Presidents from broken families have dominated the recent era

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Since 1980 we have had no presidents raised in Rockwellian intact traditional families who were not named Bush. (I don't know the particulars of GHW Bush's early years, but am guessing they were the picture of brittle WASP propriety, albeit with a nazi-sympathizer head-of-household.)

Ronald Reagan's father was a shameful drunk.

Bill Clinton's father was a shameful drunk... or his step-father? His biological father died early. Maybe both were mean drunks.

Barack Obama was abandoned by his father from the get-go, indifferent step-father, partially raised by grand-parents.

Meanwhile, the Chimperor had a phenomenally successful living father who was respected by most and W's Oedipal bullshit killed about a million people.

I was thinking of this in terms of personal accomplishment and political skill. Some children from fractious homes have a passionate desire for compromise and reconciliation.

And also, there is a long-standing but counter-intuitive phenomenon that many great men are boys whose fathers die or disappear early, leaving the male youngster to remake himself as something superior to the absent (and largely symbolic) father. (Some even write books about it!) It is not that paternal absence is good on average--most fatherless boys have worse than average life outcomes--but that a disproportionate number of phenomenally accomplished men lost their fathers early.


Discuss.

[kestrel91316]

1. I think Clinton's biological father was a good hardworking person, IIRC.

His stepfather was abusive.

[rurallib]

2. Bush's dad was an asshole

both of them.

[Jennicut]

3. Well my husband had 3 stepfathers so far. Tons of parents divorce today.

Kind of normal.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

7. And until fairly recently, with high mortality rates, tons of parents remarried after being widowed.

[Jennicut]

9. True. But my mother in law was never widowed.

[Retrograde]

4. FWIW, Washington and Jefferson also lost fathers at an early age

Lincoln was not on good terms with his father. Maybe there is something to your absent father/successful son theory, or maybe these were exceptional people to begin with who used that extra spur to get to the top.

[Berry Cool]

5. Even Gerald Ford did not have a serious relationship with his birth father.

His mom split with his dad 16 days after his birth (seems the guy was a violent bastard who actually threatened to kill her, him and the nursemaid with a butcher knife). Thus did he go from being Leslie King to being renamed after his mom's new hubby.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

6. Other than Bush, what presidents do you think had Rockwellian lives?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

8. Rockwellian is loaded (my bad) but in terms of what I mean...

Rockwellian is loaded (my bad) I didn't want to give offense by describing the nuclear family as "normal" and was fishing for a light way to describe the socially presumed norm of a father, a mother and a minimum of violence and substance abuse.

In the specific, fairly minimal sense I meant of intact families with paternal involvement throughout childhood, probably most presidents.

But I don't know that one way or another.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

11. No worries, I understood what you meant.

It's just that many presidents from the 18th century lacked a "normal" or "idealized" family.

[jberryhill]

10. Indepedent Development Of A Sense Of Self

Overall, broken families can (*can*) produce people with problems (as of course can so-called "intact" families). The flip side is that you do have others who develop a quite balanced sense of self and internal evaluation which is not so much "approval seeking" as objectively weighing emotional and other feedback from people around them.

If anything, Obama strikes me as having a tendency toward "control freak"ishness without veering very far into OCD. Overall, though, he strikes me as intensely sane - the sanest politician I can recall.

I've seen him express firmness of conviction - "Enough!" - but has anyone seen an expression of anger. On that end, and on the "silly giddy" end, it almost seems as if he is too much in control of himself. For example, when he delivers a comedic line, he has a good sense of timing for the audience laughter, which he then punctuates with a "heh" chuckle, suggesting he's having a little bit more fun internally than he lets on. But, it's a serious job.