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anymore. But each era gives birth to the village of the next generation.
    Like our families, the culture we inherit is a product largely of events and decisions we had little hand in choosing. Not that the culture is our destiny, any more than the family is: families have thrived in the harshest conditions, and individuals have survived in the harshest families. But the society is our context; we do not exist in a vacuum. Even now, in ways we cannot yet feel or recognize, the village in which our children will raise their children is taking shape. It is up to us to think carefully about what kind of legacy we want to leave them.

Every Child Needs a Champion
    If I could say just one thing to parents, it would be simply
that a child needs someone who believes in him
no matter what he does.
    ALICE KELIHER
    M OST OF the people I knew growing up had families remarkably like mine. I did not have a single close friend, from kindergarten through high school, whose parents were divorced. But there was someone I knew very well who was the child of divorce: my mother.
    My mother was born in Chicago in 1919, when her mother was only fifteen and her father just seventeen. A sister followed five years later, but both parents were too young for the responsibilities of raising children, and they decided they no longer wished to be married. When my mother was only eight years old and her sister barely three, her father sent them alone by train to Los Angeles to live with his parents, who were immigrants from England.
    When my mother first told me how she cared for her sister during the three-day journey, I was incredulous. After I became a mother myself, I was furious that any child, even in the safer 1920s, would be treated like that.
    To this day, my mother paints a vivid picture of living in southern California seventy years ago. She describes the smells of the orange groves she walked through on the way to school and the excitement of taking a streetcar to the beach. But these carefree memories were shrouded in harshness. Her grandmother was a severe and arbitrary disciplinarian who berated her constantly, and her grandfather all but ignored her. Her father was an infrequent visitor, and her mother vanished from her life for ten years.
    Yet my mother was not without allies and a “village” to support her. A kind teacher noticed that she was often without milk money and bought an extra carton of milk every day, which she gave my mother, claiming she herself was too full to drink it. A great-aunt, Belle, gave my mother gifts and from time to time intervened to protect her from her grandmother’s ridicule and rigidities.
    When she was fourteen, my mother moved out of her grandparents’ home and went to work taking care of a family’s children in exchange for room and board. The position enabled her to attend high school, but not to participate in after-school activities. Every morning, she was up very early to prepare breakfast for the children, and every night she stayed up long after they had gone to sleep, to do her homework. The family appreciated her way with children, saw her true worth, and encouraged her to finish high school. The mother, a college graduate, gave her books to read, challenged her mind, and emphasized how important it was to get a good education. She also provided a role model of what a wife, mother, and homemaker could be.
    How I wish I could have met Aunt Belle and the woman who employed my mother. I would tell them of my gratitude for the nurturance and encouragement that helped my mother overcome the distrust and disappointment she met with in her own family. They healed her of what could have been lifelong wounds. And yet, to a great extent, my mother’s character took shape in response to the hardships she experienced in her early years. From those challenges came her strong sense of social justice and her respect for all people, regardless of status or background. From them, too, came