{take especial care of your family}

"Note several terrible trends which, if uncorrected, will produce an even worse coalition of consequences.

*In ten years, one-half of all children born in America will be illegitimate.

*More and more children have no functioning fathers. Already 70% of our juvenile criminals come from fatherless homes.

*Less than half of all children born today will live continuously with their own mother and father throughout childhood."

*One-fourth of all adolescents... contract a sexually transmitted disease before they graduate from high school."

"Healthy, traditional families are becoming an endangered species!"

"As parenting declines, the need for policing increases. There will always be a shortage of police if there is a shortage of effective parents! Likewise, there will not be enough prisons if there are not enough good homes."

"Latter-day Saints therefore have no choice but to stand up and to speak up whenever the institution of the family is concerned, even if we are misunderstood, resented, or brushed aside."

"However, as Latter-day Saints, we need to do better in our families - much better! There should be less wringing of hands and more loving arms around our families."

..."there is an emerging but unjustified tendency to treat children as if they have the capacity for unrestricted adult experience."

..."we stress again and again the available remedies of family prayers, family home evenings, and family scripture study. Moreover, personal revelation regarding parenting can provide customized guidance and reassurance!"

"Applying basic remedies will take some time and will not fix everything immediately. What could be more basic, however, than "love at home", when annually in America there are four million reports of domestic violence, rivaling the number of births in America! Violence in America now kills "the equivalent of a classroomful" of children "every two days."

"In the healthy family, first and best, we can learn to listen, forgive, praise, and to rejoice in the achievements of others. There also we can learn to tame our egos, work, repent, and love. In families with spiritual perspective, yesterday need not hold tomorrow hostage. If we sometimes act the fool, loving families know this is not oru last act; the curtain is not rung down."

"Parents and grandparents, please scrutinize your schedules and priorities in order to ensure that life's prime relationships get more prime time! Even consecrated and devoted Brigham Young was once told by the Lord, "Take especial care of your family" (D&C 126:3) Sometimes, it is the most conscientious who need this message the most!"

"As the number of dysfunctional families increases, their failures will spill into already burdened schools and streets. It is not a pretty scene even now."

Elder Neal A. Maxwell

May 1994 Ensign