Family is more important than friends

Good afternoon, Ladies and gentlemen, May I point that because your family are legally responsible for you, you take each other for granted. You are much more likely to be mean to your family than you friends. Also, family do not give unconditional love. Statistics show that 1 in 3 families suffer from family abuse. To add, every 3 hours, in Australia, a woman is admitted to hospital, due to family violence. Parents are often coming to the rescue when it comes to problems at school, such as, bullying. Schools across the world, already provide lessons on preventing problems, such as these. Family are not always around when we become parents, ourselves, and we need to learn to cope with these problems ourselves. Rather than helicopter family members, coming to the rescue. And now to continue my argument, Friends enhance our social life in many ways that your family doesn't. Friends can expose you to different cultures and religions and lifestyles. Having a friend of a different faith to your own encourages you to become more knowledgeable and more tolerant. Rather than sticking to your own kind and closing your mind, a friend of a different faith expresses you to the real world full of different people and different beliefs. This encourages you to become more tolerant, more thinking, more caring for all people not just your own people. You can choose to have an open outlook by choosing your friends but may be stuck with your family's narrow perspective - as we see with certain religious groups like the Amish or many rigid, fundamental, groups. Friends can expose you to a more multicultural life. We can have friends from different cultures and so learn to enjoy a richer life full of new food, new clothes,. new lifestyles, new stories, new perspectives. Sure your family could take you to a Vietnamese restaurant but having a Vietnamese friend and eating at their house is far more authentic. You meet their family, you talk to the mother about the food, you talk about life in Vietnam, maybe, about their reason for coming here, maybe, about changes they made. This is far richer than going to a Vietnamese restaurant with your family and talking about the same boring stuff again. I choose my friends but I'm stuck with my family. Friends can increase your social life by introducing you to their friends. This is great because now you have an even greater choice of people in your circle - people who can introduce to new activities like joining them at a concert you may never of considered. You might travel overseas with them and share a lifetime of memories and adventures. Because you choose your friends choose someone who is like minded and will more likely enjoy your travels than being stuck with a family dragging you to places THEY want to visit. Friends are more fun. They are the company you choose. Families want to protect you by building a fence around you, but a friend builds the gate opening to a bigger, more exciting, more tolerant, more life enhancing world. And for this reason I prefer to choose my friends rather than be stuck with my family. Thanks for accepting this challenge and good luck for the future of this debate. Kind Regards, Caty44444444