Obama: Absent Dad Taught Me Value of Fatherhood

President's Father's Day essay urges father to 'step up' and take responsibility

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Jun 19, 2009 6:18 AM CDT

(Newser) – President Obama came to realize the value of fatherhood through its absence in his own life as a boy, he writes in an essay published in Parade for Father's Day. "The hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill," writes Obama, whose father left the family when Barack was 2 years old. He urges fathers to take responsibility for raising their children.

"We need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one," Obama writes. "On this Father's Day, I think back to the day I drove Michelle and a newborn Malia home from the hospital nearly 11 years ago. I think about the pledge I made to her that day: that I would give her what I never had—that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father."

[Images (3)]

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President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters Sasha and Malia walk from the White House as they take part in the annual Easter Egg Roll. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Barack Obama sits on Kailua Beach in Kailua, Hawaii, with his daughter, Sasha, in August last year. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia,File)

Barack Obama carries his daughter Sasha, 7, with his daughter Malia, 10, behind them, as he goes to his grandmother's home in Honolulu. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon,File)

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I observe this Father's Day not just as a father grateful to be present in my daughters' lives but also as a son who grew up without a father in my own life.
- President Barack Obama

As the father of two young girls who have shown such poise, humor, and patience in the unconventional life into which they have been thrust, I mark this Father's Day—our first in the White House—with a deep sense of gratitude. - President Barack Obama

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Obama: Absent Dad Taught Me Value of Fatherhood