What Families Really Value : JUANITA AMARILLAS : ‘Nowadays, Things Are Different’

Has your family had its moral fiber today? And who determines the nutritional content and dosage, anyway?

Dan Quayle scolded TV’s Murphy Brown for “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’ ” With that condemnation, he started a national debate over family values--and the definition of the family itself.

Only about a third of U.S. families fit the traditional pattern of a working dad and a mom at home with the kids. If that structure is changing, what does that say for “traditional family values”?

Southern Californians--including a Latina great-grandmother, a Korean-American student and a black working couple--concur that family values are crucial but don’t necessarily agree on what those values are.

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Juanita Amarillas, 82, has five children, 26 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren; she is raising one of those great-grandchildren in her East Los Angeles home.

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“What’s important is for a family to support each other, even if it means helping to raise your grandkids,” says Amarillas.

She raised a grandson--now 32--from infancy to age 7. A second grandchild--now 22--lived with her until last year. And now Amarillas is raising Kimberly, a second-grader.

“I helped raise 11 brothers and sisters, five daughters, and now my great-grandchild because families stick together, no matter what. That’s how I was brought up,” says Amarillas, who moved from El Paso, Tex., to California in 1938.

“I got my good morals from my parents. They set good examples.”

The parents of the great-granddaughter who lives with her are not married. “Back when I was a younger woman, you wouldn’t think of having a child out of wedlock,” says Amarillas. “But nowadays, everything is different. I don’t think a woman has to be married to raise children.” But, she adds, “it would be ideal to be married because the children need two parents.

“It would be nice if my great-granddaughter could be brought up with parents, but I think I am doing a great job. The first grandson I raised is a very good citizen. And so is my 22-year-old granddaughter. Now Kimberly is in my hands.”