Whether it's teenage awkwardness or outright rebellion, children of presidents have often
swiped left on life in the Executive Residence.
Why?
Here are just a few of the worst things about being a kid in the first family, at any age.
There probably isn't a more famous first daughter in American history than Chelsea Clinton.
Her father, Bill Clinton, was already the governor of Arkansas when she was born, and
she moved into the White House when she was just 12.
If having the full spotlight of the media shining down on her parents' infamous marriage
troubles wasn't enough, right-wight media figures like Rush Limbaugh constantly made
fun of her looks, while late-night talk shows and Saturday Night Live made her the butt
of jokes.
But ultimately, she rose above it all and took the high road by choosing not to engage
in the same way.
As Chelsea admitted in a 2018 interview with The Guardian,
"To retaliate with crass language or insult someone personally I just don't think I'm
built that way."
In an interview with The Big Issue, Chelsea said that something had not gone right in
her detractors' lives for them to bully a child.
She then went on to say how the bullying taught her a valuable lesson that everyone can take
to heart:
"So that helped me understand early in my life that when we're being verbally abused
by other people, it's not about who we are, it's all about the bullies."
Ronald Regan's daughter, Patti Davis, famously hated her experience being a politician's
kid so much that she wrote several books alleging abuse and dysfunction within her family.
Davis wrote a couple of fictionalized versions of her childhood before fully airing the Reagans'
dirty laundry with her autobiography, The Way I See It.
The tome addressed everything from her mother's alleged physical and psychological abuse,
to drug use by multiple family members, to neglect from her father when she reached out
to him for help.
Things got so bad and so public between Davis and her family that her siblings stopped speaking
to her for years.
In the aftermath, her relationship with her parents was, understandably, rocky.
Ronald Reagan eventually wrote her a Christmas letter in 1989, one of many, begging Patti
to reconcile with the family, which eventually did happen later, after he was diagnosed with
Alzheimer's.
Malia and Sasha Obama were 10 and 7, respectively, when their father, Barack Obama, became the
44th President of the United States.
Because of their young age, the girls kept a pretty low profile during their time at
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
"Of all that I've done in my life, I'm most proud to be your dad."
However, they still wanted to have the lives of normal girls.
Sleepovers with their friends were part of that, but they were definitely complicated.
As their mother, Michelle Obama, told CBS News,
"Imagine having Malia and Sasha come to your house for a sleepover...This is the call:
It's like, 'Hello.
OK, we're going to need your Social Security number, we're going to need your date of birth.
There are going to be men coming to sweep your house."
Once Malia enrolled in college, the tabloids followed her every move.
Whether it was making out with her boyfriend at a tailgate or smoking cigarettes, Malia
couldn't be a regular person in peace.
But in a plot twist nobody could have seen coming, the former first daughter unlikely
got support from another first daughter, Ivanka Trump, who with a little brother of her own,
tweeted,
"Malia Obama should be allowed the same privacy as her school-aged peers.
She is a young adult and private citizen, and should be OFF limits."
The daughters of the 43rd president, George W. Bush, twins Barbara and Jenna Bush, were
just as controversial as their father during the family's stay in the White House.
In his book, In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line
of Fire and the Presidents They Protect, author Ronald Kessler detailed the girls' notorious
party animal ways, which were a constant source of tabloid fodder.
Although they encouraged Malia and Sasha Obama to enjoy living in the White House because
it was such a magical place, it wasn't such a fanciful experience for the staff when the
notorious Bush twins lived there.
"Think they mis-underestimated the will and determination of the Commander in Chief, too."
As Kessler noted in his book,
"[Jenna] would sometimes purposely try to lose her protection by going through red lights
or by jumping in her car without telling agents where she was going."
The twins allegedly sparked many impromptu trips, which were a massive inconvenience
to their security detail.
Referencing a time when the girls randomly demanded to fly to New York, one agent told
Keller,
"These guys were prepared to work an evening shift, and all of a sudden they're going with
just the clothes on their backs."
A few months into their father's first term, both of the then-19-year olds were also cited
for underage drinking in separate incidents in their home state of Texas.
In May 2001, Jenna pleaded no contest to a charge of possessing alcohol while underage
after getting busted at an Austin nightclub.
A mere two months later, both of them caught a misdemeanor charge for purchasing alcohol
with a friend's ID at an Austin restaurant.
Gerald Ford's ascension to the Oval Office after Richard Nixon's resignation was a culture
shock to the youngest of his four children, Susan Ford Bales.
As Bales told The Baltimore Sun,
"I felt very besieged by the press...They talked to my friends, people who weren't even
my friends.
They wrote about romances I wasn't having."
While that makes it seem like Bales took the intrusion into her privacy in stride, she
revealed that the false stories being published about her were devastating.
One that was particularly troubling made the allegation that nepotism was the only reason
she made it through school.
Bales later recalled,
"I did take it to heart...It makes you a very tough, very thick-skinned person.
And it makes you not very trusting of anybody except your family."
In the book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, Bales reveals that
her rebellious teenage years made her become the first Ford child to receive Secret Service
protection.
However, there was a silver-lining in Susan being under 24/7 guard, as she eventually
married a former Secret Service agent who was assigned to her father's detail.
Being a parent is hard, even for the genius credited with creating the U.S. government.
Yes, we're talking about James Madison, the statesman whose idea of a strong federal government
with a system of checks and balances earned him the nickname, Father of the Constitution.
Madison had a stepson named John Payne Todd, who was the biological son of his wife, Dolley
Madison.
To say Todd gave his stepdad a hard time is like saying the colonies misbehaved a bit
under King George the Third.
Although Todd was 17 when Madison was elected, he spent his formative years being a rebellious
teen.
Madison reportedly tried everything to get Todd back in line.
He even tried making his stepson a representative for an American peace commission that was
bound for Europe.
The role was to give him a sense of purpose, but Todd didn't share his father's patriotic
passion.
Instead, he racked up $8,000 in debt during his two years abroad.
To his dying day, Madison bailed Todd out, which according to historian William Seale's
account, included a number of times for disrupting the peace while drunkenly handling a gun.
John Adams the Second, the son of America's sixth president, John Quincy Adams, wasn't
exactly a kid when he had his worst experience in the White House.
In fact, he was already married, serving as his father's secretary, and living in the
presidential residence with a child of his own.
The incident occurred during the White House New Year's Eve party in 1828 when a guest,
Russell Jarvis, was allegedly insulted by Quincy Adams in the presence of his son, John
the Second.
As was the norm for the time, Jarvis wanted to challenge Quincy Adams to a duel, but since
he was the president, that wasn't going to happen.
Instead, he challenged Adams' son in a letter, which the president's son ignored.
Jarvis later took his challenge a step further by confronting the apparently conflict-averse
John the Second in person.
At this point, Quincy Adams stepped in, but it was too late.
The press got wind of the incident and wrote stories insinuating the younger John's cowardice,
thus causing the first son intense humiliation.
The incident had a profound effect on John's life and career, as he began heavily drinking
soon afterwards.
Sadly, he died six years later, after his unsuccessful attempt at managing the family's
gristmill.
According to the John Adams Historical Society, his death was attributed to alcoholism.
Teddy Roosevelt's free-spirited daughter Alice Roosevelt was such a wild child that her father
infamously declared,
"I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice.
I cannot possibly do both."
In addition to being banished to the roof to smoke cigarettes, Alice was also known
to frighten visitors with a small snake named Emily Spinach, which she carried in her purse.
The Washington Post quoted her as saying,
"My father was president, I was without a particle of responsibility other than to enjoy
myself, and I was alert for all that came my way."
However, according to biographer Carol Felsenthal, much of Alice's unruly behavior stemmed from
her combative relationship with her stepmother, Edith, with whom Teddy had five children with
during his presidency.
Feeling ignored, the teenaged Alice perfectly summarized her White House experience in one
particularly angsty diary entry:
"Father doesn't care for me…as much as he does for the other children..I care for nothing
except to amuse myself in a charmingly expensive way."
Margaret Truman was a 21-year-old college student when her father, Harry S. Truman,
became the 33rd President of the United States on April 12th, 1945.
You would think her age would have afforded her a bit more freedom than other, younger
kids of first families, but that wasn't particularly the case.
Margaret once called 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue "a great white jail", referencing the ever-prying
eyes of the Secret Service, who followed Margaret everywhere even when she went on romantic
dates.
Margaret once lamented,
"There wasn't much to be done 'except shake hands, and that's no way to get engaged."
And it wasn't just romance that got interrupted for Margaret.
She didn't make any new friends while living in the nation's capital, primarily out of
fear that the friendships wouldn't be genuine.
If it doesn't sound like Margaret had a particularly great time being a kid in the first family,
that's because she basically didn't.
Margaret would later sum up her time in the White House by saying:
"I wouldn't call it fun.
The only thing I ever missed about the White House was having a car and driver."
Steve Ford shared Margaret Truman's youthful grievances.
Also at a formative age when his dad, Gerald Ford, took office, Steve experienced the similarly
jarring revelation that he wouldn't be doing anything without a bodyguard on standby.
He likened his experience in the White House to living in a museum.
Furthermore, his mom once scolded him for putting his feet up on Jefferson's table,
and he became bummed when the White House staff wouldn't let him park his yellow Jeep
wherever he wanted.
As Steve once admitted,
"Every time I'd come home they would move it around back and kind of hide it.
[...] I'd get frustrated and I'd go down and move it out front again and they'd move it
back."
Ford did share one fond memory of his time as a first kid, recalling an evening when
he and his best friend played Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" on the White House roof.
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