Michelle Obama ‘Glad’ She & Barack Didn’t Have Another Kid After Malia Dropped Their Last Name to ‘Push Away’ From Her
There’s nothing harder than your kids growing up. And yet, as parents, that’s not just an inevitability; that’s something you hope you can all handle with grace and love. Michelle and Barack Obama’s kids, Malia and Sasha, grew up in the spotlight in many ways. And that means that, now that they’re growing up, they’re finding ways to express themselves and make their own mark in the world separate from the legacies of their very famous parents.
All of that is normal stuff, and it doesn’t even tie into the reason the former First Lady said she was glad she didn’t have another kid. Instead, she had another—funnier—reason for it. Talking about the subject on the “IMO” podcast alongside radio host Angie Martinez and her brother, Craig Robinson, she said. “I’m so glad I didn’t have a boy,”as the discussion focused on how hard it was to raise boys these days.
Which brought up the question of exactly why she didn’t have a third kid, or tried for a boy. “Because he would’ve been a Barack Obama!” And she means literally, as in her husband would have wanted to name a hypothetical boy Barack Obama III.
The discussion comes at a time when divorce rumors have been swirling for Michelle and Barack Obama, particularly after she skipped Donald Trump’s inauguration. She addressed this a few months ago, also during the podcast, saying, “My decision to skip the inauguration, what people don’t realize, or my decision to make choices at the beginning of this year that suited me were met with such ridicule and criticism,” she said. “People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, that they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart, you know.”
“I’m here really trying to own my life and intentionally practice making the choice that was right for me,” she explained. “And it took everything in my power to not do the thing that was right, or that was perceived as right, but do the thing that was right for me. That was a hard thing for me to do.”
All of this comes after Michelle Obama opened up on another podcast, “Sibling Revelry” with Kate and Oliver Hudson, that her daughter Malia had changed her name professionally because she’s “trying to make her way” as a director without being defined by her parents.
“Our daughters [Malia and Sasha] are 25 and 23. They are young adult women, but they definitely went through a period in their teen years where it was the push away … [where] you’re trying to distinguish yourself,” she said. “I mean, it is very important for my kids to feel like they’ve earned what they are getting in the world, and they don’t want people to assume that they don’t work hard, that they’re just naturally, just handed things,” the former First Lady added. “They’re very sensitive to that — they want to be their own people.”
All very normal stuff for kids—and for parents.
