What Families Really Value : THE URQUHARTS : ‘Ideally, It Would Be Nice If Only One Parent Had to Work’

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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Working parents Dee Dee, 33, and Corey Urquhart, 32, are raising three children--two boys, 8 and 6, each from Dee Dee’s two previous marriages, and another son, 1, from her marriage to Corey. They live in West Hills.

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If Corey Urquhart, had his way, only one parent in his household would work and the other would stay home with the kids. The heating and air-conditioning repairman wouldn’t mind being a househusband.

“Ideally, it would be nice if only one parent had to work and the other could be there for the boys,” he says. “I know that in this day and age we need the two incomes to make it. We could maybe scrape by with less, but it makes it nicer to be able to afford more camping trips for the boys.”

Togetherness, says Corey and Dee Dee, a paralegal, is an important family value, and the Urquharts spend three out of four weekends camping.

“We give a lot of love and support to our kids,” says Dee Dee. “I remember when I was in high school I went to an awards dinner and my parents weren’t there to support me. I don’t want that for my kids. I want to be there for them and that’s why Corey and I focus on the kids all the time. That’s an important family value to us.”

Corey agrees.

“It’s kind of tough in some situations because Dee Dee has kids from other husbands,” he says. “(They) have their fathers and they also have me. That’s why communicating our feelings is a real important family value to us.”

Dee Dee, who grew up in a strict Catholic family, says, “We read Bible stories to the boys when we go camping, but we don’t teach our kids to be God-fearing. We’re teaching them to be God-loving.”