Margaret D. Nadauld

Mrs. Smoot and I are united in our efforts to maintain and preserve the traditional family as the basic unit of society.I am grateful for the five million women and young women all over this world with whom we work who believe, with us, that strong families will produce strong societies and a hopeful future. It is heartening to see the results of a global poll done by Wirthlin Worldwide released on November 4, 1999, which shows the following: 78% of those questioned believe that “a family created through lawful marriage is the fundamental unit of society and 84% agree that marriage is defined as one man and one woman”

In my assignment as president of an international organization for young women who belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we focus our attention on our teenage girls who live in every part of the world. We love them and have great faith in their abilities and in their future. Their future is the future of the world for they will nurture the generations yet unborn. With their parents, we are concerned about what these girls hear, read in print, and see acted out on screen. We all know that the media has the power to condone, even promote, antifamily messages by what they print, what they show, and how they show it. There are those who would have us choose abortion over babies, fully employed women over motherhood, and in place of parents, government sponsored day care and after school programs to watch over what they term “burdensome” children.

We believe that youth must be taught that this is wrong. We must teach the ideal. That is, that human life is sacred, that children need mothers to nurture, nourish, and teach them, and that they need fathers to love them, to provide for them, and to protect the family unit. For those who would believe that the traditional family can be improved on and that a more modern way of doing things is better, may I share a story told by Peter Marshall:

Once upon a time, there was a town nestled at the foot of a mountain range where it was sheltered from wind and storms. High up in the hills above the little village, a quiet forest dweller took it upon himself to be the Keeper of the Springs. He patrolled the hills and wherever he found a spring he cleaned its brown pool of silt and fallen leaves of mud and mold and took away from the spring all foreign matter, so that the water which bubbled up through the sand ran down clean and cold and pure. But the City Council was a group of hard-headed, hard boiled business men. They scanned the civic budget and found in it, the salary of the Keeper of the Springs. Said the Keeper of the Purse: “Why should we pay this romance ranger? We never see him; he is not necessary to our town‘s work life. If we build a reservoir just above the town, we can dispense with his services and save his salary.”  Therefore, the City Council voted to dispense with the unnecessary cost of the Keeper of the Springs, and to build a cement reservoir. So the Keeper of the Springs no longer visited the brown pools but watched from the heights while they built the reservoir. When it was finished it soon filled up with water to be sure, but the water did not seem to be the same. It did not seem to be as clean, and a green scum soon befouled its stagnant surface.  There were constant troubles with the delicate machinery of the mills, for it was often clogged with slime, and the swans found another home above the town. At last, an epidemic raged, and the clammy, yellow fingers of sickness reached every home in every street and lane. The City Council met again. Sorrowfully, it faced the city ‘s plight, and frankly it acknowledged the mistake of the dismissal of the Keeper of the Springs. They sought him out high in the hills, and begged him to return to his former joyous labor. Gladly he agreed and began once more to make his rounds. It was not long until pure water came lilting down under tunnels of ferns and mosses and to sparkle in the cleansed reservoir. 

  My dear associates, there will always be a need for the Keeper of the Springs! The headwaters of the springs of which I speak are the families of this world. In many ways, the homes and families of our world are being more polluted than the mountain spring of the story. The clammy yellow fingers of moral sickness will reach into every home, every street, and every life unless we are vigilant and proactive. We must rally this day and in all the days to come to keep the headwaters of the family clear and clean, that strong, safe, productive boys and girls, men and women may flow freely from them. I honor you for being true to that noble errand to guard your own homes and families and then to be an influence in your larger communities. I would like to offer three suggestions for being Keepers of the Springs.

First, we must teach and model traditional family values.

 The solutions offered by some, like the reservoir of the story, cannot substitute for the daily, individual attention given by parents who are willing to invest their best time and efforts. We must teach and model that happiness and security comes in families with a father and mother who are married and committed to each other, committed to nurturing children and raising them to be caring, productive adults. 

May women, accomplished, capable, well educated women, never apologize for following the traditions that have made our society strong. Make those traditions of vigilant watch care over home and family your number one priority. May our daughters aspire to noble motherhood as their greatest calling and not succumb to the demeaning alternative voices of those who would destroy families.

May men of learning and understanding and influence stand prepared to fulfill their duty as provider and protector in the family setting. May we teach our sons to embrace their position of responsibility in future families.

May we believe and then teach that marriage between a man and a woman and fidelity in that marriage is the truest safeguard for home and family. Recent data show that those in our church who practice these principles experience a divorce rate 1/5 the U. S. average.

Second, we must teach and model moral values. 

There is no viable substitute for the traditional moral values that keep families strong. Encourage youth to develop religious faith, acquire fine educations, understand the relationship between choice and accountability, to do good works, and to live lives of integrity. They must know that they are responsible for the nurture and stability of future families, not governments or agencies.  No society ever became great by lowering its moral standards. Politically correct is not always morally correct! We need Keepers of the Springs who will realize that what is socially acceptable in our world today may not be morally right. As Marshall says, “The world has enough men and women who know how to be brilliant. It needs some who will be brave. The world has enough men and women who know how to be popular. It needs more who will be pure.” To be great, we must be good!

Third, use your influence.

I honor you for being true to that noble errand to guard your own homes and families and then to be an influence in your larger communities. We are honored to unite with you in the great cause of preserving the traditional family. If Keepers of the Springs desert their posts or are unfaithful to their responsibilities, the future outlook for this world is bleak indeed. How large will your sphere of influence be and how far will it reach? You decide. It is up to you.

Neal A. Maxwell has said, ‘When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods?

Will what happen if cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happens in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing.” This must be so. We must make it so. It is up to us!

In conclusion, I believe in the importance of the traditional family as the ideal. My own experience convinces me of the supreme value of this ideal. Let me show you the evidence I have.

For 30 years I have devoted my life to this family. How grateful I am for the blessing and opportunity to be a keeper of one little spring. With all that I could have chosen to do, with whatever ability and talent I have, I doubt that anything else I would have chosen could have more long-term impact in our society than these seven stalwart Sons who have been scattered across this world from Russia to Wall Street, Africa to England, Belgium to Bountiful, doing good for mankind. 

Now these seven sons, products of our family, are getting married, producing incomes, and becoming fathers. They are establishing traditional families of their own and a new generation of Keepers of the Springs is beginning. In my own experience, limited as it may be, I believe that it is in the family where your sons and your daughters and where these boys and their wives will find their greatest satisfaction, their fulfillment, their peace, their joy, and their intergenerational influence.  Mrs. Smoot and I, as leaders of five million women and young women across this world, as creators and defenders of the family, we as mothers, are involved in something everlasting

I believe our influence will live on through our sons and our daughters, those we touch on a daily basis and subsequent generations. They will bless many lives and in the end, they will bless our lives because each of us was a Keeper of the Springs.