Michelle Obama’s Mom Helped The Former First Lady Become The Mother She Is Now

June 4, 2018 10:33

Author By Fabiosa

Michelle Obama is an example of a great mother to many.

The way she raises her two daughters, 19-year-old Malia and 16-year-old Sasha, is highly influenced by how her own mother, 80-year-old Marian Robinson, raised her.

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Marian Robinson was born in segregated Chicago to a family with 6 siblings. She didn’t receive a high education and married Fraser C Robinson III, a former boxer and soldier, who was tending boilers at the city’s water plant.

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Despite raising her two kids, Michelle and Craig, in a modest home in the working-class, a stay-at-home-mom was obsessed with them receiving the best education. Both of her children went to Princeton. When she was asked whether she has some magic dust that helped her daughter end up in the White House and her son get a successful career as a college basketball coach, she simply said:

I don’t think it was magic dust, as a matter of fact. I believe there were lots of families who did exactly the same thing. But that was just the norm – you raised your children to stress education. We wanted them to have the feeling they could try anything. The saying was: ‘If it can be done, you can do it.’ It was a matter of choice.

A biographer Peter Slevin, who wrote Michelle Obama: A Life, said:

Michelle calls Marian Robinson her ‘rock’. She is steady, she is strong. She has opinions, but she is very grounded in the real world.

No wonder Michelle wanted her mom to move to the White House when Barack Obama became the US President.

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When speaking at The 2018 United State of Women Summit, Michelle was asked how her mother influenced her relationship with her own daughters, to which the former First Lady answered, barely holding her tears:

The mother that I am today is the direct result of Marian Robinson.

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She continued:

The thing she always said that I do remember is she told me and my brother: ‘I wasn’t raising children, I was raising adults.’ She treated us in the way she wanted us to be.

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She admitted that she emulates her mother in the relationship she has with her children.

I want them to talk to me about everything. So that means I gotta be open and I can’t be judgmental. You gotta get that ‘mom face’ right.

via GIPHY

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Michelle definitely seems like a very wise woman and a wonderful mom. We can say Marian a big ‘thank you’ for raising a good role model for many young girls all over the world.