I want to direct my remarks today to just a portion of this vast congregation. I want to speak to you who bear the great and noble titles of husband and father. I find myself greatly concerned with what I see around me. Man, woman, young adult, youth, and child—all groping to find their identity in a troubled world.

-thus L. Tom Perry

No one knows who they are.  Everybody is looking for an identity.

The tired approach of just upbraiding men because manhood consists only of a series of obligations isn’t good enough anymore.  Always winter, never Christmas, is not an identity.  Women are great! is not an identity for men.

There is plenty of reproof in Brother Perry’s talk.  Men can take it.  But more importantly there is the positive and heroic vision of what it means to be a father and a husband.  Not just second-hand or auxiliary motherhood.

He says fathers create identity for everyone.  He says the crisis in identity among woman, young adult, youth, child . . . they will get their identities from fully-operational fathers.  When the church tries to buttress a healthy, common identity, it reminds us that we are sons and daughters of God.  Our own children can in their guts have a sense of who they are because they are sons and daughters of us.

Fathers are leaders.

Fatherhood is in the image of God.

Other Posts from the Saturday Afternoon Session of the October 1977 General Conference

• To Become a Better People by Jan Tolman
• Not a gospel of souvenirs by Marilyn Nielson