President Barack Obama and daughter Sasha in 2007

New York ? With a centennial celebration of Father’s Day coming next month, and a new president committed to supporting better parenting, liberals and conservatives alike say the political stars may be aligned for major progress in promoting responsible fatherhood.

It’s an issue that’s been divisive in the past, even as research made clear that the estimated 24 million children growing up with absent fathers — a disproportionate number of them African-American — are at higher risk in regard to poverty, crime and other social problems.

But the left-right divide over the government’s role in solidifying such families appears to be narrowing at this stage of Barack Obama’s presidency.

“This is a watershed moment, to say the least,” said Roland Warren, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative. “With President Obama — the first African-American husband and father in the White House — there’s a unique opportunity here to draw attention to the issue.”

Numerous events are planned around Father’s Day — ranging from policy symposiums to a National Rally for Responsible Fatherhood at the Lincoln Memorial. Obama, raised in the absence of his own father, has been invited to the rally and is expected to mark the day with an appeal for men to be more involved in their children’s lives.

Other rallies will be held nationwide, said a lead organizer, Jeffery Johnson of the National Partnership for Community Leadership. “We want a million men to make a commitment to be the best dads they can.”

The events celebrate the nation’s 100th Father’s Day, dating from observances in Spokane, Wash., on June 19, 1910. A Father’s Day also had been observed two years earlier in Fairmont, W.Va.

Obama already has demonstrated his interest in fatherhood issues in multiple ways.

He is a past co-sponsor of an ambitious fatherhood bill that Democrats Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana and Rep. Danny Davis of Illinois plan to reintroduce in conjunction with Father’s Day. Many of its provisions are aimed at removing barriers that deter noncustodial fathers from providing financial support to their children.

Obama also has designated responsible fatherhood as one of the four priorities of his new faith-based advisory council, a politically diverse group of religious and civic leaders.

“This could be the real signature issue of this council,” said Jim Wallis, founder of the liberal Christian social-justice network Sojourners. “If we’re going to pursue this — and we must — you need to break up the left-right culture-wars polarities.”