COLUMN ONE : Everyplace, Enemies of the Family : While politicians talk of family values, beleaguered parents don’t look to government for answers. But they find plenty of people to blame--from neighbors to themselves.

More and more, politicians talk about The Family. But families talk about politicians less and less.

Here’s George Bush during the State of the Union speech, concerned blue eyes fixed firmly on the TV cameras: “We must strengthen the family--because it is the family that has the great bearing on our future.” Here’s Democratic contender Bill Clinton, out on the campaign trail: “Our streets are meaner, our families are more broken . . . .”

Trisha and Dick Corrigan are worried about the rise of broken homes, too. But they do not see much of a role for direct government aid: They will settle for some tax breaks so the investments they set aside for three college educations will be worth something. Irene and Frank Aguero can barely cover the rent, food and utilities on their combined minimum-wage salaries. Thank God for Irene’s mother and her good health, because the Agueros cannot afford day care for their two young daughters. But when asked what government could do to ease their family life, they draw a blank.

Most of the nearly 30 families interviewed in this South Texas town do not look to government to solve family problems. Issues like day care, parental leave and more flexible work hours rarely come up, even though large majorities of Americans support these initiatives when directly asked about them.

Americans still seem to view this messy business of family--with its own rhythms, bonds and strains--as an internal affair. They blame declining family values on their neighbors, on “those people” across town, sometimes on themselves. “A lot of people nowadays are making choices without thinking,” 41-year-old Robert Gonzales, a divorced father of two, says in a pointed reference to himself, as well as society. “And when they don’t think things through, a lot of loose ends are left.”

Still, politicians know that talk about the troubled family goes to the very soul of this country and its romanticized image of itself. A majority of Americans tells pollsters that they are satisfied with their own home lives, but when they look beyond their own front lawns they see family values in decline--and they worry that problems like crime and drugs and teen pregnancy are the result.

Those worries are evident in San Antonio, a mid-size city with small-town values. This is a place where you still pump first/pay later, where McDonald’s has not yet squeezed out Murf’s Better Burgers, where the cashiers hand-punching prices at the Handy Andy Supermarket know their regular customers.

Like other American cities, this one divides neatly between families who have managed to keep it all together--even if under siege from the pressures of modern life--and families that have crumbled under the weight. Economic status is one factor determining the survivors, but not the only one: San Antonio’s gangs are more successful at recruiting middle-class members than low-income teens, notes Cynthia Test, who runs a gang-intervention program.

For Americans everywhere, family time together is at a premium, with parents under economic stress and usually holding down at least two jobs between them. Majorities of respondents across the country tell pollsters that parents today do not spend enough time with their children. One national survey found that one in five teen-agers had not had a 10-minute conversation with a parent in the past month. Another study found that parents in the 1980s spent 10 to 12 fewer hours per week with their children than parents did in 1960.

Meanwhile, single-parent households are on the rise--boosted mostly by out-of-wedlock births. Nationally, 24% of children live with only one parent, usually the mother, and one in three of those households lives in poverty. Among urban minorities the situation is even more distressing: According to the Urban Institute, nearly 90% of black children born today will spend at least part of their childhood with a single parent.

“I see mothers daily who have given up,” says Steve Johnson, the weary and frustrated principal of Mark Twain Middle School in the heart of San Antonio’s barrio. “And there aren’t enough people and places to help them.”

Throughout the neighborhoods like the one Mark Twain serves are families disintegrating, parents afraid of their own children and throwing up their hands in disgust, or--like Mary Johnson--left dazed and confused by the truckload of troubles that came crashing through their front door. “I’ve asked myself 9,000 times, ‘Where did I go wrong?’ ” says Johnson, who sent her gang-member son to a juvenile facility after he was shot three times within six months. “I beat my head against the wall, but I don’t have an answer.”

At the other end of the spectrum are families making a determined effort to build private buffers against what they see as an increasingly unstable and amoral outside world. One family moved to the country to lessen urban influences on their two boys; a couple in their 20s made wrenching financial sacrifices so the mother of their toddler could quit work; another set of parents keeps their children out of the school system as part of a growing trend toward home schooling.

Even among families with comfortable incomes, supportive relationships and children who appear to be well on the way to college and bright careers, there is a palpable fear of what the future holds. In the midst of a discussion about the challenges of being a single father, self-employed consultant Eduardo Gutierrez, 48, suddenly stops and looks his interviewer hard in the eye. “You know what my nightmare is?” he asks. “That my kid might not do as well as me.”

All this is a potent brew of political discontent. But so far in 1992, it remains unfocused, untapped.

Most of the cries for government help come from those representing the institutions forced into the vacuum left by broken families--the schools, the churches and a myriad of underfunded private and governmental family support agencies. They are the ones, like principal Steve Johnson, who daily pick up the pieces when a family becomes dysfunctional. They are overburdened, angry at the country’s political leadership and pessimistic about the future.

“We do not see the connection between families and children and developing our future work force, our leaders,” says Gloria Rodriguez, executive director of Avance, a parenting program for San Antonio’s low-income Latinos. “Families are the basic unit of society, and if you’re not supporting that basic unit, society is going to crumble. It’s a ticking time bomb ready to explode.”

With Latinos making up half the population, San Antonio reflects the future of the American West, especially California. Immigrants who poured into town from Mexico in the early 1900s to sew shirts and shell nuts are clustered on the West Side in neighborhoods that look like a cross between East Los Angeles and a Western movie set. Chic enclaves to the north--where pristine storefronts suddenly materialize offering fresh roasted coffee and exotic flowers--are populated by Anglos. The city’s small black population is concentrated on the poverty-stricken East Side.

The weed-choked asphalt lots and boarded-up storefronts of downtown San Antonio suggest better times gone by. But the military and tourism (this is home to the Alamo) spared the city from the economic free fall that took hold in Texas towns built on oil. Despite large pockets of poverty, San Antonio seemed insulated from the worst urban ills--until gangs hit the headlines. Local leaders say the groups--many of them Los Angeles exports--have been active for six years. But last summer they started shooting, and the city has been in shock ever since.

To Cynthia Test, who runs the anti-gang program, the rise of gangs reflects the sorry state of San Antonio’s families. “The gang becomes a family. They are great at communicating with each other. There is trust and respect. We should learn from them,” she says.

Inside San Antonio, many families--like David and Julie Welch--are building their own Alamos against the destructive forces gnawing at the family. Until two years ago, Julie, 26, worked as a bookkeeper, and in many ways her life would be easier if she had kept her job. But when Amy was born, she and her husband, David, 31, decided she would stay home. “The first six months after she was born, we didn’t know how we were going to do it,” she says. “We’re still late on a lot of bills.”

Even that understates the sacrifices the Welches have made. As Julie sits on the floor of the nursery, passing brightly colored blocks to her toddler, she recounts how the couple once owned their own home (bought with Veterans Administration help). But when she quit work, they could no longer afford the payments so they moved to a small clapboard rental house nestled between an upscale country club neighborhood and a crime-infested commercial strip. When one of their cars was stolen, they were almost relieved. “We couldn’t make the payment,” she says. “The bank would have gotten it anyways.”

David is starting to make money, running his own paint-and-body shop, but his hours are grueling. This night he will not get home until 10 p.m.; after she puts the baby to bed, Julie will push a dresser up against the back door so no intruders can break in.

The images of the stable, well-adjusted nuclear family in the ‘50s and ‘60s may have been largely the figment of TV producers’ imaginations. How often in real life did that carefully trimmed hedge at the end of the cul-de-sac conceal a family scarred by alcoholism, physical or emotional abuse, or simply a bad marriage?

But that does not stop many families in the 1990s from trying to re-create their own version of “Father Knows Best.” Couples like the Welches are searching for stability in an unstable world. When she was a child, Julie recalls, her once close-knit family was torn apart when her older brother got into drugs. Her husband’s mother abandoned the family when he was 5; he had a troubled childhood and adolescence. Now David is trying to build the kind of family he did not have.

And more couples would do the same if they could, Julie Welch insists. “The problem is the economy,” she says. “It makes it real hard for mothers to stay at home. I know too many women who say, ‘If we could afford it, I’d stay at home.’ The cost of living is going up, but salaries aren’t.”

Landa Mabry, 42, had the luxury of being able to stay home, and she did. She and her husband, Bob, a 42-year-old food broker, went even further to ensure a stable home life by moving out to the country, north of San Antonio. A born and bred urbanite, she says the move was a culture shock. But the impact on her two boys--Matt, now 17, and Clint, 14--was worth it.

“We kept our kids from being exposed (to urban culture) longer than most,” says Landa, whose elegant home provides sweeping vistas of the valley below. “You didn’t have something on every corner. We were more prone to do things as a family.”

Tim and Jill Thomas, both in their 20s, are sheltering their four young children, ages 1 to 7, from the harsher side of modern life in a different way--through home schooling. “A lot of what we do is integrate our beliefs,” Jill Thomas says. “We do Bible readings and life skills on how it applies to your life.”

Home schooling is on the rise, particularly among fundamentalist Christians. (It is legal in every state, though the degree of regulation varies.) One estimate put the number of home-schooled children in 1990 at between 250,000 and 350,000, roughly three times as many as in 1983. The Thomases say they know 30 other San Antonio families engaged in home-schooling.

Jill does the teaching while Tim covers the bills by waiting tables. Articulate and thoughtful, the Thomases make clear that their decision to home-school is more than a reaction to the lack of religious training in schools (though Tim blames today’s adolescent social ills on the demise of school prayer). They complain that young children today are pushed too hard and that too often children are afterthoughts in their parents’ hectic schedules.

“It’s convenient for society to put them somewhere else,” Jill says. “People want to give things rather than self.”

These families and others in San Antonio are concerned about the influence of popular culture on their children. According to a 1991 poll by the Washington research firm Mellman & Lazarus, two-thirds of Americans believe that the entertainment industry--not parents or teachers or peers--have the most influence on the development of children’s values today.

Gary Bauer, president of the Washington-based Family Research Center, says parents are particularly concerned that the values they try to teach their children are undermined by conflicting signals in the mass media. “They feel surrounded by hostile territory,” he says.

Child-development experts also worry about the steady barrage of violence and explicit sex children receive through TV, movies and popular music. Last November, the National Commission on Children called on TV producers to exercise greater restraint in children’s programming and advertising.

Popular culture is a key factor behind concerns over the country’s moral standards and quality of life, Bauer argues. The Mellman/Lazarus survey, sponsored by the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., found that 65% of respondents worried that family values are declining, with the sharpest concerns found among the elderly, women, blacks and Latinos.

However, the same survey found that two-thirds of Americans are “very” or “extremely” satisfied with their own family life. And even the bleakest assessments of today’s adolescents also note that most teen-agers go on to lead healthy, productive lives.

That was evident among San Antonio youths like 16-year-old Michael Gonzales, who says most of the talk about gangs and drugs on campus is overstated. Sporting a ponytail, glasses and a deadly serious demeanor, Gonzales--who intends to become a sound engineer--says the biggest pressure in his life is academic achievement.

Likewise, 17-year-old Matt Mabry seems most concerned about his future after college. He has worked three summers in his dad’s food brokerage firm, but technological advances and competitive pressure are fast making the business obsolete. “I don’t know if it will even be there,” he says.

Seventeen-year-old Crissy Rivas, who attends a small private school, sees family communication as a serious issue. “Parents don’t listen,” she says. “Some of the kids are afraid of their parents.”

Although divorce rates have leveled off--and in many upper-middle-class San Antonio neighborhoods divorce is as rare as spring snow--ruptured marriages remain a fixture of American life. And many are troubled by that. “If the car gets dirty they get a divorce,” complains Emily Jackson, a 70-year-old widow and grandmother of three. “They don’t get married with the idea that it’s going to work.”

Rick Saldana, 28, assistant manager of a posh San Antonio restaurant, estimates that half of his friends are already divorced. “People think it’s easier to get divorced than to break off an engagement,” says Saldana, who recently broke off his own engagement because he was not ready for marriage.

Marriage did not work out for Robert Gonzales, a 41-year-old railroad switchman, but he is confident that he has softened the impact on his two children. Inside his modest apartment crammed with family photos, Gonzales paints an upbeat picture of his life as a father. Although the children live with their mother and his job demands long hours and travel, Gonzales says he sees his children frequently and maintains good communication. Private school tuition for 11-year-old Amanda, he says, is part of “an investment in my children.”

That does not cover the emotional costs, though. When Amanda is asked about pressures in her life, she begins to cry. She chokes on the words as they haltingly spill out: “My . . . parents’ . . . divorce.” Then comes a flood of tears she cannot stop.

Outside, after the interview, Gonzales says, “I didn’t know she felt that way.” He and Amanda’s mother have been divorced six years.

Experts are divided on the impact of divorce on the family and on American society.

Researchers note that divorce does not equal dysfunction: Many divorced parents remarry, and plenty of single parents are successful at raising their children. But, increasingly, men are missing from family life. According to surveys by University of Pennsylvania sociologist Frank Furstenberg and colleagues, nearly half of all children living apart from their fathers had not seen them during the previous year, and for those that did see them, the contact was sporadic.

Often, it is the schools that step in when the father is not around. Steve Johnson, the principal, recalls how one mother demanded that school authorities discipline her son for allegedly breaking her boyfriend’s window. “She wanted us to punish him,” Johnson recalls incredulously. “She sat in the room telling him he was worthless. After she left, he grabbed me and started bawling. Here was this big pathetic kid--he must weigh 200 pounds--crying on my shoulder.”

Johnson is a firm believer that schools should pick up where troubled families leave off. He has tried to restructure his own school to meet the social--as well as educational--needs of children. “I really feel that education is going to have to fill the vacuum,” he says. “My dream was to have the school become a community center.”

If that happens, it will not be here. Johnson’s attempts to expand his school’s role have run into resistance from the city’s education Establishment. So Johnson is resigning this spring. “Some of my colleagues think I’m crazy to work on kids’ social needs rather than their test scores,” he says bitterly.

Churches also are trying to fill the gaps left by deteriorating families and communities. Popular among Roman Catholic churches in San Antonio, and nationwide, is a program called RENEW, in which parishes set up small faith-sharing and support groups. “One area where the church can make a difference is in creating smaller communities within the larger parish,” says Sister Frances Briseno, associate director of San Antonio’s RENEW program. “So, if I lose my job, this group is here to support me emotionally and financially . . . . Once people experience community, they really long for it. It fulfills them.”

On San Antonio’s West Side, Gloria Rodriguez has shaped her parent-teaching organization Avance into a kind of extended family--the barrio’s grandmother and grandfather. A large portion of mothers in this community are raising families on their own. Aunts, uncles and grandparents who might have helped out a generation ago live in other cities, or are already overtaxed by their own problems of survival or are too angry with their children to be supportive.

Inside an Avance classroom--once a run-down housing project apartment--21-year-old Ruby Rodriguez, mother of two, is one of six women pasting together lesson books for toddlers. She says Avance has transformed her parenting style. “Now I talk to the kids,” she says. “You learn that mothers are the first teacher. Before, I thought they start learning when they go to school.” Twenty-two-year-old Sylvia Gutierrez, mother of four boys, says, “I get mad less. You learn to be patient because you spend more time with the kids.”

It is a paradox of modern times that Americans place more emphasis on child-rearing than ever before and yet are increasingly less able to devote time and attention to it. (As Juliet B. Schor notes in her book “The Overworked American,” today’s deep parent-child bonds are “very much a social construction” of the past 200 years. Hiring wet nurses, swaddling infants to immobilize them, routinely leaving children in the house alone--these kinds of practices are the historical norm.)

In the 1990s, yuppies shell out money for classes on breast-feeding and diapering. Books on child-rearing fill the stores, and parents of all income levels in San Antonio were deeply concerned about how to rear their own children.

Modern times, however, demand modern child-rearing. A post-industrial country facing international competition requires a more educated work force. And children today are exposed to a variety of destructive societal pressures.

That is where political leaders should step in with policies that give parents the time and resources to be part of their children’s lives, family advocates like Gloria Rodriguez argue. Moreover, as parents grow more isolated from their own families, many of them are forced to look to outsiders--such corporate- and government-funded programs as Avance--to show them the art of discipline and nurturing and teaching.

Rodriguez knows that her efforts will help only a fraction of the San Antonio families in need. But she does not let herself count that way. Neither does Sister Mary Boniface, who collects the remains of children who are pregnant, abused or drug-addicted at the Healy-Murphy Center across town.

“It’s an evil, evil world,” the elderly nun says in her twirling Irish brogue. But like others filling in for family, Boniface does not have the luxury to despair, so that moment of hopelessness quickly passes. She walks over to her bookcase and picks up framed photos, one by one--of the boy who gave up drugs, of the young man who went on to politics, of the brightly smiling girl in her college cap and gown.