The worst Thing about being a Child in the First family

From an external perspective, the White House sounds like a child’s paradise. According to Business Insider , the presidential residence has its own game room, chocolate shop, bowling alley, and movie theater, a far cry from the lonely toy box and lonely video game console that we fight against with our brothers in our respective childhood houses. But for many children of first families, life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was not an endless ticket to an amusement park.

In fact, Teddy Roosevelt famously said (via Independent ), “One of the worst things in the world is being the son of a president. It is a terrible life that they lead ». Okay, that was long before George HW Bush’s infamous broccoli ban, which probably made him a hero to kids everywhere, but Roosevelt’s sentiment is not difficult to interpret: you can’t escape the center of attention as the son of a president, and that public scrutiny is harsh . That is why there is an “unwritten rule in Washington” (on CNN ) about respecting the “privacy of presidential children,” but that clearly does not always happen.

And of course some of these lucky sons and daughters simply did not feel their relationship with the leader of the free world. From the general awkwardness of adolescence to total rebellion, these scions of power hit life in the Executive Residence hard. With that framework in mind, let’s examine the worst things about being a child in the first family.

John Adams II, son of the sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, was not exactly a “boy” when he had his worst experience in the White House. In fact, he was married (to his first cousin Mary Catherine), serving as “his father’s secretary” and living in the presidential residence with a son of his own when he was deprived of the life of “first child,” according to US Royalty. : all the children of the presidents .

The incident occurred during the White House New Years Eve party in 1828 when a guest, Russell Jarvis, was allegedly “insulted” by Quincy Adams “in the presence of John II”. As was the norm at the time, Russell wanted to challenge Quincy Adams to a duel, but since he was the President, that was not going to happen. Instead, he challenged John II in a letter, which the President’s son ignored. Jarvis later confronted the secretary, apparently reluctant to the conflict, in person for “[yanking] John’s nose and [slapping] his face, all standard and approved provocation to a duel.”

At this point Quincy Adams stepped in, but it was too late. The press learned of the incident and “had a moment” with him, hinting at the cowardice of John II, causing him intense humiliation. His mother claimed that the whole affair “ruined her son’s career,” since he started drinking much soon after. Sadly, John II died six years later, after his failed attempt to manage the family’s “mill.” According to the John Adams Historical Society, his death was attributed to alcoholism.

Margaret Truman was a 21-year-old college student when her father, Harry S. Truman, became the 33rd President of the United States on April 12, 1945. You might think that her age would have given her a little more autonomy than others, the younger children of the early families, but according to “the boss’s boss,” as her father lovingly nicknamed her, that was not particularly the case.

According to Inside Edition , Margaret once referred to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as a “Great White Jail,” referring to the ever-curious eyes of the Secret Service, even at the end of a romantic date. “There wasn’t much to do ‘except shake hands, and that’s no way to compromise,'” he allegedly lamented.

And it wasn’t just romance that was cut short for Margaret. She “made no new friends” while living in the nation’s capital, mainly for fear that friendships might not be genuine, according to The Washington Post , who also reported that her mother, Bess, shared the same reservations. If Margaret doesn’t seem to have had a particularly good time being a child in the first family, it’s because she basically didn’t, or as she put it so succinctly: ‘I wouldn’t call it fun. The only thing that was ever lost about the White House having a car and a driver. ”

Gerald Ford rose to the Oval Office after Richard Nixon’s resignation. And while that was a shock to many, it was a culture shock to President Ford’s youngest of four children, Susan Ford Bales. «I felt very besieged by the press. They knew where he was all the time, “he said. The Baltimore Sun. “They talked to my friends, people who weren’t even my friends. They wrote about romances that I wasn’t having… I have scrapbooks full of stories, stories that said I was engaged to [rock star] Rod Stewart I have it all. ‘

While that makes it seem like Bales took the intrusion on her privacy calmly, she revealed to the media that “some of the published stories about her” left her “devastated.” One that was particularly troubling was the claim that nepotism was the only reason she had finished school. “I took it very seriously,” said Bales, adding: “It makes you a very tough person with very thick skin. And it doesn’t make you trust too much anyone, except your family.

In the book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House (via Erenow ), Susan reveals that her rebellious adolescence made her the first Ford girl to receive protection from the Secret Service. However, there was a glimmer of hope that Susan was on guard 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; she eventually married a former Secret Service agent who was assigned to her father’s details.

There is probably no more famous first daughter in United States history than Chelsea Clinton. His father, Bill Clinton, was already the governor of Arkansas when he was born, and he moved to the White House when he was just 12 years old, and he took care of things that no child should have to experience. If getting media attention to her parents’ infamous marriage problems wasn’t enough, right-wing media figures like Rush Limbaugh constantly teased her looks and late-night talk shows and Saturday Night Live made her the target. of the Chicago Tribune jokes)

But she rose above and took the high path by choosing not to participate in the same way. “For me, perhaps because I’ve had as much vitriol as I can literally remember people saying horrible things to me even as a child, I’ve never found it personally productive to participate in that way,” she said The Guardian in 2018. “To retaliate with rude language or insult someone personally, I just don’t think it’s built that way.”

In an interview with The Big Problem Chelsea said that “something clearly had not gone right” in her detractors’ lives to intimidate a child, but taught her a valuable lesson: “That helped me understand from the beginning of my life that when we’re being verbally abused by other people, it’s not about who we are, it’s about the bullies. ”

Malia and Sasha Obama were 10 and 7 years old, respectively, when their father, Barack Obama, became the 45th President of the United States. According to The Baltimore Sun , Sasha was “the youngest White House resident since John F. Kennedy Jr.” in 1961. Due to their age, the girls kept a fairly low profile during their time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but sleepovers with her friends were a problem.

“Imagine Malia and Sasha coming to your house to sleep,” said their mother, Michelle Obama. CBS News . “This is the call: it’s like, ‘Hello. OK, we will need your Social Security number, we will need your date of birth. There will be men who will sweep your house, if you have weapons and drugs, just tell them yes because they will find them anyway. Don’t lie, they won’t take them, they just need to know where they are «.

Once Malia enrolled in college, the tabloids followed her in every move. Whether it was kissing her boyfriend in a back door and smoking cigarettes, Malia couldn’t be a normal person in peace. But in a plot twist that no one saw coming, the first first daughter probably wasn’t supported by another first daughter, Ivanka Trump. “Malia Obama should be allowed the same privacy as her school-age peers,” he said. She tweeted and added: “She is a young adult and a private citizen, and must be off limits.”