Do the First Kids Do Their Chores?
By Rachel L. Swarns
July 18, 2009
Editor’s Note: This story was first published by the New Times in Feb. 22, 2009. We think that is is worth publishing again. Barclay Walsh and Jodi Kantor contributed reporting.
We would like to know what you think? dan@goldcoastchronicle.com
CONSIDER the perils of parenting in the White House.
There is a movie theater, a bowling alley, a horseshoe pit, a swimming pool, five full-time chefs and dozens of household staff members ready to dish up ice cream at all hours. There are trips to foreign lands, dinners with kings and celebrities, swarming paparazzi and blaring motorcades, all with the potential to transform sweet little children into bossy, self-important ones. (Or lonely, dysfunctional ones.)
What are presidential parents to do?
Lay down the law, according to the newest parental unit in the executive mansion. President Obama and his wife, Michelle, might not be in Chicago anymore, but they say the old rules still apply when it comes to their daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.
In the Obama White House, bedtime is still at 8 p.m. The girls still set their own alarm clocks and get themselves up for school in the morning. They make their own beds and clean their own rooms. And when the much-anticipated pet arrives, they will walk the dog and scoop its poop.
“That was the first thing I said to some of the staff when I did my visit,” Mrs. Obama said in an interview with ABC News, describing her talks with White House employees. “Don’t make their beds. Make mine. Skip the kids. They have to learn these things.”
Even as Mr. Obama tackles the recession and Mrs. Obama embraces the role of first lady, the Obamas are finding their footing as parents in the White House. They strive, and even struggle at times, to balance the intense public interest in their family with their desire to preserve a sense of normalcy and privacy in the lives of their daughters, according to relatives, friends and television and magazine interviews with the Obamas themselves.
Mr. Obama is a modern-day dad who leaves the Oval Office for dinner with his girls, rarely misses a parent-teacher conference or piano recital and prides himself on having read all seven books in the Harry Potter series aloud with Malia.
Mrs. Obama juggles play dates and homework with speeches to federal agencies and students. Both are committed to keeping their daughters grounded, their friends and aides say.
“Those are some special girls, and everyone is rooting for them to make it through this intact,” Craig Robinson, Mrs. Obama’s brother, said in an interview.
The president echoed that sentiment. “Right now, they’re not self conscious. You know, they don’t have an attitude,” Mr. Obama said on CBS News. “And I think one of our highest priorities over the next four years is retaining that.”
The Obamas have long believed that rules and routine help children thrive, particularly during unsettling times. During the presidential campaign, Mrs. Obama stuck so firmly to the 8 p.m. bedtime rule that Mr. Obama sometimes had to scramble to catch his daughters awake.
“Michelle won’t keep them up just to talk to their father,” Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president and a family friend, told The New York Times in 2007. “Bedtime is part of their normalcy. It isn’t going to be interrupted because he’s at a fund-raiser.”
But as every parent knows, there are rules, and then there is reality.
SO while the Obamas place a high premium on healthy, organic foods, the girls eat cake at birthday parties and often indulged in ice cream and other snacks on the campaign trail.
They limit television, but do not restrict viewing to the Discovery Channel. (The girls have been big fans of “American Idol,” “Hannah Montana” and the Cheetah Girls.)
They take turns saying grace at dinner, but have not gone to church every Sunday in recent years. There is no spanking, but lots of discussion about actions and consequences.
Mr. Obama said he tried to give Malia a regular allowance — $1 a week — but that fell by the wayside during the hectic presidential campaign. Still, he insists that the first lady, known among her friends as the taskmaster, is not the sole disciplinarian. “I’m not a softie,” Mr. Obama said during the ABC interview, in which he said that his wife could certainly “holler at them a little bit.”
Susan Davis, one of Mrs. Obama’s friends, said the Obamas have tried hard to keep their daughters from becoming spoiled or self-important. “They don’t act entitled,” she said. “They just seem like kids.”
What the Obamas want most, friends and relatives say, is for their little girls to continue to feel like little girls. So Mrs. Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, has moved in, and the girls will keep up with their regular activities, said Susan Sher, an adviser to the president and one of Mrs. Obama’s close friends.
Mrs. Obama, Ms. Sher said, is “someone who sees the humor and likes to joke. Fun is very important.”
The Obamas are guided by their own experiences. Mr. Obama, who grew up without his father, has described his determination to be an active force in his children’s lives. Mrs. Obama flourished in a stable two-parent household that valued structure and routine.
Since both came from families that struggled financially at times, they emphasize that good things don’t always come easily. And over the years, Mrs. Obama has stressed the importance of manners and compassion.
Still, history suggests that raising happy, well-adjusted and well-behaved children in the White House is no easy task.
President Carter, a strong advocate of public education, enrolled his daughter, Amy, 9, in public school, but she was initially very lonely, according to journalists who covered her. President Theodore Roosevelt coped with the antics of his teenage daughter Alice, who was derided as “a scarlet woman” for smoking in public and partying late at night. President Grover Cleveland’s wife, Frances, was pilloried for closing the south grounds of the White House so her baby could enjoy sunny days without being kissed by tourists.
Shielding children from the public is harder today with 24-hour news sites, celebrity bloggers, gossip magazines and newspapers all vying for tidbits. The cameras are kind now, but they can be less so as children enter the teenage years.
“It’s not going to be normal — it can’t be normal,” Doug Wead, a former Bush family adviser, said of the Obama girls’ childhood.
“All of their best efforts are not going to change the fact that being a child of a president presents unique challenges,” said Mr. Wead, the author of “All the Presidents’ Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of America’s First Families.”
Mr. Wead said that children of presidents often struggle to determine which friends are true friends and to establish an identity separate from that of their parents, an issue that often lingers long after the family leaves 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Obamas, who want to create a more open, accessible White House, have wrestled with how much they should open up about their family. They allowed the girls to be interviewed on “Access Hollywood” in July and later said they regretted it.
They discussed parenting on television, and Mrs. Obama and her girls posed for a photo that landed on the cover of US Weekly this month. But the first lady also pressured the company Ty Inc. into pulling its Sasha and Malia dolls from the market, and her aides discourage reporters from writing in detail about the girls. Mr. and Mrs. Obama declined to comment for this article.
The balancing act is not uncommon to presidential families, who are famously reluctant to talk about their child-rearing in the White House. (The Clintons and the Carters — the most recent families with young children — also declined requests for interviews.) But some former first children emphasize that life in the White House can be extraordinary.
President George W. Bush’s daughters, Barbara and Jenna, described sliding down banisters when their grandfather was president and dining with royalty when their father led the country. “It is a magical place at any age,” they wrote in an open letter to the Obama girls. Indeed, Mrs. Obama is looking forward to traveling with her daughters and showing them the world, her aides say.
And after a grueling presidential campaign, Mr. Obama says fatherhood has rarely felt sweeter.
“It turns out I’ve got this nice home office,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on NBC this month. “And at the end of the day, yeah, I can come home, even if I’ve got more work to do, I can have dinner with them,” the president said. “I can help them with their homework. I can tuck them in. If I’ve got to go back to the office, I can.”
Source: NY Times