[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 47 (Monday, November 25, 1996)]
[Pages 2406-2407]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Proclamation 6956--National Family Week, 1996

November 19, 1996

By the President of the United States

of America

A Proclamation

    Our families are among the great blessings we acknowledge each year 
at Thanksgiving.
    The influence of the family is profound. Families provide essential 
nurturing and unconditional love; share their values, wisdom, and 
religious convictions; and give their members the hope and self-
confidence they need to succeed. They form the foundation from which our 
Nation draws its strength and upon which we build our national 
character.
    If our country is to succeed in the 21st century and beyond, we must 
commit ourselves now to ensuring the health and well-being of the 
American family. Parents, educators, business, religious, and community 
leaders must work together to strengthen our Nation's families. 
Government policies at the Federal, State, and local levels must support 
families with compassion and a willingness to give all Americans the 
tools they need to make the most of their own lives.
    We must create economic opportunity so that hardworking parents can 
provide for their children and succeed both at work and at home. We must 
give our families safe neighborhoods in which to grow, free from guns 
and gangs, drugs and violence. We must reinforce parents' efforts to set 
a good example by helping to protect their children from the corrosive 
influences of alcohol and tobacco and to limit their exposure to 
explicit sexuality and violence in the entertainment media.
    In doing so, we will reaffirm the vital lessons of love, 
responsibility, and compassion that so many of us have been fortunate to 
learn in our own families, and ensure that those lessons are passed on 
to the generations to come.
    Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton, President of the United 
States of America,

[[Page 2407]]

by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of 
the United States, do hereby proclaim November 24 through November 30, 
1996, as National Family Week. I call upon all Americans to celebrate 
our Nation's families with appropriate ceremonies and activities.
    In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this nineteenth day 
of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-six, 
and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred 
and twenty-first.
                                            William J. Clinton

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 10:28 a.m., November 20, 
1996]

Note: This proclamation was published in the Federal Register on 
November 21.