President Barack Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, had an unconventional parenting style but the commander-in-chief believes that this worked well for him. He recently talked about her as he prepares to leave the White House in the next month. The president said he learned values from his mother that helped him become the leader of America.
President Barack Obama didn't grow up in a traditional environment. His mother, an academic who comes from a Caucasian family in Kansas, gave birth to him at 18-years-old. She divorced his father, Barack Sr. who is from Kenya, when the president was barely out of his toddler years.
His mother moved to Indonesia to complete her studies and while she was away, President Barack Obama was cared for by grandparents, Ann's parents. When she returned to the U.S. and had already remarried, the family moved between Indonesia and Hawaii.
A young Barack Obama as a pirate with his mother Ann Dunham. https://t.co/xzaPvTywdl pic.twitter.com/9eQTpOEdz8
— Old Pics Archive (@oldpicsarchive) December 18, 2016
Because the president and his mother had a small age gap, he confessed that she felt more like a friend to him. "In some ways, by the time I was 12, 13, she's interacting with me almost like a friend as well as a parent," he told "The Axe Files" in a podcast, according to CNN. But he also confessed that this kind of parenting style doesn't always work with other families even as it did for him.
He shared that it was from his mother where he learned what unconditional love entails. "She was somebody who was hungry for adventure and skeptical of convention," the president said, according to KITV. "But she loved the heck out of her kids." President Barack Obama's mom had another child, Maya, with her second husband.
Ann Dunham was a free spirit who always followed what she wanted to do and wasn't afraid of failure. It was from her that President Barack Obama also learned how failure made him competitive; to strive to always win.
Ann Dunham died of cancer in 1995, according to Biography. She wasn't able to see her son become a political leader who would be the first African-American president.
