In a Father’s Day speech to Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God, Sen. Barack Obama challenged African-American men to stay involved in their children’s lives, warning them that “responsibility doesn’t just end at conception.”

“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.”

Citing statistics and sharing his own life story, Obama also highlighted three lessons that fathers must learn, “whether we are black or white; rich or poor; from the South Side or the wealthiest suburb”:

  • “The first is setting an example of excellence for our children – because if we want to set high expectations for them, we’ve got to set high expectations for ourselves. It’s great if you have a job; it’s even better if you have a college degree.”
  • “The second thing we need to do as fathers is pass along the value of empathy to our children. Not sympathy, but empathy – the ability to stand in somebody else’s shoes; to look at the world through their eyes.”
  • “[T]he final lesson we must learn as fathers is also the greatest gift we can pass on to our children – and that is the gift of 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 that 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.”

Any other “lessons” to add?