Write a reflective paper (minimum 500 words) where you explore your own cultural practices and the
values that underlie these practices. These practices can be child rearing practices, mealtime practices,
leisure practices, religious practices, etc. Think of routines that you consistently practice within your
personal, family or community life. For example, a routine for parents and children might be reading a
bedtime story every night. The values that underlie this practice might be dyadic (one-on-one) interactions
between parent and child for bonding, need for routines, and value of education/ literacy. Often the
values are not immediately apparent and sometimes a community’s cultural practices have historical
significance in which the values may be so embedded they are difficult to determine. Take time to
explore your cultural practices and the possible values that might be driving these behaviors. Be sure to
cross reference and cite course content from text book or lectures.
Tristan Behling
September 8, 2020
Ethics in Healthcare
Professor Just
Pre reflection 2- cultural practices & values.
I mow the lawn every week. I eat dinner with my family often. I’m expected to go to
college and study hard by my family. I work out at the gym throughout the week. These are all
normal things for me. They are normal routines for me but not necessarily normal for everyone.
Specifically, they are cultural practices with underlying values. Values or “intrinsic things a
person, group or society holds dear” (Just,2020, slide 2). By analyzing my so called normal
practice and their values ill better be able to understand myself and perhaps be more accepting
of other cultures. Cultural practices and underlying values can be found in my leisure, mealtime,
and child rearing practices.
Dinner time is an important cultural mealtime practice for my family and I. At dinner
time my family gather together to eat. My mom, family is divorced, or my brother usually
cooks. We gather together talk about our day and its general excitement. The underlying values
of having a family dinner is family bonding. With the general chaos of 21st century life, finding
time to get together as a family is hard to come by and eating together is an excuse to get
nourishment out of the way while getting to reestablish your care for your family.
Mowing the lawn is surprisingly an important cultural practice chalked full of underlying
value. Every weekend I get up and mow the lawn. At first glance it may seem like all it is cutting
grass but there more value than just an aesthetically pleasing lawn. A nice lawn is a page in the
book of value known as propriety. It’s to show your neighbors and anyone who drives pass that
your person who cares about appearance and that presumably if you have a nice lawn then the
inside of your house is probably nice as well. Other similar cultural practices that have to do
with cleanliness have similar underlying values like washing your car or not leaving garbage in
your front lawn. Another value these simple chores provide is a sense of belonging or group
identification (Just,2020, slide 5). By my lawn being cut I can now fit in with my neighbors
strengthening my connection to my community.
By my parents I’m pushed to achieve a higher education. The cultural practice of
wanting your kids to have a successful life more prosperous and less full of struggle is found
heavily in the birth of this country and perhaps as being second generation immigrant on my
mom’s side still important for my family. It identifies with the values of education/literacy,
independence, and parenting success. If I’m able to be successful I won’t have to rely on my
family anymore thus independence and it show that my parents have reared decent children at
least in society’s eyes.
The personal cultural practice of working out at the gym for me has underlying values of
sense of belonging, importance of Health, Vanity, and sexual identification. Obviously Working
out is healthy and regular working out creates a sense of belonging by being part of the fitness
community. It appeals to my vanity because I’m striving for the bodybuilding physique to show
off muscles. It has value of gender identification because in my society the ideal physique for a
man is generally heavier muscled for better or worse. The idea of males ideally being muscled is
normative expectation of mainstream culture (Just,2020, slide 17).
My cultural practices and values can be considered normative expectation of Mainstream
culture (Just,2020, slide 17). For a large part of my upbringing I’ve grown up and lived a
relatively normal Midwestern life. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising that others have similar
value systems and culture practices as I. These actions and routines all seem normal to us, but
It’s important to remember that my practices/values are similar to many others because my
upbringing is pretty much the same for the dominant/mainstream members of Midwest United
States. I should understand that other people have different values/cultural practices. I need to
comprehend that this doesn’t devalue their beliefs and ideas because they are different the
minority. I shouldn’t be ethnocentric, or believing “one best way” as regarding culture.
(Just,2020, slide18).
Work Cited
Just, Ben. “morality, values, and ethics”, 8 September 2020, Microsoft PowerPoint File