CROSS CULTURE UNDERSTANDING

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.  AMERICANS

Most Americans see themselves as open, frank, and fairly friendly. If you ask them a question, they will answer it. They have nothing to hide. They cannot understand why people from other countries should have any difficulty understanding them. Unless, of course, there are language problems.

But most foreigners do have trouble understanding Americans. Even if they have a good command of English, most foreigners have at least some difficulty understanding what the Americans they encounter are thinking and feeling. What ideas and attitudes underlie their actions? What motivates them? What makes them talk and act the way they do? This book addresses those questions. The book is intended to help foreign visitors—both those staying for a long time and those here for short visits—understand the natives.

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A.    AMERICAN FAMILY VALUES

Everyone already knows that the word “ family “ means a social unit-whether blood-related, marriage-related or emotion-related—usually residing together. Rhe word “value” typically mean a set of beliefs and ideals (social and sometimes political) that provide moral guidance to a family unit. When you put the two  terms together, it makes sense to take their collective meaning as a set of beliefs or ideals that imbue each member of family with knowledge about right and wrong, proper moral decision-making skills and well-developed social mores. Most modern American families also include caring, love and support of the family into their system of values.

Any list of values and assumptions is inherently arbitrary. Depending on how one defines and categorizes things, one could make a three-item or a thirty-item list of a country’s major values and assumptions. The list fered below has eight entries, each covering a set of closely related values and assumptions commonly held by Americans: individualism, freedom, competitiveness, and privacy; equality; informality; the future, change, and progress; goodness of humanity; time; achievement, action, work, and materialism; and directness and assertiveness. Because individualism is so vital to understanding American society and culture, it receives more attention than the others.

Notice that the values and assumptions discussed below overlap with and support each other. In general, they agree with each other. They fit together. A culture can be viewed as a collection of values and assumptions that go together to shape the way a group of people perceives and relates to the world around them.

1.      Individualism

The most important thing to understand about Americans is probably their devotion to individualism. They are trained from very early in their lives to consider themselves as separate individuals who are responsible for their own situations in life and their own destinies. They are not trained to see themselves as members of a close-knit, interdependent family, religious group, tribe, nation, or

any other collectivity.

This particular mother may or may not have owned a copy of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s famous book, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, to which millions of American parents have long turned for information and advice on raising their children. The most recent version of the book makes this observation: In the United States…very few children are raised to believe that their principal destiny is to serve their family, their country, or their God [as is the practice in some other countries]. Generally children [in the United States] are given the feeling that they can set their own aims and occupation in life, according to their inclinations. We are raising

them to be rugged individualists…. (1998, 7)

While it has become more acceptable in light of changing economic circumstances (especially higher housing costs) for young adults to live in their parents’ house, the ideal of independence after high school graduation remains. If it is economically feasible for them to do so, young adult Americans are expected to live apart from their parents, either on their own or in college, or risk being viewed as immature, “tied to their mother’s apron strings,” or otherwise unable to lead a normal, independent life.

 Research by social scientists indicates that the culture of the United States is the most individualistic (or second most, after Australia) in the world. American individualism was perhaps epitomized by a “Walkman dance” at a major university. Students assembled in a large room, where they all danced alone to whatever music they were playing on their own Walkman. Americans are trained to conceive of themselves as separate individuals, and they assume everyone else in the world is too. When they encounter a person from  abroad who seems to them excessively concerned with the opinions of parents, with following traditions, or with

fulfilling obligations to others, they assume that the person feels trapped or is weak, indecisive, or “overly dependent.” They assume all people must resent being in situations where they are not “free to make up their own minds.” They assume, furthermore, that after living for a time in the United States, people will come to feel “liberated” from constraints arising from outside themselves and will be grateful for the opportunity to “do their own thing” and “have it their own way.” As indeed, many are.

The individual that Americans idealize prefers an atmosphere of freedom, where neither the government norm any other external force or agency dictates what the individualdoes. For Americans, the idea of individual freedom has strong, positive connotations.

Foreign visitors who understand the degree to which Americans are imbued with the notion that the free, selfreliant individual is the ideal kind of human being will be able to understand many aspects of American behavior and thinking that otherwise might not make sense. A very few of many possible examples:

• Americans see as heroes those individuals who “stand out from the crowd” by doing something first, longest, most often, or otherwise “best.” Real-life examples are aviators Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, golfer Tiger Woods, and basketball player Michael Jordan. Perhaps the best example from the world of

fiction is the American cowboy as portrayed by such motion-picture actors as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.

·         Many Americans do not display the degree of respect for their parents that people in more traditional or family-oriented societies commonly do. From their point of view, being born to particular parents was a sort of historical or biological accident. The parents fulfill their responsibilities to the children while the children are young, but when the children have reached “the age of independence,” the close child-parent tie is loosened, occasionally even broken.

·          It is not unusual for Americans who are beyond the age of about twenty-two (and sometimes younger) and who are still living with their parents to pay their parents for room and board. Elderly parents living with their grown children may do likewise. Paying for room and board is a way of showing independence, self-reliance, and responsibility for oneself.

·          Certain phrases one commonly hears among Americans capture their devotion to individualism: “You’ll have to decide that for yourself.” “If you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will.” “Look out for number one.” “Be your own best friend.”

2.      Privacy

Also closely associated with the value they place on individualism is the importance Americans assign to privacy. Americans assume that most people “need some time to themselves” or “some time alone” to think about things or recover their spent psychological energy. Most Americans have great difficulty understanding people who always want to be with another person, who dislike being alone. Americans tend to regard such people as weak or dependent. If the parents can afford it, each child will have his or her own bedroom. Having one’s own bedroom, even as an infant, inculcates in a person the notion that she is entitled to a place of her own where she can be by herself and—notice—keep her possessions. She will have her clothes, her toys, her books, and so on. These things will be hers and no one else’s. 

Americans assume that people have their “private thoughts” that might never be shared with anyone. Doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, and others have rules governing “confidentiality” that are intended to prevent information about their clients’ personal situations from becoming known to others.

Americans’ attitudes about privacy can be difficult for foreigners to understand. Americans’ houses, yards, and even their offices can seem open and inviting, yet, in Americans’ minds, there are boundaries that other people are simply not supposed to cross. When such boundaries are crossed, the Americans’ bodies will visibly stiffen and their manner will become cool and aloof.

3.      Equality

Americans are also distinctive in the degree to which they believe in the ideal, as stated in their Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal.” Although they sometimes violate the ideal in their daily lives, particularly in matters of interracial relationships and sometimes relationships among people from different social classes, Americans have a deep faith that in some fundamental way all people (at least all American people) are of equal value, that no one is born superior to anyone else. “One person, one vote,” they say, conveying the idea that any person’s opinion is as valid and worthy of attention as any other person’s opinion.

Americans are generally quite uncomfortable when someone treats them with obvious deference. They dislike being the subjects of open displays of respect—being bowed to, deferred to, or treated as though they could do no wrong or make no unreasonable requests.  It is not just males who are created equal, in the American mindset, but females too. While Americans may violate the ideal in practice (for example, women continue to be paid less, on average, than do men in similar jobs), they do generally assume that women and men are equal, deserving of the same level of respect. Women may be different from men but are not inferior to them.

This is not to say that Americans make no distinctions among themselves as a result of such factors as gender, age, wealth, or social position. They do. But the distinctions are acknowledged in subtle ways. Tone of voice, order of speaking, choice of words, seating arrangements— such are the means by which Americans acknowledge status differences among themselves. People of higher status are more likely to speak first, louder, and longer. They sit at the head of the table or in the most comfortable chair. They feel free to interrupt other speakers more than others feel free to interrupt them. The higher-status person may put a hand on the shoulder of the lower-status person. If there is touching between the people involved, the higher-status person will touch first.

Foreigners who are accustomed to more obvious displays of respect (such as bowing, averting eyes from the face of the higher-status person, or using honorific titles) often overlook the ways in which Americans show respect for people of higher status. They think, incorrectly, that Americans are generally unaware of status differences and disrespectful of other people. What is distinctive about the American outlook on the matter of equality are the underlying assumptions that (1) no matter what a person’s initial station in life, he or she has the opportunity to achieve high standing and (2) everyone, no matter how unfortunate, deserves some basic level of respectful treatment.

4.      Informality

Their notions of equality lead Americans to be quite informalin their general behavior and in their relationships with other people. Store clerks and table servers, for example, may introduce themselves by their first (given) names and treat customers in a casual, friendly manner. American clerks, like other Americans, have been trained to believe that they are as valuable as any other people,

even if they happen to be engaged at a given time in an occupation that others might consider lowly. This informal behavior can outrage foreign visitors who hold high

status in countries where it is not assumed that “all men are created equal.”

Relationships between students, teachers, and coworkers in American society are often very informal. People from societies where general behavior is more formal than it is in the United States are struck by the informality of American speech, dress, and body language. Idiomatic speech and slang are liberally used on most occasions, with formal speech reserved for public events and fairly formal situations. People of almost any station in life can be seen in public wearing jeans, sandals, or other informal attire. People slouch down in chairs or lean on walls or furniture when they talk rather than maintaining an erect bearing.

A brochure advertising a highly regarded liberal arts college contains a photograph showing the college president, dressed in shorts and an old T-shirt, jogging past one of the classroom buildings on his campus. Americans are likely to find the photograph appealing: “Here is a college president who’s just like anyone else. He doesn’t think he’s too good for us.”

Likewise, U.S. President George W. Bush frequently allowed himself to be photographed in his jogging attire while out for one of his frequent runs. The superficial friendliness for which Americans are so well-known is related to their informal, egalitarian approach to other people. “Hi!” they will say to just about anyone, or “Howya doin?” (that is, “How are you doing?” or “How are you?”). This behavior reflects not so much a special interest in the person addressed as a concern (not conscious) for showing that one is a “regular guy,” part of a group of normal, pleasant people—like the jogging college president and the jogging president of his superpower country.

B.     Traditional and Modern American Family Values

Modern society breeds a contemporary view point about the attributes of a family, but this wasn’t always so. As recently as the 1950s, commonly-used American family values took a far different approach to matters of gender, equality and the family as a whole. Despite the disadvantages of those mid 20^th century ideals, many of them still have a viable place in contemporary belief system. To formulate a set of beliefs and ideals that will work best for your family, it might help to examine both the traditional and the contemporary models.

a.       Traditional Values

Although they are not for everyone certain aspect of traditional ideas may still appeal to a wide range of families. They represent enduring familial themes and the comfrrt of conventional homes. The list below includes both common and uncommon values for old-fasioned families:

·         Opposition to pre-marital sex

·         Opposition to same sex marriage

·         Belief in traditional home-based roles for women

·         Opposition to same elements of feminism

·         Opposition to abortion while actively supporting abstinence education

·         Belief in adoption as an alternative to abortion

·         Belief in program and public policies the shield childern from exploitation

·         Opposition to separation of church and state

·         Belief in father as a head of household.

b.      Contemporary Values

Those who take a more modern approach to establishing family ideals may find themselves spoiled for choice. Although progressive families practice conscientiousness in setting up a system of values to live by, they are largely free of some of the limitations present in traditional belief systems. The following list highlights some popular ideals for America’s modern families:

·         Support for the universal living wage model to improve livelihood

·         Belief in a woman’s right to abortion

·         Belief in planned parenthood programs that offer contraception

·         Belief in government funded financial aid to families

·         Support for sex education in public schools

·         Belief in practicing and teaching tolerance, patience and understanding for alternative lifestyles

·         Belief universal healthcare and family-friendly employment laws (maternity leave, personal leave, emergency family leave)

·         Support for freedom of religion

c.       The Common Denominator

Whether you believe in traditional family roles and ideals or learn more towards the progressive, the one thing that both categories agree upon is building a loving and supportive family unit. Both groups want to instill good morals and strong character attributes into their children. In establish American family values for your loved ones, get together with your patner and discuss the values that matter most to you. Remember that no one set of ideals works for everyone, feel free to mix and match from both categories or establish a set all your own.

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

Everyone already knows that the word “ family “ means a social unit-whether blood-related, marriage-related or emotion-related—usually residing together. ”Values” are ideas about what is right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, normal and abnormal, proper and improper. In some cultures, for example, people are taught that men and women should inhabit separate social worlds, with some activities clearly in the men’s domain and others clearly in the women’s. In other cultures men and women are considered to have more or less equal access to most roles in the society.

Depending on how one defines and categorizes things, one could make a three-item or a thirty-item list of a country’s major values and assumptions. The list of fered below has eight entries, each covering a set of closely related values and assumptions commonly held by Americans: individualism, freedom, competitiveness, and privacy; equality; informality.

REFRENCE

Althen, Gary.

 Gary Althen. American ways: a guide for foreigners in the United States.—2nd ed.

Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care

By Stacy Taylor