Former first lady Michelle Obama spoke about parenting this week on her IMO podcast, saying she’s glad in retrospect she never had to deal with the pressure of raising a son with Barack Obama.
The former first lady and her brother, Craig Robinson, spoke at length about modern parenting with their guest, Hot 97 radio personality Angie Martinez, on Wednesday. Obama warned that as much as parents love their children, they need to raise them to deal with the world as it is, with all of the hazards that entails, rather than the way they wish the world to be.
“Please, mothers, please make these men ready. Get them ready for hurt and disappointment and make them resilient,” she said. “And you can’t do that if you’re monitoring his friends and trying to interfere and make life easy for him at a young age. Because he won’t be ready for what is inevitably out there. I don’t care what race he is.”
She continued by adding her own spin to some old wisdom, “People say mothers raise their girls and love their sons, and I’d say ‘Love your son, but raise him too.’ Raise him to be as strong as you know he’s going to have to be, teach him about how to deal with a traffic stop, but also teach him how to communicate in a marriage and be a listening father.”
“You should have threw a boy in the mix,” Martinez suggested in response to so much advice about raising boys.
“I’m so glad I didn’t have a boy,” Mrs. Obama said, “because he would have been a Barack Obama.”
“Oh my, Baby Barack. It would have been amazing,” Martinez joked.
“Ooh. No. I would have felt for him,” Michelle replied.
Robinson replied, “She just borrowed our boys.”
Watch:
Michelle Obama says she’s glad she didn’t have a son:
“He would have been a Barack Obama.” pic.twitter.com/HuziGTF90n
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) June 20, 2025
