    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [February 10, 1996]
    [Pages 207-208]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    The President's Radio Address
    February 10, 1996

        Good morning. Today I want to talk with you about our families and
    our future--a future of great possibilities and strong challenges,
    challenges we cannot meet with Government alone, but we can't meet them
    by letting people fend for themselves, either. We have to go forward
    together.
        In my State of the Union Address, I outlined our seven biggest
    challenges for the future, challenges we must meet if we are going to
    make the American dream available to all our people and unite our
    country around our shared values.
        Those seven are: strengthening our families and giving our children
    better childhoods; providing better education for all Americans;
    enhancing the security of working families through access to health
    care, lifetime education and training, and secure pensions; fighting
    crime and gangs and drugs until crime is the exception, not the rule, in
    America again; protecting our environment; maintaining our world
    leadership for peace and freedom; and continuing to reform and reinvent
    our Government so that it does a better job at less cost in helping our
    people to make the most of their own lives and solve our problems
    together.
        Our first and in many ways our most important challenge is to
    strengthen our families and improve childhood for all of our children.
    Our children are shaped by many forces, first and foremost by their
    parents, but also by other relatives, schools, places of worship, their
    peers, their communities, and the larger economic and social forces of
    our time.
        If the first years of a child's life go right, with engaged, caring
    parents to love and encourage them, to teach them right from wrong, it
    can mean the difference between a lifetime of fulfillment and a lifetime
    of frustration and disappointment. It can also mean the difference
    between an America prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century
    and an America that is not.
        These days, most parents are working harder just to make ends meet;
    so it's an even greater challenge to spend the time, the energy, the
    concentration necessary to get children off to a good start. And it's a
    tougher job because our children are subject to so many outside forces
    that can undermine their growing up.
        Sadly, too many of our children are growing up without parents;
    others are abused or neglected by their parents; others have parents who
    simply don't know how to be strong positive forces, the kind of forces
    every child needs in his or her life. Too often, these parents become
    shadows on the outskirts of their children's lives.
        We know that when parents are absent or abusive the results can be
    tragic. Recently in Chicago a 5-year-old boy was held 14 stories above
    the pavement by a 10-year-old and an 11-year-old, and dropped to his
    death. The boys who did the killing were essentially parentless, with
    both fathers in prison. In New York, a

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    6-year-old girl was beaten and tortured to death by her own mother.
        We know neglect can be bad, too, and not just in physical ways. Just
    this week, another national study confirmed the destructive impact on
    children of being permitted to watch excessive violence on television
    for hours and hours a day, year after year after year. Beyond that, we
    all know of the threats to our children outside the family. We must do a
    better job of dealing with these challenges.
        The sad fact is that while the overall crime rate is going down,
    crime among juveniles is still going up. While the overall drug use rate
    is going down, drug use among our children is still going up. When we
    lose these children, we suffer terrible individual losses and more; we
    lose a piece of our shared future.
        I know today's parents face tough challenges. This information and
    technology revolution in the new global economy we're experiencing is
    transforming the world to a degree seldom seen in history. Many of these
    changes are good, but let's face it, many of them put extra tremendous
    stress on America's parents, financial and otherwise.
        That's why we've worked hard to help parents in building strong
    families and bright futures for their children with things like the
    Family and Medical Leave Act so parents won't have to sacrifice their
    jobs when there's a baby born or family emergencies; with investments in
    Head Start and immunization so our children get off to a healthy start;
    with the earned-income tax credit, which this year will cut taxes for
    working families with incomes of less than $27,000 so that no families
    with full-time workers and children will be in poverty; with record
    amounts of child support collected; and with successful new efforts to
    make our streets and schools safer--100,000 more police, things like the
    Brady law, which has now kept 40,000 criminals from getting handguns.
        Just this week I signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which
    gives the parents the V-chip so they can take greater responsibility for
    their children's lives and help them to kick the degrading influence of
    excessive television violence and other inappropriate programming out of
    their house.
        Now we're working hard to pass bipartisan legislation to prevent
    insurance companies from dropping people when they switch jobs or when
    their family members or they have preexisting health conditions. A sick
    child is enough weight on your shoulders without threatening the
    family's insurance. We're trying to pass welfare reform which supports
    both work and childrearing. And we ought to raise the minimum wage. No
    parent can raise a child on $4.25 a hour, though millions are trying to
    do just that.
        Government will continue to do its part. But governments don't raise
    children; parents do, and no program can ever replace parents teaching
    their children right from wrong and helping them to grow into strong,
    self-confident citizens. We can give you the V-chip, but you have to use
    it. We can make dads send checks to support their children, but a check
    is no substitute for a parent's love and guidance. We can continue to
    improve our schools, but what happens in the classroom depends in part
    on what happens at home, before and after school. We can pass laws to
    help families, but families must help themselves with parents respecting
    each other, keeping violence out of the home, challenging each other to
    work harder to stay together. Divorce may be easier than staying
    together for parents, but usually it's tougher for the kids.
        So to every parent I say: Turn off the TV more. Get to know your
    child's teacher. Spend time together. Read and learn together. Above
    all, teach your child right from wrong. If parents do their job and the
    rest of us, including Government, do our part, America's future will be
    assured because we work together.
        The Bible asks: ``If your child asks for bread, would you give him a
    stone? If he asks for fish, would you give him a serpent? If he asks for
    an egg, would you give him a scorpion?'' Our children are what we give
    them, what we teach them. We dare not forget that basic truth. Their
    lives and our common future depend upon it.
        Thanks for listening.

    Note: The address was recorded at approximately 8:15 a.m. in the Oval
    Office for broadcast at 10:06 a.m.