Michelle Obama is an Ivy League-educated attorney, a tireless advocate for women and family issues and the country’s first Black First Lady. But as she recently told Melinda French Gates, she sees one of her most important jobs is that of mom.
The former First Lady appeared on the July 25 episode of Gates’ “The Moments That Make Us” podcast to talk about her journey raising her daughters Malia and Sasha to become “valued and valuable humans in the world.”
The girls moved into the White House in 2009 – when Malia was 10 and Sasha was 7 – and the girls spent most of their childhood in the public eye. Ms. Obama has made it her mission to nurture her daughters’ independence and prepare them for life on their own when they left the nest.
Obama said much of who she is as a mom was influenced by her mother, Marian Robinson, who passed away on May 31 at age 86.
“She was wise in her parenting,” Obama told Gates. “And it started with her intentionally seeing us not as babies that belonged to her but as humans that she was raising up to be independent beings in the world.”
Part of her parenting process, Obama said, involved allowing her girls to make mistakes, setting boundaries and sometimes doing and saying things they didn’t like – including one line many Black kids have heard from their parents time and again.
“As my girls joke, I always said — my favorite line was, ‘I’m not one of your little friends,” she said. “I think it makes parenting very easy. I don’t care if you like me. I just want you to respect yourself and know what works.”
“I was raising them thinking, ‘You’re not going to live here and with me, forever. So I’ve got to hand you your life soon and let you manage it,’” she added.
Obama’s hard work has paid off, as her daughters are living their best lives as adults in Los Angeles.
Sasha, now 23, graduated from the University of Southern California in 2023. Malia, now 26, graduated from Harvard University in 2021 and is making a name for herself in the film and television industry, debuting a short film at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024.