Focus On What’s Right About Young Men with Barack Obama

This woman came up to me and she was so nice.

She was like, Can I have a picture?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then, so you know how you get the side hug, and she's like, What did he do?

And you knew she was going to say, What did he do?

And I'm not sure.

It wasn't like, What happened to him?

That is so

terrible.

How'd he mess up?

How'd he mess up?

And she, and I said, Well, what makes you think he messed up?

Why couldn't it be?

Why did you just say no one messed up?

Well, because

I wanted to keep this conversation going so that I can tell you about it.

Oh, Lord.

This episode is brought to you by Rivian and Chase Home Lending.

Hey, little girl.

Welcome to DC, my brothers.

I am so happy to be here once again.

Yeah, it's good to have you in our town.

It is.

How's it going?

You had a little flight delay.

I had a little travel issue, but I'm not going to complain because we have been doing this for a little bit.

I know it's always a little dicey when you have somebody trying to travel.

And, you know, I'm not, I'm traveling in these streets like a regular person.

So I got to be careful.

But it's not, it, so we, for those of you, it was a little bit of a weather delay.

Couldn't fly into DC.

Yeah.

Had to divert our plane to Pittsburgh.

I ended up staying in lovely Pittsburgh for about five hours.

And

I got here in one piece about midnight.

Always grateful.

And I was able to head over to my Airbnb without bothering you.

I didn't have to wake you up.

Oh, I know.

We miss having you stay with us, though.

You're such a Airbnb.

I am.

I've really, I've really changed my behavior.

How's this one?

This one's really nice.

You know, actually, this one's really nice because it's just ordinary.

It's like an ordinary spot.

Are you in a neighborhood?

I'm in a neighborhood.

Can walk around and right across from a church.

How are you close to us?

I'm about two miles from here.

So it took me like 20 minutes to get here this morning.

That's good.

It's really a neat.

It's good to have you here.

It's good to be here.

And we've got...

a very special guest today.

You know,

very, very,

very, very, very special.

Someone near and dear.

This is the episode that everyone's been waiting for.

With bated breath, because

we have

my brother-in-law, my man, my husband,

the former president of the United States.

He made time in his busy schedule

to come on IMO.

We are just so grateful.

We have the former president of the United States.

We are honored to have

Barack Obama join us.

Barack Obama, can you join us on our own?

Come on out here, brother.

Welcome to IMO.

Look at you.

How are you?

Wait, you guys like each other?

Oh, yeah, really, huh?

That's

the rumor meal.

It's my husband, y'all.

She took me back.

Now, don't start.

I can't.

It was touch and go for a while.

It's so nice to have you both in the same room.

I know, because when we aren't, folks think we're divorced

let me let me tell you first of all see i i

i'm i i'm in wichita kansas

for austin's tournament uh-huh and you know This podcast has made me quite popular.

You're bishop.

And people come up to me all the time.

This woman came up to me and she was so nice.

She was like, can I have a picture?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then, so you know how you get the side hug?

And she's like, what did he do?

And you knew she was going to say what he did.

And I was like,

it wasn't like, what happened to him?

That is so

terrible.

How'd he mess up?

How'd he mess up?

And I said, well, what makes you think he messed up?

Why couldn't it be?

Why did you just say no one messed up?

Well, because

I wanted to keep this conversation going so that I could tell you about it.

Oh, Lord.

I was like,

what?

And she's like, he did something, didn't he?

I was like,

it's, don't worry, everything's fine.

And let me tell you, she was so happy, you would have thought I gave her a Christmas gift.

These are the kinds of things that I just miss.

Right?

So I don't even know this stuff's going on.

Right.

And then somebody will mention it to me, and I'm all like, What are you talking about?

Yeah, there hasn't been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quitting.

Um, my man, um, and we've had some really hard times.

So we had had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures.

And I have become a better person because of the man I'm married to.

Okay.

Don't make me cry now.

Right at the beginning of the show.

Don't let me start tearing up now.

And welcome to IMO.

Welcome to IMO.

Get you all teared up.

See, but this is why I can't talk.

See, you can take the hard stuff, but when I start talking about the sweet stuff, you're like, stop.

No, I can't do it.

No,

I love it.

I'm enjoying it.

But thank you, honey, for being on our show.

Thanks for making the time.

We got

a great time.

Of course, I've been listening.

Yeah, what any tips?

Any, you know, any

observations?

You know,

Craig can tighten up a little bit.

You're doing great.

Thanks, honey.

And that's why we're married.

For

I got you, folks.

I thought so.

See, now that's what a brother-in-law is for, folks.

Absolutely.

Well, we've got a question today

from a listener in San Francisco named Emma.

Okay, I want to hear from Emma.

And let's hear from Emma so we can dive into this topic.

Hi, Michelle and Craig.

I have three younger brothers and I'm a new mom to a one-year-old little boy.

What can we do to change the fact that we raise our girls and we love our boys?

There is so much dialogue on raising strong, independent women, but how can we raise emotionally intelligent, competent men?

I am deeply concerned by the ideology promoted to my younger brothers online.

I want to raise a young man who sees through those ideas.

How can we energize the discussion around raising young men that want to change these oppressive and even violent dynamics?

Now, before we dig in,

you two have raised two wonderful daughters and have taught them numerous lessons.

And I just want to hear from Barack

how you approached raising your daughters, because this was obviously before you got to the White House.

So you were just like the rest of us, just a regular dad who's having kids and going to work and trying to make time.

What was your strategy?

Well, first of all,

the most important strategy, whether it was a boy or a girl, was having the right partner.

And

now, that I'm not

that I say, even behind her back.

Yeah.

Every one of my young male staff members,

when they talk to me about dating and

relationships and what to look for,

I say,

look, the starting point is

this person is going to raise your children alongside you.

And so I'll be honest with you.

michelle being malia and sasha's mom um that made all the difference and then i and and i do think

for whatever reason we had similar strategies in the sense that i think we both believe that you give unconditional love to kids but you also give them structure

that that

you're always there for them and keeping them safe, but you're also

saying as early as two or three,

no, you can't do that.

No, you can't have that.

We believed in explaining why,

but we also believed in being firm.

We had bedtimes and bath times, and

you had to eat.

your vegetables even if you didn't like them.

And

you couldn't act stupid stupid in public, yeah, and

couldn't do it,

couldn't whine

tantrums.

And

so, we had, I think, a shared vision of how to, you know, what your mom always used to talk about: you're raising adults, right?

And so you're starting off

saying to them, here are consequences for your actions.

Here's responsibilities that we think you can handle.

Make mistakes and learn from them.

So we had that.

And let me just say, too, just so that people understand the kind of father Barack was from the beginning: is that he was an engaged father from the minute they were born.

And he wasn't the kind of man that was like, I don't do this, I don't change diapers.

I'll hand them to me when they talk.

And I can, you know, and I can relate.

They make me feel comfortable.

You know, we, as when, when Malia was a baby,

we shared 50-50.

I took the night shift.

He took

the night shift.

He's the night owl.

And that helped me because I wasn't sleep deprived because I would pump while I was breastfeeding, which wasn't for a long time.

And I would go to bed at a reasonable bedtime and I could hand my baby, and I will say my, because she was my baby over over to this guy and

sticky man

and know that she would be alive in the morning.

Right.

You know,

and he relished that time, but I also had to let go, right?

I had to say, you know what?

Whatever is happening between eight at night and five in the morning.

I can't, I can't micromanage that relationship.

They're going to be okay.

She's a baby.

He was the one who got her sleep trained because I wouldn't have been able to handle letting my baby cry it out.

But over the course of a week, I think

it was three days.

It wasn't even a long time at five months.

So once he did that, so we had kids who slept through the night from the time they were five months old.

So because we shared that responsibility and Barack owned a huge part of the girls as infants, it established a relationship between him and them

that, you know,

carries through even today you know that that brings me what you said what you both have said brings me to a question that i'm gonna ask but i'm gonna contextualize it with the fact that when after you guys became famous people would ask me

about you guys meeting and and how you came about and the origin story and all of that And what I always talked about,

and it warms my heart to this day, is that

Barack's background is so different from our background.

I mean, it's so different.

And everybody knows, it's, it's, and I used to say, in, it,

in spite of the fact that we were raised so differently,

somehow you developed the exact same values that we did.

So much of Barack reminded us of our dad.

Our dad, and the, the, the way stuff he said, stuff you said, and it was his consistency, his honesty, his, you know, his humor.

His

authenticity before people were using that word, authenticity,

your calmness.

And it just,

I

brought that up because I think

people who haven't asked me that question should know.

that and

probably want to know how did how did that evolve

yeah you know it's interesting

because this relates to how i was thinking about fatherhood too right um

i as as i think most people now know you guys certainly know i i did not know my dad right uh he was in kenya by the time i had memories you know he left my mother and i when i was two um i met him once

and

so

I'm really raised by my mom and my grandparents for about four years, my stepfather when we were in Indonesia, who was a very kind man.

Maya's dead, my sister's dead, and

I have very fond memories of him.

But

one of the reasons it worked was he didn't pretend like

our relationship was more than it was.

He was like, look, I married your mom.

I love you.

I'm going to take care of you.

But I understand, you know,

we're

different.

And then my grandfather was older.

He's white,

generationally different,

a good heart, but it was troubled in a lot of ways

and had issues.

So I didn't have like the obvious role model the way you did of, all right, here's how you are a dad.

And I didn't really have a bunch of uncles around or or other immediate family father figures so i'm kind of piecing it together and which is true for so many that's the story for so many boys growing up these days i i mean in that sense i think as unusual as my background was that part of it isn't that unusual right it was kind of typical

and

I think a couple of things happened.

Now, I was loved, and that's a starting point, right?

That the people who were around me cared about me, and I never felt an absence of that.

And

the second thing I think you learn to do when you're in that situation is, all right,

I got to sort of,

I have to adopt role models.

I got to piece them together.

and get a sense of, all right, what does it mean to be a man?

Now, later on, as I got older, you'd start recognizing that some of the

ideas about manhood that were being given to us back in the 70s and the 80s, not all of them were great.

Can I ask you both to talk about what that manhood meant for you?

You know, what it meant for you when you were little boys coming up, what you thought it was, and what you then

came to

understand

it to actually be?

Well,

I don't remember maybe

when I was a really young child, other than the idea that

guys were

strong, they didn't whine,

they were tough,

they were expected to go to work, they worked, and provide

and protect.

Yes.

I mean, and I think back about dad, I think when I'm thinking about dad as a role model, I remember the fact that here you have a man who has MS

and he's getting up and he's going to work absolutely every day.

And he is not complaining.

That's another thing.

Men didn't complain.

You don't complain.

You're stoic.

I love that word, stoic.

Coach Carmody used to use that all the time, stoic.

But our dad.

never complained.

He never got up.

He had a sense of humor.

That was another thing that you learned from guys is that you needed a sense of humor.

And, but the most, one of the most important things that I remember is that you got along.

Got along.

You got along,

period.

Period.

You got along with the other guys you were with.

You got along with your teammates.

You got along with your coworkers.

Nobody wanted to be considered a jerk.

That is true.

Some of the definitions of manhood, I think, were negative, right?

You don't whine, you don't cry.

No emotion.

You're not a jerk.

I do like the thing you brought up, though, about being a protector, because for some reason, that

part of it, I think, appealed to me.

And

at its best, it then counterbalanced the idea of being strong, right?

Like you're strong

not to pick on people, right?

Not to be a bully,

not to dominate others.

Instead, it's strength in order to protect.

And for me, a lot of being a man was being self-sufficient.

The idea of

I can handle myself and make my way through the world.

And

I,

you know, I tell this story, You've heard this story.

And sometimes people kind of freak out.

Fairly early on because

I was living in Indonesia.

I'd fly from Hawaii to Indonesia on my own if I was visiting my grandparents, even at the age of eight.

And it was cool because

stewardess was there.

She'd grab you

and

put you in the seat and give you a little,

if it was Pan Am, they'd have a little

pin, flight pin, and,

you know,

give you

a soda pop.

And so I felt very grown up.

I didn't mind.

So I was used to traveling pretty far distances alone.

And coming back

from Jakarta, Indonesia, when I was at this point probably 10, maybe 11,

my mother, who was working there and was about to go into the field, dropped me off.

I had my little suitcase and she gave me a hug, love you, babe, and

then took off.

And she was about to actually leave the city.

Didn't walk him to the gate.

Just

and come to find out, she'd forgotten to give me my passport.

Oh, wow.

So, and I didn't really kind of find this out until I'm about to go through customs.

And

so I'm problem solving a little bit here.

And I'm thinking, okay,

now Jakarta is a city of like 8 million people.

It's not a small area.

No, this is like being in New York or something, being at LaGuardia.

And there's no cell phone.

And there are no cell phones back then

and whatnot.

So I'm thinking, okay, I think she had to stop by her office first before she left town.

I ask the

steward

to leave the bag with him.

I go outside.

There are these little rickshaw type things called bejocks.

And I say,

can you give me a ride to where my mom's office is?

And I don't have any money, but I know if I get there.

Hopefully I catch her.

Get there.

She's just about pulling out.

I tell her, hey, mom, you forgot the passport.

Oh, by the way, I got this driver.

We got to pay.

And get back in time and make my flight.

And when Michelle hears this story, right,

she's horrified.

And I'm sure Kelly, if she heard this story, would be horrified as well.

I have to say that

for me,

it was like, oh, I can handle this.

And I don't remember feeling scared or worried or neglected.

I just remember thinking, okay,

how do I figure this out?

And I felt good about the fact that I'd figured it out.

And I do think that that element of

being a man for me was important.

Now, keep in mind, my mother was 18 when she had me.

Right.

So

around this time, she's not much older than Malia.

And in that sense, I think I felt more protected towards her and didn't feel as if somehow

that I needed to or should depend on her in order to make sure that I'm handling my business.

And well,

there's a spectrum of parenting.

I mean, they label it now.

You know, there's the helicopter and then there's the, what is the jungle parent or the free willing?

They call it something, free-range parenting free range right my mother was definitely in the free range

category love me to do um you know but they are you know the story you tell is the story of probably most kids a lot of kids across across the country if you know you're a single parent you don't have somebody at home you know a lot of kids are you know they got to get up make their own breakfast find their way they're doing that every day um because there isn't an alternative correct And figuring out what that balance is.

Figuring out what that is.

That's exactly the point.

What is the balance?

It's tough.

Which is very different from how

we parented our kids, how Kelly is, and you and Kelly are parenting your younger sons now.

Part of it, don't you think part of it was also time-specific in the sense that when we were coming up,

you know,

the idea of

kids just being out and having adventures and just getting home in time for dinners, especially during the summers, right?

Part of what happened, and I maybe affected boys a little more than girls, I don't know,

is that freedom, that sense of being able to build up resilience and a sense of competence and a sense of I can manage the world around me because the stakes weren't so high.

When I think about kids kids now on the south side, same neighborhoods where you guys grew up, but the chances of possibly getting shot or the chances of

some other terrible thing happening are higher.

And I think that affected everybody's parenting and it affected how we

handle kids, right?

So that now suddenly instead of just saying, all right, get out of here and come back

for dinner time, now it's a play date and where are you and do we know the parents where you're playing and and so on and so forth we see a good example in it in uh one of my favorite shows on netflix that has become the topic of conversation amongst a lot of people particularly in black homes is this uh series uh forever

which is a beautiful story um of young love in in in a black neighborhood and it it is not traumatic and bad things don't happen.

It's just regular kids.

It's just regular kids that reflects all of our lives in real ways.

And I know you watch some of that and Barack, you are well aware of it, but

the show has created a lot of conversation.

in terms of how do you raise emotionally intelligent boys and what we get right and what we get wrong,

not just among boys, but kids in general.

We watched it as a family.

We watched the whole series as a family and enjoyed it a lot.

And

it was really fun

to hear the boys talk about, oh, you guys would have done that or you guys wouldn't have done that.

That was eye-opening as a parent.

Yeah.

You know, because

they're evaluating it.

They're evaluating it.

They've got a little checklist.

They're evaluating our parenting or they're evaluating their parenting based based on their own.

That's the crazy thing dad would do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it so so, but this brings me back to Emma.

Emma's trying to raise these boys.

And so she's trying to be somewhere between forever.

And then the other show that people are talking about, adolescence, which I haven't watched yet,

which

it gets into sort of the misogyny that

young boys are exposed to and the online you know the the man they're getting they're getting their parenting they're getting online they're getting their notions of manhood from from from extreme

extremists yeah extremists well let but

let me ask you this yeah because because let's go back to the original question all right emma's trying to figure out how to raise boys um

i think we did a pretty good job of raising our girls but I've said often that I think I would have had more difficulty raising a son.

I agree.

Because I think I might have

been more judgmental, harder.

And,

you know, I would have tried to, I'd like to think I would have been more self-aware enough to combat that.

But I just think father-son relationships for me, particularly if I don't have a dad around to show it to me, might have been more difficult.

So talk about, Craig, just how thought about it was it just you took what your dad had done and you said

i'm going i'm going to do this i'm going to try the same thing uh were there things did it change over time it there it was a little bit of everything

but with both what you're both saying

initially i thought okay i'm going to take what i learned from dad all the things that I thought were positive, and then the couple of things that I thought were negative, I was going to try and repurpose.

What were were some of the positives?

Well,

I mean,

just kind of the stuff that I named before,

the willingness to get up and go to work every day,

taking me with him to see what it was like to have male relationships, either at work, at the barbershop.

You know, he didn't go to the gym, but in places where men hung out.

Right.

The record store, we would go to the record store every now and then and he'd have a bunch of friends there.

That sounds like like an old i know the right idea going to the record store it's come back it's come back oh has it okay good

it's retro

but but those were some of the positive things you know how how to walk with mom when you're walking down the street always walk on the street side

holding the door and opening the door for her allowing her to go in It was just things like that.

And then, and then I, you know, I'd have to really work at thinking of something negative that dad did.

But

well, what about,

let me ask this, though.

I mean, you know, dad also came home, put his feet up.

You know, he didn't always cook or he didn't do dishes.

He didn't do.

But, but you have to remember that I was thinking at the time.

That was okay because he was at work all day and he needed to rest and mom was always cooking.

So, but that, but that's a good one.

That's a good, that's a good potential negative.

Gender roles, very clear negative roles.

Very clear gender roles.

Very clear.

And I thought, okay, I'm going to do the positive things and then sort of

expose Avery, who's my oldest, to less of the negative things.

And you have to remember, Avery's 33.

So he didn't have to worry.

We didn't have to worry about social media.

There was very little internet stuff.

You know, we really focused on uh how to behave out in public as a guy or i i should say

um

how to how to get along how to how to treat girls how to have conversations but with austin and aaron it's more of how do you deal with social media yeah

and what which was which was uh in forever the the whole premise uh of the show uh what are you supposed to say when you do this spoiler alert spoiler alert

was a video that got leaked.

So we were constantly talking to them about that.

And now I have even more things to draw from because

I raised Avery and there were some things that I was like, I wish I hadn't done that.

I could have done that better.

I could have done that better.

Whether it was sort of

teaching them how to drink

me,

if you don't know how to, you could end up in a bad situation.

You know, more

direct conversations about

the first time you are with a woman intimately.

Do you mean sex, Craig?

I do.

I do mean sex.

And it's funny how

I was tiptoeing around it.

Craig got a little

bit.

I was tipping around it because I feel like I'm

like, you made me nervous.

I would just like, let me just let him get through this.

Hey, everyone.

It's your boy Craig Robinson here.

And if you've been listening and watching our show, you will know that I have become an Airbnb guy.

And I used to be a non-stop hotel guy.

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Just take this trip that I'm on right now.

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Relying on the guest favorites feature

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So the next time you're planning a trip, why don't you try the guests' favorites feature on the Airbnb app?

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I love what you were talking about earlier.

And

this was part of my thinking about being a man and being a protector was

the little things,

you know,

getting somebody's chair, opening a door,

you know, helping,

you know, standing up if you're on the bus

and giving your seat

to somebody else, right?

A lot of the basic things that also just had to do with being thoughtful, right?

This was like being kind.

Being kind.

I mean, this was male expressions of kindness and consideration.

It used to be called common courtesy.

Common courtesy.

Can I ask?

Because as you guys are talking about these characteristics and traits, again, a lot of it is how to behave, the external part of you.

But I think what I hear that gets missed and it was missed in you guys growing up and definitions of manhood was the internal self,

right?

Because all stoicism is external, manners, common courtesy.

It's all external, protecting.

It's all outward.

It's like, how do you appear?

I don't want you to get arrested.

So you have to behave in a certain way.

I want you to be polite because I want you to be safe.

Right.

And

there's not a lot of conversation at this table about, well, how do you, how do you feel?

And how, how are boys being taught to help sort through their internal selves?

And it's almost like you're supposed to pretend like you don't have an internal self, an internal emotion of hurt or fear or all the things that are natural.

of any human, but definitely, you know, fears and emotions that young boys, adolescent men, grown men are feeling.

But there's, there's no talk in any of these conversations about being anyone, father present, father not, helping boys guide through that piece of it.

It's almost as if we are raising boys and pretending like their outward selves are the only things that matter.

And therefore, who they are internally.

how they process, you know, how they deal with fear and hurt.

Like that, that's not even on the list.

Of no, I would agree with you.

It's not on the list because it, it,

I don't know about you, but during my upbringing,

that what nobody talked about that, yeah.

So, that you couldn't even have that for yourself.

I, I, I, I wouldn't even known how to have it, right?

I, I would have, I would have,

I'm just trying to think about the times when I felt insecure, that's internal, or I felt fear, or I felt some sort of way, I could always go to dad and say, I'm feeling this

because of something that took place.

It wasn't, I didn't even know that I could be feeling this just inside and not manifesting itself.

It was always a discussion on something that it was some issue that had come up.

And so it was a problem-solving conversation.

It was always a problem-solving conversation.

Well, look,

I do think that is part of

the culture we grew up in, was not that you didn't have feelings, but you ascribed them to a certain situation.

You know, somebody's messing with you.

You're getting bullied at school.

You didn't make the team.

How should you deal with this?

Right.

And then there would be real conversations, but it very much was around, all right, stuff happens in the world and you've got to deal with it.

And it goes back to the whole notion of being strong, self-reliant, don't be a baby, et cetera.

I do think that one of the differences for me was being raised by a teen mom

and, you know,

young mother.

was

she would talk to me a lot about how she was feeling.

And in turn, I could talk to her about how I was feeling.

And so I do think I developed some internal vocabulary around this.

And frankly, and I know this, you know,

conforms to my nerdy

reputation that my wife likes to tease me about, but books taught me a lot about

emotions, right?

Like

reading and movies and TV shows, et cetera, but

getting that sense of, oh, this is what people go through and developing kind of an inner monologue about

situations,

how are other people feeling, how am I feeling.

I tried to kind of piece that together and it was imperfect.

But at least there were avenues in which I could have those conversations.

Craig,

I am interested in what you described in terms of your relationship with your dad.

So did that then carry over to how you interacted with your friends coming up?

And

was there a point in time where you thought, okay,

when I'm dealing with Avery or Aaron or Austin, I need to maybe have a different approach.

I need to share.

more of my emotions so that they feel like they can come to me and talk about theirs.

What was that process?

So the process was this.

I felt like once I had kids, I had to reevaluate

everything, which included my relationships with my friends and family and work and the whole thing.

And I realized

When Avery was born, I needed to cut down my circle of friends to the serious ones because I've got some serious business of raising this kid, these kids, when Leslie came along.

And it was about that time

that I was, it is probably the first time where I had really deep conversations with my male friends where you started to understand.

Okay, something's going on with this person.

Let me find out what it is.

Something's going on with me.

Let me share it.

That's the hardest part, at least for me.

One of the things you've both been good at

is having male friend groups.

And studies show that the rate of loneliness among young men and older men has gone up, which pushes them into these manosphere spaces because it's the only place they're going to find community or to talk to one another.

Can you guys talk about how you both have managed to to maintain friendships?

What do you think is different about the way you guys have lived lives?

I mean, Barack, you've maintained your friends through being in the White House, but there are a lot of men out there in the world who say that they don't have more than a couple of friends, if that.

I was in high school, mostly being raised by my grandparents.

And

I ended up making

a bunch of friends, a lot of them who were basketball players, but not all.

And it wasn't until later that I realized actually they were all

kids of divorced parents.

So they're all being raised by single moms.

It was almost like we kind of created our little tribe

of

found community, a found family.

And you now know them all, Bobby, Titcum, and Greg Orm, and Mike Ramos.

And

they

were an opportunity for me actually to learn how to share.

And

what that did teach me was

that having

male friends I could talk to and count on

was important to my life.

And it turns out, actually, what we've learned is

our families, our nuclear family was healthier and happier precisely because we had a bunch of friends.

And we had, you know,

essentially

non-blood aunts and uncles and cousins,

play cousins and all that, who were around all the time.

But even with my close male friends, there was a phase, you know, when we were in our 30s and into our

early 40s.

First of all, we just didn't have that much money.

So, and they were living in different places, so we couldn't see each other all the time.

But we did stay in touch.

And

what I've figured out

and that lasted through the White House as I collected other friends and in Chicago and in

college

was

just being intentional

with your friendships,

making the investment, knowing it's important,

letting them know they're important to you, your friends,

small gestures,

all that stuff mattered.

And I do think that

guys

sometimes

don't

do that.

Like the idea is, all right, well, if you're around, we can hang out.

If it happens, it happens.

But yeah, I know so many men who don't call each other.

They don't talk on a regular basis.

They're best friends.

And it's like, well, I saw him three years ago.

He's my best friend.

Right.

And so I think I have gotten better about this.

And, you know, one of the things that got me through the White House was that those same three friends that I knew,

you know, and from high school,

I saw them all the time.

And Bobby Titkum became a, you know, was during most of the White House was a commercial fisherman in Hawaii.

And Greg Orm was managing a yogurt plant in

Oregon.

And Mike Ramos was an accountant.

And,

But

the sense of trust and

the memories we shared and them having our backs and them loving our daughters.

And

we set up this thing.

Michelle did this.

One of the best gifts I ever got

for my birthday was my 50th.

And it was a rough time.

I was getting my butt kicked in the presidency.

And she organized my 50th birthday,

brought all these friends from all my different walks of life to Camp David

for a weekend.

And of course, being boys, we just

started competing.

It was organized

competition.

And

we had so much fun that we made it into an annual thing.

that we started calling Camp Adlon, even after it was no longer in Camp David.

And, you know, you get these you know 12 15 middle-aged men running

you know uh you know

bowling or uh you have kind of ping pong

you've seen it's quite the spectacle it's quite the spectacle yes but

the point is just creating some some structures where guys can get together and then in the in stride in the flow

Now a whole bunch of stuff is shared, talked about, et cetera.

That turned out to be something that

mattered a lot to me.

But

what's been your secret to maintaining your friendships?

It's been

your last point of being intentional.

And to Misha's point,

I would say in the last,

let's call it,

seven years.

So that's not long at all.

I have, have, because of these kinds of discussions, I have picked up the phone and called my friends more often than I had done in the past.

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And, you know, one skill that has helped me over my years is adaptability.

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I do want to talk to Emma as a mother,

because she's a mother trying to figure this out.

And I do think there's a question, like the original question of why do we love our sons and raise our daughters?

And I think that's something worth sort of talking through among mothers, because sadly, many mothers are parenting alone, which is a huge problem.

I think Scott Galloway, there are other researchers out there who say that one of the challenges that boys face is that there just aren't enough men in their lives.

You know, the men have disappeared, whether through divorce or fatherhood, there are small numbers of male teachers in high schools.

Boys are growing up in an education system where they're mostly surrounded by women.

Barack, you talked about the fact, you've talked about the fact that the entire education system isn't even designed to recognize boys and what they need.

So, you know, what do we say to Emma?

You know, because again, we don't know whether she's parenting alone or whether she has a husband, but I do think that mothers struggle to figure out what do their sons need.

And so they wind up operating out of their own fears and their own instincts, which is to love unconditionally.

I think mom was like this.

She raised me to be tough because I think she knew what it was like to be a woman.

In her mind, she knew what she was preparing me for.

The insults, the limitations, the

whatever you

can think of, the sexism, the biases.

So she knew you have to have a mouth.

You have to be able to speak up for yourself.

With you, she wanted you to be nice so that you wouldn't get in trouble or you wouldn't get arrested.

But was that who you were?

So what do we say to the Emmas of the world?

How do we sort of start thinking as as a society about helping mothers

raise sons because they're doing it alone and we're being told that we don't have what it takes to give boys all of what they need?

Well, look, I think you started hinting at it

as somebody who was raised by a single mom,

not perfectly, but

You know, that unconditional love is a start as the right one.

I do think,

thinking about raising boys in the same way you're thinking about raising daughters, which is how do you make them good, responsible people

who know how to function and know how to

understand themselves well enough that they can navigate this really complicated world and setting high expectations.

So there are a lot of these things that apply to boys and girls.

I do think that there are some particular issues with boys that as a society we're not addressing.

I do think as a society we have to create more structures for boys and men to have

guidance, rituals, frameworks, encouragement,

to be able to meet a wide range of role models so that whatever their inclinations, they can see a path to success that isn't just sports or money,

you know, making a lot of money.

And so that's on all of us together.

What I would say to Emma would be

in

your community,

even if you have a wonderful male partner who's in the house, I think it still would be good to find

assets in the community, people in the community, friends in your community,

you know, places of worship,

community organizations, what have you, where there are a bunch of men

who can be sort of elders to boys.

And so they're not just looking at one particular role model, but many.

And, you know, one of the things I, when we, when Michelle and I first started dating and I'd go over to your guys' house, one of the things I loved was just,

you know,

seeing all your uncles and your cousins.

And there were a bunch of different kinds of men.

You know, there were men that were kind of soft-spoken, and then there were men that were loud, and there were men who were

engineers, and then there were men who were,

you know,

police officers, or they, or they drove, you know,

a gym cab.

Right.

And

that's one of the things that I think a lot of times boys need is

not just exposure to one guy.

One dad.

One dad.

No matter how good the dad is.

Dad is, he can't be everything.

He can't be everything.

And that boy may need somebody to

give the boy some perspective on the dad.

One of the most valuable things I learned as a guy was

I had a gay professor

in college

at a time when openly gay folks still weren't out of life,

who became one of my favorite professors and was a great guy and would call me out when I started saying stuff that was ignorant.

You need that.

to show empathy and kindness.

And by the way, you need that person in your friend group so that if you then have a boy who is, who's, who's, who's gay or non-binary or what have you, they have somebody that they can go, okay, I'm not alone in this.

Yeah.

Right.

So, so that I think is creating that community.

I know it's corny, but that's what they need.

And we talk a lot about what we had with our mother and father, right?

And, you know, a lot of times, but we really did have a big community of people in our lives.

I mean, that we don't talk a lot about that on this show.

We allude to it, but we, Craig and I, we grew up in a huge community of extended aunts and uncles and cousins and all types of male role models, which helped in broadening out and filling in where our mother and father were limited.

So, for Emma, I'm picking up a couple of things.

Community, big,

huge, not just

a single mom or mom and dad, but a broad community.

And I can appreciate you using our family as an example, but uncles, but not necessarily blood,

but men who can concept, who can

give a kid or kids some contextualization of who their parents are.

Right.

And what if you're a menu?

And men can model, there are a lot of ways to be a responsible, respected, strong man, and you don't have to be rich, and you don't have to be a professional athlete.

And you don't have to go find it on the internet among a group of unclear influences.

And this is a thing that parents, Emma has to understand if that if

her sons aren't getting it,

they'll look for it.

They are going to look for it because this is, because boys need this.

Whether they think that they're happy playing video games on their own, and we haven't even talked about how the, you know, the rise in video games has sort of left kids feeling like, well, this is who I am.

I'm alone or I'm

interacting through a game.

Virtually.

Virtually, but I don't have any in real life friends.

Kids are going to seek out some kind of community.

So big, big community, I would emphasize because they need to have other outlets.

They have to be able to learn how to be more than just the sport that they care about.

And while they get great skills in sports and they learn a whole lot of traits,

it isn't music.

It's not language.

It's not social in certain ways.

And so I think we owe it to our boys to be very deliberate about saying enough with sports and let's try some other things.

Encouraging them and exposing them to it in a way, look, sports was scaffolding for me to to pull myself into manner

but

even as i was doing that though my mom was still dragging me to art museums

yeah

and

i was still being taken to

yeah waiting for godot

like i i remember my mom took me to a samuel beckett play when i was like 12.

and i'm kind of sitting there like what is this about but but you know what?

I kind of got it after a while.

I thought, that's interesting.

I mean, it wasn't necessarily the thing I would choose to do, but the fact that I did it meant later when I was 17, 18, all right,

there's something there that, you know, may be interesting.

So sometimes it's just a matter of, you know, giving, saying to our boys,

you being interested in art and you being interested in,

you know, uh theater

that's cool

i would also always hearing that yeah that's that those are good things so that and and i would tell emma you know

don't assume who your son is going to be based on some male stereotypes of what you think he should be right really pay attention to who he's showing you he is

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So

we're giving Emma those two things, the community and the diversity in sports.

But I want to go back to a third thing that

you brought up early on is

we have to help them be self-aware of their own

internal feelings.

Is that how you're

rather than you know, when we're talking about all the traits were all external?

That's a that's one.

I like that one.

I like that one for Emma.

I like that one for Emma.

Okay, I'm glad you like that one.

Well, and Michelle's right that I think girls, it comes more organically to them and their social groups.

But the way I describe it, and you know, I talked to Malian Sasha about this, is

figuring out how to

have

a good conversation with yourself

and being open and kind to yourself and figuring out, all right, I'm not feeling great here and what's going on and

where How can I share this and how can I talk about it?

I mean, I think that's something you want to teach all kids.

But that takes time.

But that takes, and it takes some practice and encouragement.

And I would say to Emma and all parents, period, of sons that

it requires some slowing down on the part of the parent

because that, that stuff,

that's not science.

That's art.

That you're like, you can't.

You can't schedule that.

It's not a formula.

You have to create space

for your, and it's not efficient.

It will never be efficient because kids, you know, they don't open up on time.

You know, they're not always going to have a feeling at dinner time when you're ready.

So you have to create enough space, enough downtime throughout the course of a week, a month, you know, to give kids that space to let things unfold, to let them unfold.

for you.

And I think parents of sons have to understand that sons need unfolding in that emotional way as much as their daughters do.

Well, it turns out, yeah, some of these studies are showing they may need it more.

They may need it even more.

Maybe because they're not getting it reinforced in the outside world.

It does mean, though, that

as men, we have to, in

whatever conversations we're having with boys, sending the signal that that

emotional intelligence, paying attention to how other people are feeling, and also paying attention to how you are feeling and being able to describe that and work through those things, that that is a characteristic of being a grown man.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

It's worthwhile.

And that means

men have to practice that too.

And that's also a message for the fathers out there, you know, among many things of we need more men present.

You know, that's something that studies are showing.

You know, men are not present in the lives of children.

And that

has a disproportionate, is having a disproportionate impact on boys.

But men have to do the self-work too.

Fathers, men general, in general, because if you're of a certain generation, we just saw it here.

You guys didn't, you guys weren't taught that.

You weren't taught how to, you know, Barack, you read about it.

You know, you were unusual in your pursuit of it, maybe because it's the way you were raised, but a lot of men aren't aware that their ability to unpack themselves and the need to do that work is going to directly impact young boys in the world, period.

I think you are absolutely right.

At the danger of sounding like the policy guy here, I do want to just go back to something I said earlier.

Everything you said is right, and that's work men have to do.

I think it's important not to divorce that work from

some other stuff like men having jobs.

I totally agree.

Totally agreed.

It was not an either or at all.

Exactly.

But

because part of what happened when we say there aren't a lot of men around,

part of what happened

And it happened in the black community first,

but then now you're seeing it happening across the board was a lot of male identity and status was tied up with being a provider, having a job, doing a good job, coming home.

And when folks started losing jobs because of deindustrialization and offshoring,

and you know, obviously this isn't a political show, so we're not going to go down all the reasons that it happened, but it happened.

And so then you've had a bunch of men suddenly feeling

lost because their identity had been so wrapped up in

that one thing, which was being a provider.

And so

part of what we have to do is, yeah,

as men take responsibility for

figuring out how to talk about and share feelings and cultivate relationships and friendships.

But

as a society, we also have to make sure that men don't feel redundant and don't feel as if there's not a place for them.

And

there are entire communities now where the women are more likely to be employed than the men are.

They have more avenues for supporting their families.

And

that is something that no matter

how much talk you engage in, if guys are feeling left out and not respected,

then

they're going to act some kind of way, and they're also going to pass that on to their sons.

And we're making huge generalizations because in every community there are going to be exceptions.

But before we close this out, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you,

the

person who embodies hope,

what is it?

What do you see as

going right for

young people?

What are you optimistic

about

this future generation?

I do think that when we look at Mali and Sasha's generation, Avery's generation,

we don't yet know what things are going to be like for Austin and Aaron because they're still on the come up.

But

I do think this idea of

men,

there are many different ways of being a good,

strong, successful, happy man.

I think that's something that

young people are more open to

and recognize.

And

so that's promising.

And we see it

when we talk to Malay and Sasha and their friends.

I think that

what we need to do in order to take advantage of that is to,

as a society, as communities,

recognize that

this kind of transition from

the old models that you and I, Craig, grew up on.

Just like you said, you took a lot of good stuff from your dad,

but then there were some modifications that just had to be made either because of blind spots, limits, lack of resource, what have you.

The times.

The times.

You know,

we joke that talking to Malay and Sasha, sometimes they go out with their friends and, you know, they're in a group and the guy's got crocodile arms.

You know, it's like,

not picking up the check.

And it's like, okay,

you don't have to pick it up all the time,

but if you're never picking it up, right, that's a problem about you.

If you're never opening a door or pulling out a chair, because that's just common courtesy, that's just being kind, right?

So, for those of you who do not have sons, uh, so Emma, we are rooting for you because those of us with daughters, we need

we've got to have

good guys out there, not necessarily to get married, but to make sure that

what we're learning, I think, is that when we don't think about boys and

just assume they're going to be okay because they've been running the world and they've got all the advantages relative to the girls, and

all of which has historically been true in all kinds of ways.

But precisely because of that, if you're not thinking about

what's happening to boys and how are they being raised, then that can actually hurt women.

And I would argue that some of the broad political trends we've seen, not just in this country, but around the world, have to do with

this sense of

boys, men, not

feeling as if they are seen,

feeling as if they count.

And that then makes them more interested in

appeals by folks who say, you know what, the reason you don't feel respected is because women have been doing this, or this group has been doing this, or that group's been doing this.

And

that's not a healthy place to be.

And I will say,

as quote-unquote progressives,

Democrats,

progressive parents, enlightened ones,

we've made that mistake sometimes in terms of our rhetoric,

where it's like we're constantly talking about, you know,

what's wrong with the boys instead of what's right with them.

We rightly have tried to invest in girls to make sure that

there's a level playing field and then they're not barred from

opportunities.

But we haven't been as willing, I think, to be intentional about investing in the boys, and that's been a mistake.

And I think people are starting to recognize that.

So going back to your optimism, I think there's a healthier conversation taking place now, both among this new generation of

young women and men, but also among

the public at large that's starting to see like, hey,

You know, we got to do better by our boys.

And if we do better by our boys and we're producing

stronger, more confident men, that's going to be good for

our girls and our women as well.

Well, thank you, Barack Obama.

Man, it's been great having you on.

And you know what?

Since we were talking about communities,

my daughters having

such a great uncle as a role model, you are the best example of what I was just talking about.

The love

and learning that they've gotten from you

has made all kinds of difference, just like the relationship they have with Avery,

you know, their cousin.

You know, having a bunch of boys and men in their family who are not like me,

you know, who don't have exactly the same blind spots or,

you know,

biases or

weird habits.

It's just

made them better.

And you know how much they adore you,

but

that's a great gift that

you've given me.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Appreciate it.

And the same goes

to you for our kids.

All right.

We appreciate that.

All right.

These are men.

See how they struggle with their emotions?

They're trying to get away from it.

I didn't think I was family.

I thought I was being pretty open.

I thought he was really good.

No, you did good.

There we go.

You know what?

I love you, man.

I love you too, man.

I love you, and I don't know what I'd do without you.

I'm Hoda Kotbi from Making Space.

Okay, you and I are both on the other side of the jump, whether it is Life After the White House or in my case, Life After the Today Show.

So what has this new chapter taught you about starting something new at any stage, about being a beginner again?

I would encourage all your listeners to embrace those transitions, to practice them.

It's a muscle, and not to run away from change, but to embrace it as much as possible and turn that into something really special.

There's a lot of learning that happens on the other side of our fear of change, and I'm living proof of that.

You know, nothing keeps me

sharper these days as somebody who's getting up there in years than doing something completely new and foreign.

And with Misha and I doing IMO,

it gives me particularly an opportunity to do something that is completely outside of my wheelhouse of experience that I've had before now.

Please give Making Space a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

And make sure you tell your friends, follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now.