Introducing "Renegades: Born in the USA"

Speaker 1 Hey everyone, I'm Michelle Obama and today I wanted to share an episode of a new podcast that I just love. It's called Renegades Born in the USA.

Speaker 1 It's a personal conversation between two good friends who are willing to share their feelings, their fears, and their experiences growing up in America.

Speaker 1 It's hosted by my good friend Bruce Springsteen and someone else I know pretty well, Barack Obama. I'm going to play an episode of Renegades that I especially enjoyed.
This one's about fatherhood.

Speaker 2 For all of our outward success, Bruce and I both agree that the most important anchor over the years has been our families.

Speaker 2 We were lucky enough to find remarkable, strong, independent women to push us and challenge us and ground us and call us out on our BS.

Speaker 2 Women who helped us become better versions of ourselves and forced us to continually re-examine our priorities.

Speaker 2 Michelle and Patty also gave us the single greatest gift of our lives, the chance to be fathers. to experience the joys and trials and profound humility of being husbands and dads.

Speaker 2 We spent some time trading notes about what wives and kids continue to teach us, what values we want to pass on, what examples we want to set, and what kind of country we want to leave behind for them to inherit.

Speaker 2 We're now dads.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 how did that change you? How

Speaker 2 much on-the-job training did you still have to do? Was there still a lot of

Speaker 2 stuff you had to work out before you kind of got to the point where you said, all right, this is the kind of dad I want to be? The problem that I had was I didn't trust myself for a long, long,

Speaker 2 long time

Speaker 2 with

Speaker 2 someone else's feelings.

Speaker 2 All you have is faith to go on. If you take a baby step, you'll be able to take another one.
Where did that faith come from? It comes out of the love in your life.

Speaker 2 In my case, Patty was an enormous source of love in my life and a deep well of faith for me. Gave me the faith in myself.
to risk parts of myself that I had never risked before and say, hey,

Speaker 2 I think I'm there at a place where

Speaker 2 I can hold this down

Speaker 2 and let the chips fall where they may. If it all crumbles and comes apart and winds up in ruin,

Speaker 2 then that's what happened, you know.

Speaker 2 But if it doesn't,

Speaker 2 what if it doesn't?

Speaker 2 Then what am I going to do?

Speaker 2 What if suddenly I find myself with a family and with a long-standing love?

Speaker 2 Who am I then?

Speaker 2 All of these things came into question way before being a dad. And,

Speaker 2 you know, Patty and I, we were just together and we were just

Speaker 2 loving each other. That was...

Speaker 2 That was our business of the day, to build something.

Speaker 2 I'm

Speaker 2 35, 36 years old.

Speaker 2 That's getting up there, you know? And deep inside,

Speaker 2 I want to have a family. And I felt like I've got to be honest with her.
I said, Patty,

Speaker 2 I don't know if I can make this.

Speaker 2 And she just said, well, we'll see.

Speaker 2 You know, she says, it's okay if we take it a day at a time.

Speaker 2 And so we did.

Speaker 2 I came home one night. I think I was away for a few days.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I walked in the room. She says, oh, by the way, I'm pregnant.

Speaker 2 That's what it sounded like.

Speaker 2 Crickets. Crickets.

Speaker 2 And we're on the bed.

Speaker 2 She tells me.

Speaker 2 I look away and she doesn't know exactly how I'm going to respond. But there's a mirror on the inside of the door.
And

Speaker 2 she says, hey, I just saw you smile.

Speaker 2 That was it.

Speaker 2 Many smiles later,

Speaker 2 here we sit, you know, my boy about to be 30 years old. It moves, man.
yeah

Speaker 2 yeah well your oldest how old is is malia's malia's 22 22 sash is 19. so so i meet michelle

Speaker 2 uh while i am

Speaker 2 working at a law firm for the summer she's already a lawyer she's younger but had gone straight through school. I had taken my diversion into community organizing after college.

Speaker 2 So I'm an an older law student. I'm 28.
She's 25. And she comes from a completely orderly family.
And they had a big extended family beyond that.

Speaker 2 Michelle and I always talk about how part of the attraction that we had for each other, in addition to her being very attractive

Speaker 2 and funny. and smart as a whip, was that in me, she saw some things that had been missing in her childhood, which was adventure, the open road, a bunch of risk-taking,

Speaker 2 traveling the world. And so that appealed to her.

Speaker 2 I looked at her and her family and I thought, oh, you know, well, they seem to know how to set this up.

Speaker 2 I had a vision of

Speaker 2 wanting to make sure that my kids

Speaker 2 were in a place of love

Speaker 2 and I liked the idea of

Speaker 2 not necessarily a big family,

Speaker 2 but an extended family. Like there was a community of people who were all part of their lives, right? And Michelle's family was very much like that.
And Michelle, you know, she wasn't shy.

Speaker 2 You know, pretty early on, she just says, look, I really value my career, but the thing I really

Speaker 2 want to be is a mom.

Speaker 2 And I really care deeply about family.

Speaker 2 That very first summer that we we were together, I thought to myself, this is somebody I could see

Speaker 2 spending my life with. It didn't mean that it was going to be

Speaker 2 that I'd have the wherewithal to go ahead and commit. And so when I come back,

Speaker 2 I'm graduating from law school. I live in her apartment, which is upstairs from her parents' apartment.
Her father had died in the interim.

Speaker 2 He had some health issues. and I had flown back and been with her during that time.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I think from her perspective, she maybe saw that I'm not a guy who was

Speaker 2 going to be afraid to be there for her when she needed it.

Speaker 2 So by the time we get there, look, once you come back to a city and you've moved in in her place, now the clock has to be ticking because it's like, well,

Speaker 2 what are you doing here? And I did not have a big panic about it. There was a part of me, and this goes to our earlier conversation about just being a man in a culture that

Speaker 2 says in comedies and television and popular culture, it's always like, man, you're going to get

Speaker 2 their hooks in you. And you got to try to wriggle free.
And are you ready to... I'm surprised you didn't have a bigger issue with that given your history.
Yeah. Your familial history.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I really am. I was under no illusions that the family life I would have would be one in which

Speaker 2 I could sit back

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 just be the Lord of the manor

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 have her

Speaker 2 doting on me and

Speaker 2 fixing my teeth. That wasn't going to happen with Patty.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 That just was not going to be an option.

Speaker 2 I found it's Patty. She was trying to define for me a broader sense of maleness and of masculinity, a freer sense of it.

Speaker 2 And that scared me.

Speaker 2 That I've met someone

Speaker 2 who can change me

Speaker 2 and who can assist me in changing myself. That's a great influence to allow into your life.
But you realize if you don't do that, you are not going to have a full life. You know,

Speaker 2 just to catch 22. Well, maybe because in my family, it was my mother and my grandmother who were the adult figures that I both relied on most and

Speaker 2 respected most.

Speaker 2 That it was natural for me to see women as

Speaker 2 my equals,

Speaker 2 as

Speaker 2 my friends, as

Speaker 2 partners in

Speaker 2 work

Speaker 2 or

Speaker 2 play.

Speaker 2 And it also meant that the kind of relationship where a woman's just batting her eyes at me and telling me how wonderful I am, I'd get bored, right?

Speaker 2 Or I just couldn't take that seriously because, well,

Speaker 2 that certainly wasn't who my grandmother was. That wasn't who my mother was.

Speaker 2 I expected to be challenged. I expected to be

Speaker 2 questioned.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the women I found most interesting,

Speaker 2 most attractive were women who interested me because of how they thought. I'm not saying I wasn't paying attention to how they looked, but

Speaker 2 their ability to make me laugh, their ability to make me see something I hadn't seen before,

Speaker 2 their ability to force me into asking questions about who I was and what I wanted and what I expected. All that was

Speaker 2 something I naturally gravitated towards. And I, I don't know, I liked the idea of having something kind of hard.
Hey, very similar to

Speaker 2 my ready-headed gal.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. Patty went with a lot of guys and she left a lot of broken hearts.
A lot of broken hearts out there.

Speaker 2 In her trail.

Speaker 2 And I was around. You know, I said, damn, she's living like I live in the way she was approaching her relationships.
And she didn't like to get tied down. She didn't want, she had the leash, you know,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I found that attractive about her. And I found it like,

Speaker 2 you know what?

Speaker 2 I need somebody with that kind of power. This is somebody who is my equal and that I am always going to think highly of.
And

Speaker 2 even when I'm mad.

Speaker 2 Even when we're in an argument, I'm going to say, yeah, but she's something. You know, she's she's,

Speaker 2 period, full stop, right?

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 to me, at least, if you didn't have that,

Speaker 2 then you wouldn't weather the storms.

Speaker 2 If you're going to have a family, if you aren't choosing a partner who you have confidence is going to pass on strength and values and common sense and smart to your kids.

Speaker 2 And when I looked at Michelle, I could say she was suey generis. I didn't know anybody like her.
I thought even if the marriage didn't work out, I would always admire and respect her. And so

Speaker 2 having been with her,

Speaker 2 I would never regret that. So we, you know, I asked her to marry me at

Speaker 2 that summer when I had moved in. And

Speaker 2 then

Speaker 2 so I was 31. And so then.

Speaker 2 We had this nice stretch of about three years

Speaker 2 where where she was doing her thing in her career and I was doing mine. And then we started trying to have kids.
It took a while. Michelle had a couple miscarriages

Speaker 2 and we had to kind of work at it.

Speaker 2 And when Malia was finally born, we were more than ready to be parents, right? Because there had been this six-year stretch in which

Speaker 2 probably for about half of that we had been trying.

Speaker 2 So there was no surprise to it. There was no,

Speaker 2 are you sure? But I had no doubt the minute I saw that little creature with those big eyes looking up at me, I said, my goodness, I will do anything for you. I know.

Speaker 2 And when the second one came, when Sasha showed up, I felt the exact same way, you know, and the love of being a father.

Speaker 2 was not something I had to work on. I mean, it was just, it was physical, it was emotional, spiritual.

Speaker 2 The attachment to my children, I felt entirely and completely. And I, and I thought to myself, okay, if the baseline is unconditional love, I've got that.
It's something I have.

Speaker 2 And we had an incident where Patty was a few months pregnant. She had some bleeding.

Speaker 2 So we go to the doctor's, go in the office. I'm standing there.
And suddenly I realize

Speaker 2 there isn't anything I wouldn't do in the world right now.

Speaker 2 If somebody said there's a lion in the hall, can you please go and get him out of the building for now? There's a bear out there. There was nothing I wouldn't have done

Speaker 2 to

Speaker 2 have Patty and the baby be all right.

Speaker 2 It was visceral. It was visceral, and it was my first acquaintanceship with unconditional love.

Speaker 2 There was a fear, I felt a fearless love for the first time in my life.

Speaker 2 First time in my life.

Speaker 2 I never knew that I'd be capable of even feeling that.

Speaker 2 You know, all I want to do right now is be the man that my wife, Evan, was, was born first, and my son hates. You just don't want to disappoint him.
You don't want to disappoint him.

Speaker 2 Man, the idea of disappointing

Speaker 2 your family and not being there and doing right, you just, you couldn't, I could not abide. I thought, oh, this would,

Speaker 2 this would be.

Speaker 2 And I think that was the question. Am I capable of not disappointing?

Speaker 2 I wasn't sure. You're never completely sure, I suppose, but after the children were born, and you start to find the resources that you have inside you that you didn't know were there, that

Speaker 2 is a gift you get from your children and from your wife. Your acknowledgement of a new self and the realization of your manhood.

Speaker 2 It was

Speaker 2 huge.

Speaker 2 I woke up, I felt as someone, not necessarily someone different,

Speaker 2 but someone so much further down the road than I thought maybe I'd ever get.

Speaker 2 This is one place where I do think the idea of what it means to be a man changed in a real way. By the time I had Malia,

Speaker 2 it wasn't just that I was completely absorbed and fascinated and in love with this bundle of joy and

Speaker 2 this woman who had gone through everything to give me this joy. There was, I think, a sense that dads should want to spend time with their kids and should want to ideally,

Speaker 2 you know, burp them and change diapers. Yeah.
And I took the night shift

Speaker 2 because I was a night owl. So was I.

Speaker 2 And there'd be some breast milk in the freezer. And I had to set instructions.
And midnight and two o'clock in the morning, I'd be patting them on the back and feeding them. And

Speaker 2 putting them on my laps. And they're staring up at you.
And I'm reading to them and talking to them.

Speaker 2 I used to love playing music for them. Yeah.
And

Speaker 2 I think the joys of that were something that, you know, in the same way that for a long time, men couldn't even see the delivery, right? I mean, that was like taboo. Yeah, they lay in.

Speaker 2 I completely loved that. And the timing was good because Malia was born.
She's a 4th of July baby. Wow.
The state legislature was out. I was already in the state legislature at that time.

Speaker 2 The law school was out. I was teaching law at the time.
I could put my law practice on hold. So I just had all this time to just wallow in it.

Speaker 2 And then Sasha was born. She was a summer baby.
Same kind of thing.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 here's the one thing that I had to wrestle with. And Michelle challenged me with.
And the challenge of fatherhood for me was

Speaker 2 the nature of my work was exhausting, all-absorbing, and often took me out of town. The

Speaker 2 emotional investment in fatherhood was never hard for me.

Speaker 2 There was nothing I enjoyed more than just hanging out with my kids, listening to them as they got older and started having their own little insights and the discovery

Speaker 2 of the world,

Speaker 2 the reacquaintance with wonder that they provide,

Speaker 2 looking at a leaf or

Speaker 2 a snail or

Speaker 2 asking questions about

Speaker 2 why this and why that.

Speaker 2 All that stuff.

Speaker 2 Love children's books, love children's movies. I was all in.
The only thing I didn't love, you know, children's pizza, I always thought was a little bit,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 they like that little, those little flat cheese pizzas that don't have anything on them. But, but, but what I was going to say, though, is that eventually it wasn't summer.

Speaker 2 And eventually I've got to go down to Springfield, Illinois, a three-hour drive for the state legislature. And when I get back, I've got town hall meetings that I've got to do.

Speaker 2 And then eventually I'm running for office. And then,

Speaker 2 you know, I'm gone for five days at a time. And from Michelle's perspective, in which

Speaker 2 family was not just a matter of love,

Speaker 2 was not just a matter of

Speaker 2 being present

Speaker 2 when you are there. but was a matter of, no, physically being present

Speaker 2 because you've made choices and organized your life so that you can be with your family more. Right.
So you had your children, let me say, young in your work life. Yeah.
All right.

Speaker 2 I had my children relatively late in my work life.

Speaker 2 You were sufficiently well established that you could set your own absolutely.

Speaker 2 You'd be like, if I don't want a tour right now, I don't have time. I had already gone.
to the top of the hill and over the other side.

Speaker 2 You know, I was like, I had a certain kind of success I wasn't going to have again, didn't expect to have it again, wasn't pursuing to have it again. I was happy now.

Speaker 2 I'm just, I'm going to be a working, playing musician. And I had all that out of the way

Speaker 2 really before Patty and I even got together. You know, so

Speaker 2 that makes sense. Yeah.
So I was at a point in my life where the relationship and the family had really become a priority and I could give myself to it because of where I was.

Speaker 2 And also, you're a musician. Musicians create their own schedule if you've had a certain amount of success.

Speaker 2 You get up when you want to, you go in a studio when you want to, you put your record out when you want to, you go where you want to go, you come home when you want to come home.

Speaker 2 You can say, I'm going to go away for three days, I'm going to go away for three months. But if you know, if when I go away for three months, it's bad when I go and when I come back.

Speaker 2 When I go away for three days, it's okay when I come back. I've got to start going away for three days.

Speaker 2 That's the better choice. We figured out things like, well, whenever you're away for more than three weeks, that's bad.
Now, for a Tory musician, that's not much.

Speaker 2 But all we knew was that when we passed a certain point, it wasn't good for our relationship. We started to

Speaker 2 split into other and separate lives. Anything that's going to keep, add to my stability, I want as a part of my life.

Speaker 2 The things that are destabling my life, I don't want those as a part of my life now because they will poison me

Speaker 2 and they will poison my beautiful love here.

Speaker 2 And so we slowly figured all this out together.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 through making some mistakes and You're king on the road. Everybody just wants to say yes.
And you're not king at all. Now, how can I do this for you? What can I do to make you happier?

Speaker 2 What can I give? Oh, what, but my house, you take my girlfriend, take my girlfriend.

Speaker 2 You know, it's like, it's like everybody just, what can I possibly give to you, the man who writes the songs that the whole world sings?

Speaker 2 So it's like, so you're out there, and you're going like, oh, yeah, this isn't so bad. I mean, what is, you know,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 when you come back, you are not king.

Speaker 2 You are the chauffeur.

Speaker 2 You are the short order cook in the morning. You know,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 the thing is, you've got to be at the place in your life where, and you love it.

Speaker 2 What you're saying about

Speaker 2 your schedule, though, and where you were at your career, that is a difference because essentially, we have kids, and within the span of

Speaker 2 two or three years, I am suddenly being catapulted. I mean, look, Sasha was, when I ran for the U.S.
Senate, Sasha's only three years old.

Speaker 2 When I'm sworn in as a U.S. Senator, Sasha's four, and Malia's eight, something like that.
Three years later, I'm president of the United States.

Speaker 2 And in the interim, for a year and a half, I've been on the road. Not for three-week spans, but for

Speaker 2 big chunks of time.

Speaker 2 Look at all of you.

Speaker 2 Look at all of you.

Speaker 2 Goodness. And it was hard.

Speaker 2 Got a couple more guys down here.

Speaker 2 This is the lifeblood of this campaign. You know, volunteers like you guys coming in.
You know, the burden I put on Michelle was enormous

Speaker 2 because she was still, look, it wasn't even as if I was working for money. that would allow her to take a break.

Speaker 2 She was still working initially full-time, then part-time when I started running for president.

Speaker 2 Here's a smart, accomplished woman who has her own career that she now has to adjust to

Speaker 2 my crazy ambitions.

Speaker 2 I'm missing the girls terribly. The first six months of me running for president, I was miserable because I was missing that family bad.

Speaker 2 And we got through that only by virtue of Michelle's heroic ability to manage everything back home and

Speaker 2 the incredible gift of my daughters loving their daddy

Speaker 2 anyway.

Speaker 2 What I didn't anticipate was the fact that I get to spend much more time with my kids once I'm president

Speaker 2 because now I'm living above the store. Naturally,

Speaker 2 I have a 30-second commute, and so

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 just set up a rule. I'm having dinner with my crew at 6.30 every night,

Speaker 2 unless I'm traveling.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 my travel schedule

Speaker 2 is very different now because people come to see you.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so unless I was overseas, I'm going to be home at 6.30 for dinner.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to be sitting there and I'm going to be entirely absorbed with stories about the annoying boys and the weird teacher and the drama in the cafeteria, reading Harry Potter and tucking them in and listening to whatever music they're now listening to.

Speaker 2 And that actually

Speaker 2 was my lifeline, right?

Speaker 2 In

Speaker 2 an occupation in which I'm dealing daily with mayhem, chaos, crises, death, destruction,

Speaker 2 natural disasters, right?

Speaker 2 And so I always say that the degree to which

Speaker 2 Michelle and those girls sacrificed

Speaker 2 and lifted me up kept me going.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Prevented me from either getting cynical or despairing, reminded me why I was doing what I was doing and spurred me on because, man, this better be worth it. What I accomplished, this job, this work

Speaker 2 is worth the time that I've spent away from them. And the birthday parties or the soccer games or whatever that I've missed, you know,

Speaker 2 that better count.

Speaker 2 What do you think you learned being just a dad? Now, we talked a little bit about being a husband, but. I know it was tough being president, but let me explain to you how hard it is to make an album.

Speaker 2 Making an album is pretty hard.

Speaker 2 I'm making a dumb joke.

Speaker 2 Listen,

Speaker 2 making an album. I had you for a minute, though.

Speaker 2 I had you going for a minute. Make an album

Speaker 2 is pretty hard,

Speaker 2 but it does seem a little more fun sometimes.

Speaker 2 I think so. A little more fun.

Speaker 2 What did you learn from being a dad? From being a dad,

Speaker 2 so the hardest thing that I had to learn to do was to be still.

Speaker 2 I had some habits I wouldn't give up, old musician habits. Partly was the schedule I like to keep.
I like to stay up till three or four in the morning, get up at 12 in the afternoon.

Speaker 2 And for the first several years of when I were children,

Speaker 2 Patty was kind of

Speaker 2 just kind of letting me do it. I was picking up because the kids were still babies.
And so I was taking the night shifts.

Speaker 2 If they cried at night or if something happened at night, I was awake. And I, I would, and then so when the morning came around, late morning came around, she'd kind of pick it up.

Speaker 2 And, but, you know, as the kids grew older, there was, there was a lot more morning work than there was night work.

Speaker 2 And I was kind of enjoying that.

Speaker 2 And she just came over to Monday, says, you know, you don't have to get up,

Speaker 2 but if you don't

Speaker 2 they're gonna miss it what do you mean

Speaker 2 well

Speaker 2 kids are at their best in the morning that's when they're the most beautiful is when they have reawakened from a night of dreams

Speaker 2 they're at their most gorgeous at that moment in the morning and you're never gonna see it Okay, I don't think I wanna miss that.

Speaker 2 So I said, well, what am I gonna do? He says, you're gonna make breakfast. I said, I don't know how to do anything.

Speaker 2 I don't know how to strum that freaking box.

Speaker 2 Try to put me anyplace else, and I'm no good to anybody. She said, Well, you're going to learn.

Speaker 2 I got pretty good at it. I got pretty good at eggs.
And I got pretty good at,

Speaker 2 like I say, I became a pretty good short-order cook. If I could get a job at one point anywhere in any diner from, say, six to noon, and I'd be all right.

Speaker 2 And she was right about the children.

Speaker 2 If I saw them in the morning, it was almost like I'd seen them for the entire day. And if I missed them in the morning, you could never quite make up for it for some reason.
That was

Speaker 2 presentness.

Speaker 2 One, I was not my father. I didn't have to chase that ghost or worry about that.
anymore. That was a part of my past.

Speaker 2 Two,

Speaker 2 be present in this world wherever you are at any given moment be present in their lives i used to think like if somebody interrupted me while i was writing what the tip book holy smokes do you know the great thoughts i'm thinking right now it's probably been the greatest american song ever it could have been had you not being walked in here no i'm being that's right i'm being interrupted you know so i that's where i started

Speaker 2 And where I ended up was I realized, oh, wait, wait, wait. Songs.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 A good song is there forever.

Speaker 2 Music is there in my life forever.

Speaker 2 Children,

Speaker 2 gone.

Speaker 2 They grow up. So those were the initial things I picked up from fatherhood.
Yeah, man. What about yourself? What's the biggest lesson you learned from becoming a parent?

Speaker 2 You know, Michelle figured out much earlier than I did that kids are like plants.

Speaker 2 They need sun, soil,

Speaker 2 water, but some of them are oaks and some of them are pines and some of them are willows and some are bamboo. And those seeds of who they are and the pace

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 ways in which they're going to unfold are just uniquely theirs. I think I had a notion with Malia and Sasha, there was sort of a way of doing things.
And what

Speaker 2 Michelle figured out earlier than I did, but I also ended up learning, was

Speaker 2 each one is just magical in their own ways.

Speaker 2 A branch is going to sprout when it's going to sprout.

Speaker 2 And a flower is going to pop when it's going to pop that. And

Speaker 2 you just

Speaker 2 roll with that unfolding, that unfurling of who they are, being comfortable just discovering them as opposed to feeling as if you've got it, as if it's a project, right?

Speaker 2 Sometimes you watch, there's a term now, helicopter parents, right?

Speaker 2 But that idea of, okay, I approach this the way I would approach some PowerPoint

Speaker 2 project. And I've got to check every box.
I've got to be,

Speaker 2 this is when my kids have to be doing this. And this is when they,

Speaker 2 thinking of it more as just throw a bunch of stuff at them, be with them, play with them,

Speaker 2 teach them values.

Speaker 2 We were good about saying to the girls things like,

Speaker 2 we're not going to sweat you on your grades right but we are going to sweat you on did you put in some effort

Speaker 2 absolutely we're not going to we're not going to give you a hard time about making a mistake

Speaker 2 but we will give you a hard time if you're lying about making a mistake or

Speaker 2 if you

Speaker 2 mistreated somebody right

Speaker 2 so you know you put some guardrails around them

Speaker 2 in terms of values. But otherwise,

Speaker 2 and I think this was particularly important because they were growing up in the White House. They had more than enough expectations and eyeballs on them.
Jesus. And,

Speaker 2 you know, Secret Service following them around. Oh, my God.
At that age.

Speaker 2 I mean, I remember, look,

Speaker 2 we'd go,

Speaker 2 you know, William or Sasha, they'd have a play date. Secret Service had to go to the house of the person they were visiting and

Speaker 2 check everything out.

Speaker 2 And the poor parents, you know, we so we had to make friends with the parents and say, Listen, sorry about the intrusion. And

Speaker 2 when they went to the mall or the movies, you know, they've got somebody, oh boy, yeah, boy, they handled it with such grace. They did.

Speaker 2 And so, given all that,

Speaker 2 the last thing I wanted to do was to

Speaker 2 make them feel as if

Speaker 2 they have to

Speaker 2 be something

Speaker 2 right as opposed to just being themselves i still

Speaker 2 measure myself

Speaker 2 and i still fall back on a lot of those attitudes about what does it mean to be a man that's right and if i had a son i suspect i would have been tougher on him in some ways.

Speaker 2 And I'm wondering for you with your boys, how conscious you you had to be. You know, I had learned the great word in my house was no.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 we don't go outside of our comfort zone.

Speaker 2 We don't talk about our feelings in this way. We don't cry over these things.
And I realized at a very young age, I had taught my oldest son to say no to the things.

Speaker 2 things that he needed.

Speaker 2 And he was quite young at the time. I remember I came into into him, he might have been eight or nine.
He was still pretty young. But I remember going into his room one day and saying, Evan,

Speaker 2 I think I've taught you a very bad lesson. And I would like to apologize to you for doing that.
I think I've taught you to not need me because I've been afraid of what that meant as

Speaker 2 your father. And that's something I really,

Speaker 2 I need to apologize to you for. And I need to tell you, I need you.
I need you so badly in my life,

Speaker 2 so dearly as my son,

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 I would like to try to connect with you now in a way

Speaker 2 that I hadn't been doing, you know.

Speaker 2 And I realized that was going to take a lot of work.

Speaker 2 And so when I was working,

Speaker 2 instead of thinking, oh, I'm so busy now thinking great thoughts, I don't want to be disturbed.

Speaker 2 I stopped. Anytime he came in, or any of the children came into my room, I stopped working.

Speaker 2 The only way to teach him that no wasn't the answer was for me to start saying, Yes, yes,

Speaker 2 yes,

Speaker 2 yes, yes, over and over and over again.

Speaker 3 Renegades Born in the USA is a Spotify original presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions.

Speaker 3 From Higher Ground Audio, Dan Fearman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan, and Joe Paulson are executive producers. Carolyn Lipke and Adam Sachs are consulting producers.

Speaker 3 Janae Maribel is our editorial assistant. From Dustlight Productions, Misha Youssef and Arwen Nix are executive producers.
Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knopf, and Tamika Adams are producers.

Speaker 3 Mary Knopf is also editor.

Speaker 3 Andrew Epen is our composer and mix engineer.

Speaker 3 Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodriguez.
Special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the Dustlike Development and Operations Coordinator.

Speaker 3 Daniel Eck, Don Ostroff, and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers.

Speaker 3 Music supervision by Search Party Music. From the great state of New Jersey, special thanks to John Landau, Tom Zimney, Rob Labrette, Rob DeMartin, and Barbara Carr.

Speaker 3 We also want to thank Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Lynn, and Betsy Whitney.

Speaker 3 And a special thanks to Patty Scalfa for her encouragement and inspiration. And to Evan, Jess, and Sam Springsteen.

Speaker 3 From the District of Columbia, thanks to Christina Schockey, Mackenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Baron Helimescale, Alex Platkin, Kristen Bartolone, and Cody Keenan.

Speaker 3 And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia, and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades, born in the USA.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening, everybody. You can hear more from Barack and Bruce on Renegades Born in the USA.
All you have to do is search for Renegades Born in the USA on Spotify.