Proclamation 6956—National Family Week, 1996

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, 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