| Obama Calls on Fathers to Be Responsible
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Friday that fathers have to share the responsibility for raising children and caring for families because their role doesn't end at conception. Days before Father's Day, the first-term Illinois senator and father of two daughters delivered his life message as well as an assessment of what government needs to do in remarks at a Baptist church.
"What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise a child," Obama said.
In his prepared text, Obama said: Men need to "stop acting like boys - who need to realize that responsibility does not end at conception"
He recalled his own upbringing as the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas. Obama said he grew up with a father he know only through letters and stories told by his mothers and the relatives who raised him.
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I don't blame the (middle-class) parents
Is it all the fault of the middle classes? I ask because some of the language used in the debate over disadvantaged kids has a faintly accusatory tone to it (Yes, guilty). Or perhaps the term "middle-class" has been used for so long as a term of abuse that it is impossible to read it any more without hearing the echo of a sneer. The middle classes read to their children. They teach them to count. They tell them about shapes and colours and the world. I don’t think anybody is complaining about that, yet. But they also use public services – health visitors, doctors, Sure Start children’s centres – and if you listen to public sector workers for more than a few minutes, you will hear protests about that. A mother’s likelihood of seeing a health visitor after giving birth actually decreases with her income; the people who most need help are those most likely to be left behind.
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