Obama promotes fatherhood ahead of Father's Day

 2009-06-20 04:34:33  

    WASHINGTON, June 19 (Xinhua) --

Two days ahead of Father's Day, U.S. President Barack Obama used an entire afternoon on Friday to promote the importance of fatherhood, urging fathers to fulfill their responsibilities.

    "Fatherhood also brings great responsibilities. Fathers have an obligation to help rear the children they bring into the world. Children deserve this care, and families need each father's active participation," he said in a presidential proclamation issued by the White House.

    First on the president's agenda Friday afternoon is a visit to a local nonprofit organization, Year Up, that helps young adults prepare for a professional career.

    Meanwhile, his staff members moved across the city and partnered with athletes and other celebrities to reach out to young boys through various local organizations.

    Dwyane Wade of the NBA's Miami Heat, Antwan Randel El of the NFL's Washington Redskins, pro skateboarder Tony Hawk and Tony Award winning actor B.D. Wong are just a few of the celebrities who are taking part in events around Washington to promote the president's message of responsibility.

    Later afternoon, Obama will hold a town hall-style event in the White House, where he will lead a discussion about fatherhood and take questions from an audience of local fathers and young men.

    The president and his guests will attend a barbecue on the White House South Lawn with celebrity chef Bobby Flay firing up the grill.

    Obama also wrote an op-ed that will run in this Sunday's Parade Magazine, in which he acknowledges how growing up without his father affected him.

    "I knew him mainly from the letters he wrote and the stories my family told," the president writes.

    "And while I was lucky to have two wonderful grandparents who poured everything they had into helping my mother raise my sister and me, I still felt the weight of his absence throughout my childhood."

    In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama wrote about the questions he had for his father but couldn't ask him because he had such a limited presence in his life.

    He described his struggle to understand his identity as a young African-American man growing up with a single mom and his white grandparents.

Editor: Yan