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5B American Values and Assumptions

People who grow up in a particular culture share certain values and assumptions（1）.That doesn't mean they all share exactly the same values to exactly the same extent; it does mean that most of them, most of the time, mostly agree with each other's ideas about what is right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, and so on. They also agree, mostly, with each other's assumptions about human nature, social relationships, and so on.

One of the most important things to understand about Americans is how devoted they are to "individualism"（2）.They have been trained since very early in their lives to consider themselves as separate individuals（3） who are responsible for their own situations in life and their own destinies. They have not been trained to see themselves as members of a close-knit, tightly interdependent family, religious group, tribe or nation. 

You can see this in the way Americans treat their children. Even very young children are given opportunities to make their own choices and express their opinions. A parent will ask a one-year-old child what color balloon she wants, which dessert she prefers, or where she wants to sit. The child's preference will normally be accommodated（4）. Through this process, Americans come to see themselves as separate human beings who have their own opinions and who are responsible for their own decisions. 

Indeed, American child-rearing manuals state that the parents' objective is for the child to move out of the parents' house and make his or her own way in life（5）. Americans take this advice very seriously, so much so that （6）someone who remains dependent on their parents longer than the norm may be thought to be "immature", "tied to the mother's apron strings," or otherwise unable to lead a normal independent life.

Americans are trained to conceive of themselves as separate individuals, and they assume everyone else in the world is too（7）. When they encounter a...