obama on fatherhood

Obama made a speech to mark Father's Day in an African-American Chicago church yesterday. It's a good one. In truth-telling mode, he bemoans the high rate of single-parent households in society and in the African-American community in particular:

"Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL,” he told a huge African-American congregation in Chicago. “There’s a hole in your heart if you don’t have a male figure in the home that can guide you and lead you and set a good example for you.” “What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child — any fool can have a child,” he said, to applause. “That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father....

...You and I know how true this is in the African-American community,” he said. “We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled — doubled — since we were children. We know the statistics — 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. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it."

Along the way touches upon his own upbringing, marked by an absent father, and on his experience of being an 'imperfect father' himself.

Obama didn't make this speech for purely political reasons - he's been making a similar speech for several years now - but there's no doubt it is good politics. By drawing on a strain of African-American conservatism that runs from Booker T. Washington to Bill Cosby and that emphasises the importance of the black community taking responsibility for its own problems, Obama marks himself as different from the more liberal, Al Sharpton wing of the Democratic Party. He also reassures culturally conservative whites that he shares the same family values they hold - and the painting in of biographical details forms part of his ongoing introduction to the whole country.

YouTube of the full speech here.

Comments

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Daniel Moynihan linked absent fathers to poverty and other ills many years ago. But Barack Obama speaks from personal experience and had the respect of the audience he addressed yesterday. My one addition is that there are complex reasons why African American fathers are less responsible than they could be, but I am sure Obama knows the broader context: these have to do with not being "respected" and not being given a fair shake. Of course some of the time they serve as excuses. African American women end up with the responsibility.