Dreams from my Father

Dreams from my father

In his autobiographical memoir, Dreams from My Father, aspiring US president Barack Obama engages in a physical and metaphoric journey into matters of race, identity and fatherhood. He travels half way across the world to Africa as a young man, following his father’s life, trying to fill gaps left by his absence while growing up. In doing so, he achieves a better understanding of his own existence within the world he lives in. The book’s theme leaves no doubt that father’s matter a lot to their sons and daughters.

Dads matter to their children’s educational, emotional and social development, and there is plenty of irrefutable evidence from research, to support this assertion. Fathers do not only pass on their genes to their children. As a matter of fact, biological fatherhood is in many senses, of less consequence than social fatherhood. Stepfathers and adoptive fathers are as important as natural fathers, especially where the latter are absent in their children’s lives. Whereas certain traits are inherited from a child’s parents, fathers play their most crucial role in their kids’ lives during their socialization, that is, the long process of becoming social beings of worth to the immediate community and the larger society.