Writing in today’s edition of Parade, President Barack Obama talks both about having a father and being a father.

As he points out, he grew up without a dad who was more than an illusion. His father was a graduate student from Kenya who met and married his mother in Hawaii. The elder Obama was a man of unkept promises, a rambling intellect who nonetheless ended up an alcoholic who died in a car crash in Africa.

So if a person who had a father fitting that description can become president of the United States, can it be said that the traditional role of a father is still relevant?

Who better to answer that question than Obama? And he does so with clarity.

“In many ways,” Obama wrote, “I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence — both in my life and in the lives of others. I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill. We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and good schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the difference.”

In Vicksburg and in Mississippi, a perilous threshhold has been crossed. Most newborns here now leave the hospital with one parent. Not a few. Not some. Most. Hundreds of other children are in single-parent households due to divorce. A child who lives with a mom and a dad in the same house is a minority. So much has changed so fast.

Some of the trend is unavoidable, but some is by choice. And that’s a horrible omen for the future. To all the dads who are dads in every sense of the word, we say congratulations for the gift you’ve given yourself, and for sticking through the tough times.

To others, we commend the words of a president who grew up without a father: “The hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one no government can fill.”