Together for an afternoon outing, a father and his 4-year-old son walked from a public transit stop to a music festival being held in a baseball stadium a few blocks away. The crowd was so thick that, from his 4-foot-high vantage point, the tot could see only a forest of legs, feet and ankles as they made their way to the stadium, and the situation made him nervous.

"Are you still with me, Dad?" he asked every few hundred yards, though he clutched his father's hand the entire distance. Each query brought the reassuring reply, "Yes, Son, I'm still with you."

Simple as it is, the scene can teach lessons on more than one level.

As they traverse the perilous road toward adulthood, children need the security, assurance and support that a dedicated father provides.

Some observers of the human condition today identify fatherlessness as the engine driving society's most pressing social problems, including poverty, crime, drug abuse, behavioral disorders, missed or squandered educational opportunity, adolescent pregnancy and domestic violence. (See, for example, Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem, by David Blankenthorn.)

Former U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan recognized the vital necessity of fatherhood when he wrote in 1965: "There is one unmistakable lesson in American history. A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, . . . never acquiring a stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any rational expectations about the future — that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure — these are not only to be expected, they are virtually inevitable."

More recently, U.S. President George W. Bush observed: "Fathers are the object of a young child's admiration. They provide their sons and daughters with an example of what it means to be a good man. And many of us believe a father's love, like a mother's love, even imperfectly, mirrors divine love." (From an address to the Fourth National Summit on Fatherhood, Washington, D.C., June 7, 2001.)

Yet today, one-third of all births in the United States are to unmarried women, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Small wonder that the First Presidency, in its inspired 1995 document, "The Family: A Proclamation to the World," would underscore the heaven-mandated role of a father by declaring: "By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners."

In a day when some segments of society are inclined to treat lightly or even dismiss the necessity of the male parental role, thank God for fathers who can say to their children, "Yes, I am still with you"; who earnestly strive to have a meaningful presence in their children's lives; who balance the demands of providing for them temporally with the need to be with, love and teach them. God bless fathers who do all they can to foster a safe, warm, sheltering haven where children can grow and learn, who esteem their young ones as "an heritage of the Lord." (Psalm 127:3.)

For it is God, our Heavenly Father, who sets the perfect example of true fatherhood in His unceasing care for His sons and daughters.

Like the 4-year-old in the above incident, we often are distressed, perhaps even overwhelmed, by our surroundings. How wonderful in times of tension or sorrow to know He is watching over us; that we can, in effect, cry out to him, "Father, are you still with me?" and, through the power of the Holy Ghost receive the assurance that, indeed, He is still with us, leading us by the hand through mortality and into eternal life.