Barack Obama and Michelle Obama raised two amazing women, but the former president is not sure he would have done as good a job if he had a son.
Proving the divorce rumors wrong, Barack appeared on his wife Michelle’s IMO podcast, in an episode that will air tomorrow, which she hosts with her brother Craig Robinson. PEOPLE shared a clip of the candid conversation, and things get deep. The 63-year-old is the proud father to Sasha, 24, and Malia, 27, who have both proven to have a good head on their shoulders, but he admitted, “I think I would have had more difficulty raising a son.”
Michelle quickly backed him up with an “I agree.” Barack then reflected on his own upbringing, explaining his reasoning. He was raised by Stanley Ann Dunham, who became a single mother after his father, Barack H. Obama Sr., left them when he was 2.
Barack has explained in the past that he only saw his father once when he left Kenya to visit them in Hawaii when he was 10. That absence of a father figure, he said, might have changed his parenting style if he had a son. “I might’ve been more judgmental, harder,” he said.
“I’d like to think I would have been more self-aware enough to combat that, but I just think father-son relationships, for me, particularly if I don’t have a dad around to show it to me, might’ve been more difficult,” Barack added.
In a separate clip posted to social media, Barack explained, “Those of us with daughters, we’ve got to have good guys out there.” “Not necessarily to get married, but – what we’re learning, I think, is that when we don’t think about boys and just assume,’ ‘they’re going to be okay because they’ve ben running the world and they’ve got all the advantages relative to the girls,’ – all of which has historically true in all kinds of ways. But precisely because of that, if you’re not thinking about what’s happening to boys and how they are being raised, then that can actually hurt women,” he said.
He went on to argue that some of the “broad political trends” we are seeing around the world are because boys and men are not feeling as if they are seen and counted. That alienation can lead to resentment and to movements that pit men against women with the idea that the reason they don’t feel respected is “because women have been doing this, or this group has been doing this,’ and that’s not a healthy place to be.”
Fans seem excited to see the episode, with the top comment reading, “I miss having an intelligent President who thinks before he speaks.” “In the most kindest way possible he’s trying to say, he doesn’t want incels running rampant,” another person wrote.
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