His father deserted him when he was a toddler. His mother was left to act as both parents to him and his sister, and she largely depended on his grandparents to help raise him. That was not an episode he wanted to see re-run.
He was determined to “break the cycle,” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told a South Side congregation on Father’s Day. He took a pause from the presidential campaign trail to spend the holiday at home. Obama, in the midst of a blue sea of choir robes, took the dais at Apostolic Church of God and implored men, especially Black men, to get their priorities in order and be the foundation that their home should be built on.
“Any fool can have a child, that doesn’t make you a father,” he said to thunderous applause. “If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers are missing û missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.” The presumptive democratic nominee for the White House said the dearth of men in the household is especially prevalent in the Black community. “We know that more than half of all Black children live in single-parent households. We know the statistics û that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison,” he said, as his wife Michelle and two daughters listened from the front row. Obama said he knows all too well about being raised by a single parent, however, he was “luckier than most.”
“I know what it means to have an absent father. My father left us when I was two years old, and I only knew him from the letters he wrote and the stories that my family told,” he said. Growing up in Hawaii, Obama and his sister were reared by his mother and white grandparents.
He made many mistakes in the past, but was afforded many “second chances,” chances that many kids nowadays don’t get, the senator said. “I know the toll that being a single parent took on my mother û how she struggled at times to pay the bills; to give us the things that other kids had; to play all the roles that both parents are supposed to play.
And I know the toll it took on me. So I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle û that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father to my girls,” Obama said, also giving praise to single mothers who are doing a “heroic job.”
It was Obama’s mother and grandparent’s resolve that made him the man that he is, he said, and he also credited examples his father-in-law, Frazier Robinson, set as the framework for his own experiences as a father. Robinson didn’t use his disability as an excuse; didn’t miss a day of work; nor miss any of Michelle or her brother’s activities, he said, before he laid out a few fundamental lessons for fatherhood. An example of excellence must be set, but it must start first with the parents. Children learn from example, he said.
“It’s great if you have a job; it’s even better if you have a college degree. It’s a wonderful thing if you are married and living in a home with your children, but don’t just sit in the house and watch SportsCenter all weekend long. As fathers and parents, we’ve go to spend more time with them, and help them with their homework, and replace the video game or the remote control with a book once in awhile,” Obama said.
The value of empathy must be instilled in children, so they will learn to stand in someone else’s shoes, and “look at the world through their eyes,” he said. “Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in ‘us,’ that we forget about our obligations to one another. We need to show our kids that you’re not strong by putting other people down û you’re strong by lifting them up,” Obama said. Obama closed his lesson plan for the day by instructing fathers to pass onto their children the greatest gift of all û hope.
“I’m not talking about an idle hope that’s little more than blind optimism or willful ignorance of the problems we face. I’m talking about hope as the spirit inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better is waiting for us if we’re willing to work for it and fight for it. If we are willing to believe,” he said. Obama’s poignant speech hit home for a few male teens who listened from the church’s youth ministry section.
“Listening to him gives me more reason to be a better man to my children once I have then, than my father was to me,” said Michael Phillips. The 17-year-old’s father skipped out on him when he was about 6 years old, leaving him to feel a “little envious” of a few friends who had fathers in their lives. His father’s absence didn’t keep him down, instead, it made him stronger. Phillips has a mentor that he met two years ago while worshiping at Apostolic.
“He is there when I need him and I appreciate that. I associate myself with him because he is very positive and I know I can learn great things from him,” Phillips said. Sixteen-year-old Gregory Burton said Obama gave “young Black males the idea of how we’re supposed to act, what we’re supposed to do when we have kids.
We are not supposed to run away from them.” Aaron Hill, 17, said Obama spelled out exactly how his own father is. “His words really got to me because my dad does everything Obama said fathers should do,” Hill said.
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