Remarks and a question-and-answer session at Kramer Junior High School

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Feb 7, 1994

Family Life

Q. Good morning, Mr. President. Since family life has been breaking down for the last 30 years, what can my generation do to restore family values?

The President. Did you hear what she said? She said, "If family life has been breaking down for 30 years, what can my generation do to restore it?" Good question. First thing you can do is make up your mind you're not going to have a baby until you're old enough to take care of it, until you're married. I mean, that's the most important thing.

You know, I gave--how many of you all saw my speech the other night? Did any of you see it? I guess you knew I was coming, so some of you watched it. Did they tell you to watch it? The principal told you to watch the speech. We spent all this time--now, I'm trying to figure out how to help people get off of welfare, good people who are strapped on welfare, who hate it, who don't want to be on it. And I've got some ideas, and I've learned a lot from people who are on welfare about it.

But one big problem is, people get on it because they start having children when they are children. And that's the first thing. The second thing that you ought to do is something you can't do alone, and that is that we need to organize, starting about this age, young men to start talking among each other about what their responsibilities are, and that they shouldn't--they should not go out and father these kids when they're not prepared to marry the mothers, they're not prepared to take responsibility for the children, and they're not even able to take responsibility for themselves. This is not a sport. This is a solemn responsibility. Look, it's hard.

Then, once you get married, people have to realize they're going to have to ride through some tough times to keep the family together. There is no such thing as a trouble-free family. There's no such thing as a family where fights never occur, where differences never happen, where some days you think it wouldn't be easier to quit than to go on. There is no such family.

So the third thing we should be doing when young people are young is to say, look, the family is the most wonderful institution in society, but it's a human thing, which means it's full of fault, too. And you need to think about it. And when you make a commitment to it, you need to do everything you can to hang in there with it, all the way, because it makes life much more meaningful. Life is lonely enough as it is. And if you have a family and you have people that are helping you, it makes a huge difference, and it makes life better. I'm telling you, until we decide this is a--this is a big cultural thing. We've got to make a decision. Every one of you have to make it. Is it right or wrong, if you're a boy, to get some girl pregnant and then forget about it? I think it's wrong. I think it's not only wrong for them, I think it's wrong for you. It's something you pay for the rest of your life. You carry that in the back of your head: Somewhere there's some child out there you didn't take care of that's in terrible shape because of something you didn't do. And if you're a young girl, you've got to think being a mother is still the most important thing in society. It is the most important thing that any person can do. But when you do it, you ought to do it when it's right: when it's right for you, when it's right for the child, and when you can do it right. And we just have to make a decision. If you really want to rebuild the family, then people have to decide: I'm not going to have a baby until I'm married. I'm not going to bring a baby into the world I can't take care of. And I'm not going to turn around and walk away when I do it. I'm going to take responsibility for what I do.