Baltimore, Maryland Remarks at the Opening Session of the White House Conference on Families.

Thank you, Jim Guy Tucker, Bishop Stafford, Mayor Schaeffer, Coretta King, Mario Cuprap, Guadalupe Gibson, Maryann Mahaffey, and Senator Mathias and Senator Sarbanes, who came over here with me, members of the National Advisory Committee, and delegates to this first White House Conference on the Families:

I'm very pleased to see that there's no violence in the audience or on the outside of the assembly area.

As you probably know, I feel a deep sense of gratitude to all of you, particularly those who have helped to make successful the preparations for this first of three very important meetings. Jim Guy Tucker and John Carr 1 and thousands of others, including some of you, have helped to make this day possible. You have literally reached out to the heart of America, and not just to the professional experts but to hundreds of thousands of people, literally, who believe that the strong family is the basis for a strong America.

We've had meetings now in all the territories and in 48 of the 50 States. People have participated in laying the groundwork for this conference and the ones that will follow in Minneapolis and in Los Angeles. We are brought together by one thing: by our love and our concern for the families of our country. I don't know of a finer motivation, and I don't know of a more important motivation. Every family is different, unique. If I ever doubt that, I have to look at my own family. [Laughter]

Early in 1976 when the news reporters first recognized where Plains, Georgia, was and what it was, they were interviewing my brother, Billy, at his service station. And there had been some stories around town—all false, of course— [laughter] —that Billy was something of a character, and they were trying to probe what Billy was. And he said, "Listen." He said, "I've got one sister almost 50 years old, who spends every weekend on a mo-

1 Executive Director, White House Conference on Families. motorcycle." He said, "I've got another sister, not quite so old, who's a holy roller preacher. I've got a mother that joined the Peace Corps when she was 68 years old." He said, "I've got a brother who thinks he's going to be President of the United States." [Laughter] He said, "I'm the only sane one in the whole family." [Laughter]

I would guess that each one of you can tell a story about the members of your family that would show the uniqueness of the interrelationship among those who are different, but who love one another. In fact, I was very fortunate in my family.

I grew up in a strong and a loving family. And I had the extra benefit of an extended family in Plains. About 7 miles south of Plains is a cemetery where my wife's grandparents are buried; the first one buried there was born in 1787. And about 7 miles north of Plains is the Carter family cemetery, and my ancester, Wiley Carter, who is buried there, was born in 1798. We've not moved far.

And I had a community of friends who wished me well as a child and who gave me strength and who gave me support, who gave me confidence, who gave me encouragement. And when Rosalynn and I were married almost 34 years ago, we tried to pattern our own family on the family style of our parents and our grandparents.

Our deepest joys together now are when the other members of our family can join us. We've always shared the same hard work, the same pleasures, the same pains, the same successes, the same failures, the same excitement, the same boredom with each other. We've had our problems, we've had our struggles, we've had our sadnesses. I have to admit that we've even had some arguments. It hasn't hurt our family. In fact, those exciting experiences, some good and some bad, have strengthened our family ties.

A very beautiful picture in microcosm of a nation: with troubles, trials, tribulations, tests, boredom, excitement, achievement, disappointment—unified through trial into a stronger nation. Every family has similar experiences with ours. I know that we were very lucky, and we still are.

When we think of families, ordinarily we think of brothers and sisters and a father and a mother, with grandparents and uncles and aunts and nephews and nieces and cousins, perhaps. That's a standard that's been held up by many traditions, including of course the Judeo-Christian tradition, and also by thousands of years of human experience. But that same tradition and that same experience teaches us that there is really no such thing as a perfect family or one that should be used as a standard for all other families.

We find the essence of family life in the universal need for mutual support, for nurturing, a safe haven for children and for old people, and for love; a love that doesn't always ask questions or impose qualifications on others before it's given, a kind of unselfish love. People need that love, just as surely as people need food and shelter, and air to breathe.

That love can be found, obviously, in many different circumstances. For instance, Rosalynn's was a family of sorrow: When she was 13 years old, her father died. Her mother had four little children. She worked in the school cafeteria, and she was a seamstress for the other, more prosperous ladies of the community. Later on she got a job in the post office, and she kept her family together.

There were a lot of other single-parent families in Plains, probably 35 or 40, out of a population of just a few dozen. I saw the struggle they had emotionally and financially to keep their family together and to keep their family strong. They didn't always succeed. And I promised myself, when I entered politics as a State senator and later when I was Governor and when I was running for President, to help struggling families like that have a better chance.

I also saw families, black and white, that worked hard, but never quite had enough. I saw the strength that the family ties gave them as they struggled. And I saw men and women who reached the time in years when they deserved and had earned a secure retirement, but they had all too little to sustain them in those later years. And I vowed to do something about those kind of families too, if I ever had a chance.

You, friends and delegates, through this White House Conference on Families, we have a chance to help those kinds of families and also, at the same time, to help every single family in America. To do that we must face up to the real changes in our society, changes that present both new problems and, at the same time, new opportunities.

Some of us come from a history and an ethnic background where the family is still the center of existence, where the ownership of a home and to care for one another is paramount. Others come from a less rigidly structured family environment, where there's more freedom and more movement, more mobility, where children are not wedded so deeply to their parents in their later years.

More of our people are living longer. More women, particularly more mothers, are working now outside the home. There are more single-parent households because of divorce or death. Our people are more mobile. The average person lives in a particular place now less than 5 years.

People are uprooted. Television—that electronic version of the man who came to dinner and never went home—affects families in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Inflation and recession both put additional burdens on family life. Problems like drugs, alcohol, unwanted pregnancies, even suicide have reached down to members of a family who are younger and younger. Tragic instances of family violence remind us that the bonds of kinship don't automatically make families a place of nurturing one another. Most violent crimes against a person are committed among those who know each other and often love each other.

Some laws, some government policies, tend to disrupt family structures. It's easy to list the problems associated with a modern, fast-changing, technological world, but we must not overlook the improvements that have been made in family life since I was a child and many of you were children.

Much of the death and disease that once stalked childhood—such as polio and diphtheria, typhus and typhoid—is now either conquered or greatly reduced.

More of our people are better than ever before. My father didn't high school. Neither did his father, any other in our family for five or generations back.

More families have a chance to cultural and leisure activities now than before. This was once a privilege of few. Even 40 years ago, when I was still living on the farm, the workday was or 17 or 18 hours. And with the sweatshops and the long working hours in urban areas, there was very little time for a family to be together, because the breadwinner had to be on the job.

We have made great progress in this country against racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, age discrimination, and we are fighting to make more progress. Both men and women are more free today to fulfill their own and their family's needs in new and exciting and challenging ways. Many fathers have discovered, for instance, the joys and responsibilities of being with his children more.

Family ties are based on more than blood kinship. There are also kinships of shared experiences and shared dreams and shared joys and sorrows. Most of all, they are based on love, love that can span vast distances and also span the barrier between generations. Families are or should be the first place that we ever learn. As Jim Guy quoted me, it's the first school. We can learn how to live in harmony and helpfulness with one another, and nourish the individuality of those who live in the same home; respect one another, even though we're different.

It's the first place that we learn to care and to nurture the child, and to recognize its centrality in any society. That has always been the special responsibility of the family. It's here that the motivation and the morals and goals of a life are first shaped. Habits that one carries through adulthood are quite often formed at a very early age in the family. In family life we also find the roots of crime and failure, and quite often a lifetime of health problems are started at an early age within the family. They are also the roots of good habits and achievements and happiness and a pattern of whether or not we are concerned about others or just ourselves.

I hope that we'll come out of this conference with a reaffirmation of families as the fundamental building blocks of our society. I hope we will unite around a Commitment to strengthen and not weaken families, to help and not hinder families, to lift families up and not drag them down.

Four years ago, I called for this conference, because I was deeply concerned that official America had lost touch with family America—and I don't mean just government, but the private sector, the news media and all its ramifications need to be reminded of the importance of and the problems of and the opportunities of and the challenge of American families.

How many of our modern-day problems could be resolved if just a little could be done in each family to make it stronger? I want the conference to be a catalyst for a new awareness in the Government, which I head, and also in State and local governments throughout this Nation, of the importance of families and the needs of families and for a period of intense reassessment of programs and policies. Where government is helpful to families, let it be strengthened. Where government is harmful to families, let it be changed. And what you recommend will be studied very carefully.

No one wants government interference in our personal affairs. We don't want government in our kitchens, in our bedrooms, in our living rooms, monitoring-certainly not controlling—family life. But we know that regardless of that commitment that government does touch our families through the tax system, public education, social security health, housing, human services, transportation—government touches our families.

As a Nation, we are faced with serious problems both at home and abroad, and almost every one of those problems that we address has a direct effect on an individual family. The solutions we've worked out will either strengthen or weaken those families—as I deal with inflation, as we bring down interest. rates—touches every family in this country.

When we create jobs, it helps the families of this country. When we improve education, helps every family. Better health care helps every family. When we insist on equal justice under the law or equal rights under the Constitution for all people, we help the American family. And when we work for a secure nation and a peaceful world, we help the American family.

This country is looking to you in this conference for constructive suggestions on how our society can help, not just government but the entire society in all its public and private aspects, how we jointly can help American families of all kinds. I hope that you will recommend specifically things that the government can do or stop doing in order to strengthen families, but I hope you'll go much deeper. Look for creative and compassionate solutions to the problems of families that have already been presented by those hundreds of thousands of Americans, and those that will be presented to you, directly or indirectly, through these three conferences, and then consider who can best carry out your recommendations or how those recommendations can be carried out.

I hope that you will search your own hearts and minds to see what nongovernmental institutions might help with family life. Colleges, universities, other eleemosynary institutions, churches, synagogues-already done very much. And as you know, certain denominations or certain religious faiths concentrate specifically on families as a major, permanent project. It'll be good to remind all the churches that if they deal with family lives, their ultimate goals are much more likely to be realized.

I hope that we will consider not just the troubled families but the families that are okay now and might be troubled in the future. And I think the most important thing, perhaps, for us to remember is that the members of the families themselves are the most likely ones to make the best and the right decisions about their own lives.

I have no doubt that we can make our country a better place to rear a family. Starting today we can help imbue our Nation and its institutions with a new appreciation and a new sensitivity about families. We can build an America of stronger families, an America where home is a place of love and stability, where children are nurtured to a responsible citizenship; where husbands and wives can share love and growth; an America where in the home basic religious and ethical values are taught to children at an early age, and where they are lived by example for the children to observe among their elders; an America where each family is a wellspring of racial and ethnic and religious understanding, where people who look differently within the community from the members of the family are embraced, not only as neighbors but as brothers and sisters.

We can build an America where parents are partners with the schools in education. We can build an America where the tasks of the family life are valued and recognized as very important work. We can build an America where employees don't have to make the horrible choice between responsibilities as workers on the one hand, and responsibilities as parents on the other.

We can build an America where the powerful forces of inevitable change in a modern life don't endanger the basic structure of family life, but strengthen the foundation of family life. And we can build an America where the policies of our national life as a family grow out of the needs of millions of individual families that make up our great Nation.

I'll do all I can to ensure that your work does not end just as a report on the shelves in Washington. I'd like to remind you that in the past, there have been very few White House Conferences. When there have been White House Conferences, they have almost invariably spurred this country to major and constructive change. Your deliberations and those that will follow in Minneapolis and Los Angeles are, therefore, extremely important.

Certainly American families face difficulties, and they look to us for strength and support in the 1980's. Your recommendations will he very important, but in the enthusiasm that has already gone into this event and the care with which it has been prepared, we can already see something else: We can see the strength of American families.

American families have been tested. They've survived. They are strong. They are there to be strengthened further, and we can see the commitment of Americans to their own families and to their national family. And we can see the love that will provide a better future for every family in our land.

Those are the things that we see together; those are the goals that we'll establish together. And I have no doubt that this White House Conference on Families will transform our Nation into a place where the hopes and ideals and the spirit and the commitment and the love of America will all be made stronger in the years to come.

Thank you very much.