FAMILY VALUES DEBATE HAS A HEARTENING SIDE

The debate over family values continues to grip many people in this country, though not necessarily driven by the campaigns of President Bush and Bill Clinton or the national media. Instead, most Americans, while perhaps disagreeing on the role government or political rhetoric play in the argument, embrace the issue because it is very close to them. It is a primal trait for humans to form in collective groups, and how these family units relate in our society (and how the dissolution of traditional family structures affects a nation) prompts a ready discussion from many quarters. Whether it is proper in the context of a political election or not, this is not a subject easily dismissed.

Last week was an active and curious one in the discussion of family values. On the national level, television viewers watched the fictional character Murphy Brown rebut the real-life opinions of Vice President Dan Quayle. On the local level, the Southeast Missourian published a week-long series of stories about the disparate nature of family life in this area. On both levels, public reaction was forthcoming. We presented our series as a challenging examination of the way people lead their lives. We are less enamored with the "Murphy Brown" thunderbolt approach to what was a drizzle of an affront.

Here is the underreported portion of what Dan Quayle said on that night in May when he became Hollywood's whipping boy:

Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this. ... It's time to talk again about family, hard work, integrity and personal responsibility. We cannot be embarrassed out of our belief that two parents, married to each other, are better in most cases for children than one.

His points are well-taken, and it's easy to see why many Quayle supporters regret that he ever breathed the words "Murphy Brown" ... not because he shamed the administration but because this one sentence out of a long instructive text was allowed to dilute a needed point of view. On the other hand, maybe the meat of the family values discussion would have never come to light had there not been such an uproar.

Our belief is that a family is what a family is; whether a single-parent household or the two-parent type traditionalists favor (and, don't be misled, this is still the national majority), people who conduct themselves as a family are welcome to their own lifestyle. Murphy Brown was correct in at least part of her view: families come in "all shapes and sizes."

On a broader level, Quayle's points are backed up by facts. Evidence exists, pointed out by the vice president and obscured in the ensuing furor, that fractured families are statistically more likely to be a part of societal problems: crime, poverty, illiteracy and so on. The vice president did not submit the word "illegitimacy" to the debate and did not imply that every child raised in a single-parent household will be a dead-end kid. Quayle spelled out a problem. If a problem exists, if facts bear it out, and a national leader does not acknowledge it, what then do we say of that leader?

If nothing else, the family values debate has reinforced in us a sense that there are plenty of people who view themselves as loving individuals who care for their kin. That this issue has touched a national nerve expresses an intrinsic belief that the family is something important.