National Family Week, 1996

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Part IV

The President

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Proclamation 6956--National Family Week, 1996

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Title 3--
The President

Proclamation 6956 of November 19, 1996

National Family Week, 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, 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.