Moriah Mosher, USAGood Afternoon, everyone! I want to thank the organizers of this Forum for giving us this opportunity to meet here and discuss the future. I think it is important and I’m very excited to be here.

My topic today is traditional family values. Now I must admit I had a little problem in writing this talk. Values are, as we say in the United States, “caught rather than taught.” So it’s hard to put some of these values into words. But I’ll do my best!

If you have watched a Hollywood movie latterly, as I’m sure most of you have, you probably think that Americans don’t have any traditional family values. You may think that in America commitment means going on a second date. You think that every couple in the U.S. lives together. You think that those few who do get married, quickly get divorced. You think that most American children are born into broken families. You think that most young people are too busty demonstrating against Wall Street to worry about getting an education, or a job.

Youth nowadays experiences large transformations, from technological, economical and political changes to values and mentalities changes, as parts of the globalization process. Let’s take some examples of transformations and see what seems to be good and what seems to be bad. As good sides of globalization we have youth mobility, freedom of expression and extensive means of communication, open societies, human rights and tolerance. On the other hand we see various trends which we perceive as negative: consumerism, restriction of freedom of expression, disappearing of centuries long values atomization of life, and so on. At first sight, these negative trends together with others seem to be chaotically and without any sense. But as everything concerning social structures is a system, these negatives trends are connected and have common roots. I will try to demonstrate how some of the negative trends are not alone, but directly triggered by the apparently good features of the globalization, and how these negative processes influence the young people.