May 8, 1994 Parade Magazine
Marian Wright Edelman
“ I feel I am the luckiest child in the world to have had a mother and father who lived, rather than just preached, their faith and family values--who taught their children that being honest was more important than being honored, and that faith was a safer and more enduring harbor than fame.”
As we celebrate Mother’s Day 1994, an American child is abused or neglected every 13 seconds, is born to an unmarried mother every 26 seconds, is born into poverty every 30 seconds, is born to a teen mother every 59 seconds, is arrested for a violent crime every five minutes and is killed by guns every two hours.
Every day, 1234 children run away from home, 2860 see their parents divorce, 100,000 children are homeless, and 1,200,000 latchkey children come home to houses in which there is a gun. The crisis of children having children has turned into the tragedy of children killing children, as too many of our young mimic the adult conduct they see.
Never have we witnessed the threats to family stability posed by soaring out-of-wedlock birthrates and an epidemic of teen births among black, brown, white, rich and poor alike. Today two out of every three black babies and one out of every five white babies are born to unmarried mothers. And if it’s wrong for 13-year old, inner-city girls to have babies without benefit of marriage, it’s wrong for rich celebrities too.
Never has America permitted children to have such easy access to--and to rely upon--guns and gangs rather than on parents, neighbors, community institutions and religious congregations for protection and love. Never have we pushed so many children into the tumultuous sea of life without the life vests of nurturing families and communities, a sense of right and wrong, enough adult role models they can emulate--and without challenged minds, job prospects or hope. And never have we exposed children so early and relentlessly to cultural messages glamorizing violence, sex, possessions, alcohol and tobacco.
It is time for all parents and adults to stop our hypocrisy and break the code of silence about the breakdown of spiritual values and parental and community responsibility to nurture and protect children. While we decry rising youth violence, drug use and antisocial behavior, the plain truth is that we adults have preached moral and family values that we have not practiced consistently in our homes, religious congregations, communities and national life.
It is adults who have financed, produced and performed in the movies, TV shows and media that have made violence ubiquitous in our culture. It is adults who manufacture, market and make available guns to anybody who wants one, including our children. It is adults who have taught that hate, racial and gender intolerance, greed and selfishness are family values. It is adults who have left millions of children without a healthy start, a head start, a fair start and a safe start in life. It is adults who have taught children to look for meaning outside rather than inside themselves--teaching them, in Dr. Martin Luther King’s words, “to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity.” And it is adults--mothers and fathers--who must accept responsibility and pledge anew to morally guide, protect and invest in our own children and in all children.
If you are a parent, recognize that it is the most important calling and rewarding challenge you have. What you do every day, what you say and how you act will do more to shape the future of America than any other factor. The Ashanti proverb that the ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people means that its success also begins there. What power we parents--especially we mothers, who continue to disproportionately bear the responsibility of child rearing--have for good!
As mothers, we must value children enough to discipline them, spend time with them, be decent role models for them and fight for what they need from our communities and nation. And we must tell our children that forming families is serious business and not to have children until they are ready to support them emotionally and economically.
A terrible story is just unfolding. It reflects the personal and national consequences of hundreds of thousands of runaway and throwaway children, AIDS orphans and children shunted about in out-of-home care; the legacy of countless parents of privilege who have emotionally abandoned their children for money, personal pleasure or work; and the toll on children of parents who are stressed daily to the limits of survival by joblessness, homelessness, too few community supports and isolation. How many children are turning to gangs and cults and drugs and too early sex in suburbs and inner cities alike to find what they cannot find at home?
As I look back on my own childhood, it is nearly unimaginable that I could have overcome gender and racial discrimination without the strong values, high expectations and steady support of my parents, whose legacies still guide and sustain me every day.
I was 45 yeas old when my mother, Maggie Leola Bowen Wright, died in 1984. Yet nothing had prepared me for the feeling of being orphaned, of not being someone’s child. When my dad had died 30 years earlier, I was 14 years old and the youngest of five children. This devastating loss was cushioned by my mother, who was a rock that I and my siblings leaned upon for security, continuity and guidance.
My father, a Baptist minister who lived every day the faith he preached on Sunday, had been the strong family head and out-front community leader while my mother--whom he called “pal” and “buddy” -- worked in the background, keeping home and church running smoothly. Although we worried how she would manage without him, my mother did not miss a beat in assuming either the family or church leadership mantle. My brother Harry assumed my father’s pulpit, and my mother continued as family navigator and glue, church organist and fund-raiser, and nurturer of my father’s legacy of service in and outside the home.
She prospered by giving and led by serving. She opened our home to 12 foster children and continued operating the Wright Home for the Aged, which she and my dad had begun behind our church, until she died--cooking three meals a day for senior citizens, some of whom were younger than she, until we insisted in her later years that she hire a cook. She kept up her community and church work until a few weeks before her death because, she said, “I did not promise the Lord that I was going part of the way. I promised Him I was going all the way until He tells me otherwise.” And when she was no longer able to be productive or to walk under her own steam when faced with a rapidly growing cancer, she quietly announced she was ready to go, did not want to be a burden to her children and refused further nourishment.
My deep sadness at being unable to pick up the phone, hear her voice and seek her advice passed over time as her seeds of love bloomed in new ways. The South Carolina home where I was born and my sister and three brothers were raised serves today as a youth development center of the Children’s Defense Fund and bustles with laughter and activity from community youth, parents and teachers. Two of her grand-daughters help their father care for the nine senior citizens in the Wright Home for the Aged. There is never a day when I do not think of her and never a time any Wright children get together that we do not laugh about and reminisce about our parents. I make few important decisions without asking what Mama or Daddy would think, and I celebrate no important family occasion without feeling their presence. They never left us children alone--even in death.
Mama’s faithfulness, willingness to sacrifice for her children, love for her grandchildren and other people’s children and commitment to service “as the rent we pay for living” bolsters my spirit and guides my way every day. And I am struggling mightily to pass on her values and strength and faith to my three sons. I hope to grow with my children as she grew with me and let them go, as she let me go, where need calls and talent leads. While she did not always understand my choices, she respected them and let me live my hopes and dreams rather than hers.
When I got a scholarship to study my junior year in Europe and wanted to visit the Soviet Union with a student group, my scrimping and saving could not provide all the money I needed. She produced the difference by selling, I learned many years later, one of the small pieces of property my father had left her for rainy days. When I called, my senior year in college, to tell her I planned to protest segregation in Atlanta and probably would be arrested, she said, after expressing concern for my safety, that she would be praying for me. A few months later, when I told her I was going to law school and did not plan to settle down with a nice young man and have children right away, she sent me along my new way with her blessing.
She was very proud when I graduated from Yale Law School but perplexed and worried when I moved to Mississippi upon graduation in 1964. But she visited me and carried on her one-woman mission of service to her children, grandchildren, foster children and extended family of community children for whom she felt personally responsible in our small South Carolina town of Bennettsville. When I informed her I planned to marry a man who was neither black nor Christian, she asked if I had thought carefully about what this might mean. Then she warmly welcomed him into our family.
I feel I am the luckiest child in the world--still--to have had a mother and father who lived rather than just preached their faith and family values—who taught their children that being honest was more important than being honored and that faith was a safer and more enduring harbor than fame. They did not care about status; they cared about service. They did not care about things; they cared about thinking and thoughtfulness.
They taught us good manners: to stand up when older or disabled persons entered a room, to address adults with respect, to work before play, to take responsibility for our actions and to stay away from complainers and big talkers but small doers. They stressed the importance of reading and also what was worth reading. They valued education for its own sake but valued it more as a means to helping others.
The Best Mother’s Day Gift
In the book The Measure of Our Success: A letter to My Children andYours, I share 25 lessons for life with my three wonderful sons. Lesson 7 seems particularly appropriate on Mother’s Day, because the best Mother’s Day gift millions of husbands can give their wives is: Remember that your wife is not yourmother or maid but your partner and friend.
Share family responsibilities. Men need to take responsibility for figuring out what needs to be done at home—just as you do at your job. If you are lucky enough to be deaf to crying or coughing children at 3 a.m., then recognize your wife’s nightly burden and likely exhaustion by taking on some of her responsibilities the next day—without having to be asked or even asking if she would like you to. Just do it!
Rotate and share household chores: cooking, dishes, laundry, garbage. There really is nothing that decrees that only women are capable of washing clothes, cleaning up children’s vomit or remembering flowers, anymore than it is a given that only you are responsible for meeting all family expenses or for mowing the lawn.
What no wife and mother wants is to have you assume that she—not you- is responsible for your mess. Simply treat your wife as you’d like to be treated. I do any chores happily for my husband and children, just as I want them to do so for me—because it’s needed or because I want to, not because it’s assumed to be my sole responsibility.
Adapted from the new gift edition of The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to MyChildren and Yours, Copyright 1992 by Marian Wright Edelman. Reprinted with permission of Beacon Press, Boston. All rights reserved.
A Pledge
On this Mother’s Day, I urge you to join me in the following pledge:
“I promise to…
Listen to my children
Communicate with my children
Teach my children right from wrong and be a good role model for
them
Spend time with and pay attention to my children
Educate my children in mind, body and soul
Work to provide a stable family life for my children
Pray for and see God in my children and all children
Vote for my children to ensure them equal opportunity
Speak out for my children’s needs and join in a movement to see
that no child is left behind in our nation.”