Management Of Family Resources

Lesson 15 : Attributed Of Standards And Standard Of Living By Families

Choosing Standards

Choosing either a conventional or a non-conventional standard is based consciously or unconsciously on four criteria: its relation to fundamental values and goals held; its effect on the individual and the group; its cost in use of the available resources of money, time, and effort; and lastly, the amount of satisfaction it brings. The strongest consideration in choosing between a non-conventional and a conventional standard is its relationship to values and goals held by the chooser. Choosing a non-­conventional standard, a mother of four young children wrote once in a letter: "I sprinkle only the shirts and very lightly at that. As for clean­ing-remember I'm near-sighted. I mop the kitchen floor only when my feet start sticking to it!" She had no household assistance and was help­ing her husband with the clerical part of his graduate work. She had a hierarchy of values in which the value of conventional cleanliness in house care ranked much lower than the value of professional advance­ment for her husband. Choosing a conventional standard, a family which has the goal of socialization of the children may adhere to the custom of having the father serve the plates at dinner to accustom the children to that practice.

In balancing non-conventional against conventional standards, questions of quality arise. A reverence for quality makes people fearful of adopting new standards. For some, the question immediately comes, will the new method yield as "good" a product? The "passion for perfection," which drives men onward in spiritual and ethical matters, is operative in the more mundane matters of life as well. For many there is genuine satis­faction in work well done.

Cost in resources of money, time, and effort used is the rational ap­proach to the selecting of a conventional or a non-conventional standard. For one thing, the criteria of time and money are quantitatively measur­able. Nevertheless, we must recognize that rationality is not the com­plete explanation of human behavior.

The degree of satisfaction is a subjective and highly personal one and only the person or group consciously choosing a standard can judge it. It is especially related to the first criterion that is from what value or values does this particular standard stem?

Along with other professionals who work with families, the home economist faces two questions in relation to conventional and non· conventional standards. As a professional person she must know con­ventional standards as they exist in her field, both locally and in wider areas. Hence there is justification for her learning conventional standards. It is one thing to deviate from a conventional standard through choice, and another to deviate because of ignorance, and only those who know accepted standards have the ability to choose. On the other hand, she must be made equally aware that many if not most conventional standards have been adopted unconsciously. They represent the customs and traditions of the home economics faculty and the geographical area. She must respect the individuality expressed in the non-conventional standard, the freedom it represents in choosing, and the creativity it offers in home management.