What Families Really Value : TYRA LINDSAY : ‘To Do What’s Right in the Eyes of God’

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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Tyra Lindsay, 26, and her husband, Mervyn Lindsay, 34, live in Culver City with their 3-year-old daughter. The Lindsays, who have been married f o r five years, work in a bank.

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Tyra Lindsay believes family values are important but adds: “They’ve really been lost. I don’t think people do the traditional thing anymore.

“I am not married because people think I should be. I did it because I wanted to. If I wasn’t married, I’d still have a child if I wanted to.

“We live in strange times,” she continues. “My sister’s 11-year-old son has already asked her for condoms. She made a joke about it because she didn’t know how to deal with it. She asked me, ‘What will you say when (your daughter) asks you about this stuff?’ I said I hope (she) doesn’t have to ask. I hope she’ll know what’s right before she gets to that point.

“I wouldn’t teach my child that it’s the best thing to have a baby without benefit of a husband,” she says. “My theme to my daughter will be to marry before having sex and before having children . . . to do what’s right in the eyes of God. But the reality of today’s world is that people have sex and have kids before they marry. And I really don’t think you must be married to raise children successfully.”

Tyra Lindsay says she will teacher her daughter to “respect those who earn her respect.”

“Teachers, police and traditional authority figures are not always worthy of respect. And because my child will give respect where it is due, she will be taught to expect it back.”