A couple of weeks ago 10 former directors of Enron reached into their own pockets and drew out $13 million as a gesture of goodwill to irate shareholders. A couple of days before that, in the first week of the New Year, ten former WorldCom directors offered $18 million a collective monetary mea culpa. Martha Stewart spent Christmas in the cooler rather than behind a hot stove. Last November, the presidential election was determined by a concern for values, or so the exit polls were interpreted.

Are we to conclude that greed is out and values are in?

If so, why is Donald Trump’s latest bride in her six-figure dress on the cover of the February issue of Vogue?

Why is a reality show dedicated to face-lifts and liposuction a hit? Why do we, as a nation, care about Jessica Simpson’s vapid pillow talk with her husband?

OK, so Jessica Simpson’s inane chatter is sort of amusing – it’s a chance to listen in on someone else’s private life and realize that celebrities discuss the same mundane stuff that we talk about with our own spouses and friends.

But I do think that despite being surrounded by a pretty murky moral landscape, we are lurching towards a greater sense of accountability – towards an appreciation that money should be connected to a sense of values both in the way it is made and the way it is spent.

But we are hardly there yet. We are still confused about the value of values.

Money plays a, maybe the, leading role in this confusion. We don’t think that the way we make and spend money has all that much to do with values. We don’t think about what message we are giving our kids when we lease a new car but don’t put anything away for college tuition – all the while preaching the importance of education. We don’t think much when we buy each kid an iPod and complain that he or she never reads.

Our financial decisions reflect what we think is important. They reflect what we value.

And it is not just about spending. If one member of a couple is a compulsive saver, he or she may not believe that a vacation could have some value as an investment in the future of the marriage. That is, until the spouse goes on vacation, alone.

We are reactive about money and clueless about what part it plays in our lives and in the lives of those we love. This conflict between what we say we value and the kind of financial decisions we make is a rich source for tragedy – think King Lear – and comedy – think Donald Trump.

This column will take a jab at the disconnect between what we say with money and what we say we hold dear. As a financial journalist I spent a lot of time thinking about money. Now retrained as a family therapist I have been shocked by how often money and the way it is used contaminates marriages and relationships between parents and children. As a member of a team at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in Manhattan that explores the relationship between money and family values, I have learned from the wisdom of my colleagues.

In his inaugural address, President Bush vowed that he would carry “the untamed fire of freedom” throughout the world. That speech scarcely made the nine o’clock news.

Instead, coverage centered on: The cake – seven-tier, orange-flavored, weighing in at 300 pounds. The ring: 12-carat diamond with a price tag of $1.5 million. The difference in age: 25. Number of weddings – number three for the Donald, first for her. Friday morning’s Daily News quoted one Florida resident as saying “This is the largest event of public interest in Palm Beach in 20 or 30 years.”

So what is it, remind me, that we value?

Ms. Bailey is a writer and a family therapist in New York.