which were anathema to Sartre.
But for Christians, the cross of Jesus is the ultimate expression of agape: the unconditional, radical, selfless, self-emptying, self-giving love of God. The very last thing that could be said of Jesus hanging in anguish from the cross is that he is focused on a journey of self-discovery. No, Jesus on the cross is intensely focused not on himself but on the good of the other. He utterly eschews “eudemonia” for the benefit of God’s children, his family.
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Even worse from a Sartrean perspective is that Jesus went to his death through obedience to an external force. Jesus did not at first eagerly embrace his gruesome crucifixion — in the Garden of Gethsemane, his sweat dripping red with the blood of anguish, he pleaded with God to “let this cup pass from me,” only to submit to God’s will in the very next line, saying, “Still, not my will but yours be done.” Jesus went to the cross not only out of love, but out of obligation and duty.
Here we find the antidote to the modern plague of self-centeredness as revealed by the Values Bridge, which is unsurprisingly accompanied by an unprecedented mental health crisis and existential despair. To reverse the tragedy of a culture that prioritizes personal comfort over caring for our families, we must reemphasize the importance of faith in our culture. Several recent studies indicated a resurgence in church attendance in recent years, particularly among younger generations. This is sorely needed good news for a nation mired in self-centeredness, and for the fate of the American family.
