Michelle Obama: Our daughters are pushing away from us
Michelle Obama has said her daughters are trying to 'push away' from her and her husband to forge their own paths separate from their famous parents.
The former first lady said that her daughters Malia and Sasha tried to distance themselves from her and her husband, the former US president Barack Obama, particularly during their teenage years.
'Our daughters are 26 and 23, they are young adult women. But they definitely went through a period in their teen years… it was the 'push away,'' Mrs Obama said during an episode of Kate Hudson's Sibling Revelry podcast.
Mrs Obama said her two children are continuing to attempt to chart their own course in order to differentiate themselves from their parents.
'They're still doing that, and you guys know this of children with parents who are known,' she said.
Addressing her elder daughter's decision to drop her surname in her professional life, Mrs Obama said: '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.
'They're very sensitive to that - they want to be their own people,' she added.
For Malia's debut film, the Heart, which premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival, the 26-year-old writer and director went by her first and middle names, Malia Ann, in the director's credits.
'Malia, who started in film, I mean, her first project – she took off her last name, and we were like, they're still going to know it's you, Malia,' Mrs Obama said of the decision. 'But we respected the fact that she's trying to make her way.'
She added that as their children have grown up, they have come to terms with the decisions she and her husband made as parents in the public eye.
'As they're older, I think they are embracing our parenting principles… They have a clearer understanding of why we did a lot of what we did,' she said.
'They understand us as full human beings now, in the same way that I think I discovered that about my parents when I went away to college.'
Her comments echoed the former president, who recently joked on an episode of The Pivot podcast that their children were 'stubborn' and would 'go out of their way to not try to leverage' their famous family name.
'On the credits, it said Malia Ann. I was like, 'You do know they'll know who you are?'' Mr Obama said.
'And she's all like, 'You know what? I want them to watch it that first time and not in any way have that association.''
Mrs Obama has in recent months begun to speak more openly about the challenges of her time in the White House.
She announced on Thursday that she will be releasing a new book, The Look, in November focusing on her most famous outfits and her efforts to 'reclaim' her story.
'During our family's time in the White House, the way I looked was constantly being dissected — what I wore, how my hair was styled,' she captioned the post on Instagram. 'For a while now, I've been wanting to reclaim more of that story, to share it in my own way.'
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