Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – President Barack Obama on Monday addressed an audience of more than 300 in Washington, DC, on the virtues of fatherhood and the limits of government promoting it.
Obama spoke at THEARC, the Town Hall Education Arts & Recreation Campus, declaring the time ripe for “a new conversation around fatherhood in this country.”
Obama most of the time uses his own life and this time was no different as the president borrowed heavily from his own experiences with his father and his children.
Obama shared on the meaning of having a child, saying that “to have a child is to have your heart walking around outside your body.”
On the subject of his father’s absence in his life, Obama said: “While I was lucky to have a wonderful mother and loving grandparents … I still felt the weight of that absence. It is something that leaves a hole in a child’s life that no government can fill.”

Obama reiterated his pledge to be a good father, sharing an experience of driving home from the hospital after the birth of a child: “It is unadulterated joy and sheer terror. I made a pledge that day to give my child everything I could that I didn’t have. If I could be anything in life I would be a good father.”

With the pressures of presidency, Obama noted, “I have made plenty of mistakes as a parent. I have lost count all the times when the demands of work have taken me away from the responsibility of fatherhood … (there are) moments I will never get back. And that’s a hard feeling to accept.” 

He unveiled a new nationwide fatherhood and mentoring initiative that would promote responsible parenting on a host of fronts, specifically bettering job training services and domestic violence prevention, helping fathers fulfill child support payments and re-engaging out-of-touch parents in their children’s lives.
The president outlined a new program being overseen by the Attorney General’s office that would create “fatherhood reentry courts for ex-offender dads” that would help fathers leaving the criminal justice system reenter society.


Secretaries Timothy Geithner and Gary Locke were in attendance as well as Attorney General Eric Holder. In addition, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty were also on the stage. 


THEARC is part of a revitalization project in Anacostia officially opened in October 2005 and was the winner of the Urban Land Institute’s Award for Excellence in May 2007.
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