It's fair to say that there's a crisis of family in America. It's impossible to draw any other conclusion from the divorce rates, out-of-wedlock birth statistics and juvenile and spousal abuse cases. This crisis is feeding anxiety about the future of the nation.

Why? Personally, I believe a major reason is that as a society we've still not faced up to the individual and collective efforts required to keep a family intact and functional.... Most of us have moved well away from our core family.... The very idea of family is not as rich as it was when the grandparents were just down the road or around the corner or, in many cases, just upstairs....

Of course, changes in the American family culture go well beyond geography.... [The 1960s] backlash in its raw fury was too indiscriminate. It attacked the good as well as the evil, especially when it came to the place of the family and personal commitments.

For many young women, the long-overdue liberation of their gender [in the 1960s] presented a conflict.... It was at once an exhilarating and frustrating time....

[My wife and I] escaped most of the trials of adolescence in part because we stayed close to our daughters through common interests, such as travel, athletics and friends.

The modern American family does face more pressures. Women, in most cases, must juggle the demands of career and motherhood.... Men, especially, have to accept the fact that fathering a child is one of life's profound acts....

To shore up the condition of the family, to bolster the idea of commitment to family, we have to show the way from the ground up, not the top down. Politicians who advertise themselves as profamily too often are more interested in dividing the electorate than they are in healing the fractures in society.

Ultimately, the salvation of the family begins at home with a common set of values, constantly maintained and shared with friends and relatives. The longterm health of the family in our society should be approached with the same sense of urgency we have about our individual physical health, our choice of automobiles, wardrobe, entertainment and vacation destinations.

What works, what doesn't, what are the perils, what are the rewards: That should be the common stuff of a continual national dialogue.

--Excerpted from an article which appeared in the October 1995 edition of Good Housekeeping.

Reprinted with permission of Tom Brokaw.