The Obama transition team ended weeks of speculation today and announced that Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama's mother, will leave her Chicago home and move with the family into the White House, at least temporarily. Robinson will continue the role she filled during the presidential campaign, when she routinely stayed with her granddaughters — Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7 — in the Obama home in the Hyde Park section of Chicago while the girls' parents traveled on the campaign trail.
"Mrs. Robinson will be coming with the family to help the girls get acclimated," Deputy Communications Director for Michelle Obama Semonti Mustaphi told Grandparents.com this afternoon. "She will determine in the coming months whether or not she wants to stay in D.C. permanently."
Robinson, 71, will become the first Presidential in-law to live in the executive mansion since Elvira "Minnie" Doud, Mamie Eisenhower's mother. Doud "wintered" in the White house from 1953 to 1960, but Eisenhower's children were grown at the time.
An "unsung hero"
In an interview on 60 Minutes soon after the general election, President-elect Obama called Robinson "one of the unsung heroes" of his campaign, and said, "We couldn't have done it without her." He meant that literally: Michelle Obama has said that if Robinson had not been available to step in and watch over the girls, Obama might never have launched his campaign. During the campaign, Robinson quit her job as an executive secretary at a bank to have more time for her grandchildren.
"We couldn't have done it without her," Obama said on the program. "'Cause she retired, looked after the girls, gave Michelle confidence that somebody was gonna be there when Michelle was on the road."
As the country's new "First Grandmother," Robinson will become one of at least 5.7 million American grandparents who live in the same home with their grandchildren, according to the U.S. Census. Across the nation, grandparents care for millions of young children while their mothers work, and more than 4.5 million children live in their grandparents' homes, according to Census data. (Robinson is actually a grandmother of four — her son Craig, the head basketball coach at Oregon State University, has two children, Avery and Leslie.)
Of course, living in the White House, with its teams of Secret Service agents, cooks, and housekeepers, not to mention the occasional visiting foreign dignitary, is by no means typical. But in many ways Robinson's situation will mirror that of many of the country's other 70 million grandparents, who devote their time and resources to helping to raise their children's children.
A typical grandmother?
Michelle Obama has been described as a role model for the modern working mom. She has balanced marriage, motherhood and, a high-powered career, first as a lawyer and then as an executive with the University of Chicago Medical Center. But since Malia was born in 1998, Mrs. Obama has increasingly relied on her mother's support. "There's nothing like grandma," she has said.
Not unlike other mothers and daughters across the country, however, Robinson and Michelle Obama sometimes have different ideas about the best way to raise kids. In a rare interview last spring with The Boston Globe, Robinson said that she enforced an 8:30 bedtime and provided the girls with organic food — as her daughter demanded — when she sat for them in their own home. But when the girls had sleepovers in Robinson's home, she admitted, "I have candy, they stay up late ... they watch TV as long as they want to, we'll play games until the wee hours. I do everything that grandmothers do that they're not supposed to."
Michelle Obama and others have described Robinson as private person, but she can also be a fierce advocate for her children and grandchildren. "If somebody's going to be with these kids other than their parents," she told the Globe, "it better be me."
A witness to history
Robinson will now have a historic role in the White House, but she has already had a front-row seat to history. President-elect Obama told 60 Minutes that the emotion of nearly two years of campaigning to become the country's first African-American chief executive didn't really sink in until he was watching the returns on election night, and Robinson reached for his hand.
| Is Marian Robinson a role model? |
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Yes; she shows the importance of grandparents 86.4%
No; the Obamas have a unique situation 13.6%
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"There's no doubt that there was a sense of emotion that I could see in people's faces and in my mother-in-law's face," Obama said in the interview. "You know, I mean, you think about Michelle's mom, who grew up on the west and south sides of Chicago, who worked so hard to help Michelle get to where she is, [and] her brother to be successful. She was sitting next to me, actually, as we were watching returns. And she's like my grandmother was, sort of a no-fuss type of person. And suddenly she just kind of reached out and she started holding my hand, you know, kind of squeezing it.
"And you had this sense of, 'Well, what's she thinking?'" Obama continued. "For a black woman who grew up in the '50s, you know, in a segregated Chicago, to watch her daughter become first lady of the United States ... I think there was that sense across the country. And not unique to African Americans."
Despite his upcoming role as the nation's commander-in-chief, however, Obama admitted that in his home, he chooses his battles carefully. As he told 60 Minutes, "I don't tell my mother-in-law what to do ... I'm not stupid. That's why I got elected president, man."
Next: Join the debate over who should be in charge when grandparents babysit, read our survival guide for families living together, and get tips for saying good-bye to the family home.
