Growing up in the White House is a uniquely transformative experience, and these former First Children have gone on to lead fascinating, occasionally controversial, and sometimes tragic post-White House lives.
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00:00Growing up in the White House is a uniquely transformative experience,
00:03and these former first children have gone on to lead fascinating, occasionally controversial,
00:08and sometimes tragic, post-White House lives.
00:12When his dad moved into the White House in January 2017,
00:15Barron Trump was hesitant to be uprooted. Up until that point, the then-10-year-old had
00:20already been living a privileged life in Manhattan. But once the school year ended,
00:24he and his mom ended up making the move to D.C. In contrast to his older siblings,
00:29the youngest of Donald Trump's children was granted a little more privacy as he grew up.
00:33Now that he's older, though, he's received a bit more media attention,
00:36such as when he was spotted at New York University with the Secret Service in tow.
00:40In September 2024, his dad revealed to the Daily Mail,
00:43"[He was accepted to a lot of colleges, he's a very smart guy, and he'll be going to Stern,
00:48the business school, which is a great school at NYU.
00:51He's a very high-aptitude child, but he's no longer a child."
00:55In January 2009, 10-year-old Malia Obama and her younger sister Sasha
01:00joined their parents in the White House after their dad was elected president.
01:03At first, she wasn't thrilled about having to move from Illinois to Washington, D.C.,
01:08but she soon settled into her role as one of the country's most famous children.
01:11Her parents strived to keep her and her sister protected from public scrutiny,
01:15which included enrolling them in a private school until their high school graduation.
01:19Malia attended several public events alongside her parents throughout her dad's eight-year term,
01:24but as her father's time in the White House drew to a close,
01:26she was looking to leave the nest and lead her own life.
01:29She ended up enrolling at Harvard University, where she graduated in 2021.
01:34Over the years, she demonstrated a passion for the entertainment industry,
01:37having worked as a production assistant with CBS in 2014,
01:40before interning at HBO during her senior year of high school.
01:44In September 2024, she was in France for the Deauville American Film Festival,
01:48where her short film, The Heart, won the festival's Young Spirit Award.
01:53To be able to have audiences watch your stuff as a young
01:57filmmaker, artist, is the moment that kind of shifts your work."
02:02When 7-year-old Sasha Obama was thrust into the spotlight when her father was elected president,
02:07the media attention was mostly positive. For example, in 2014, she and her sister were
02:12among the youngsters recognized by Time magazine as the most influential teens of the year.
02:17Sasha graduated from Sidwell Friends School in 2019 and then went on to
02:21attend the University of Michigan. She initially continued to live with her family while taking
02:25online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, but then she decided to transfer to the University
02:30of Southern California and move in with her sister. Sasha graduated in 2023 with a degree
02:36in sociology. In 2024, a Natasha Obama was credited as a casting interviewer on the
02:41Showtime documentary series Couples Therapy, with viewers believing that the Natasha in question
02:46was, in fact, Sasha. Chelsea Clinton was almost 13 when she and her family moved into 1600
02:52Pennsylvania Avenue in 1993. She managed to escape media scrutiny by attending a private school and
02:58having a social life outside the view of the press. Clinton looked back at this time in her
03:02life during an appearance on the People Every Day podcast in May 2021. Referring to the Secret
03:07Service's constant presence, she admitted,
03:10"'I used to be asked all the time, did you ever run away? No, I never ran away. I respect that
03:14they had a job to do. I wasn't going to make that job harder for them and I wasn't going to
03:18stress out my parents like that."
03:20After her time in the White House, Chelsea went on to get her bachelor's and master's degrees,
03:25as well as a PhD in international relations from Oxford University. She also pursued a
03:30career as an author, writing inspirational books for young readers, and she became a
03:34New York Times bestseller with her book, She Persisted, 13 American Women Who Changed the World.
03:40We need to celebrate and amplify the stories of women who have made our world healthier,
03:47more equitable, more just."
03:49Amy Carter was just 9 years old when her dad, Jimmy Carter, was sworn into the Oval Office.
03:54While she had three older brothers, there was a large age gap between them,
03:57so she lived alone with her parents. The president strived to give Amy as normal a
04:02childhood as possible by enrolling her in a public school and even building a treehouse
04:06for her on the property. While she may have maintained a picture-perfect reputation during
04:10her father's term, things shifted a bit when she went off to college. Shortly after Amy enrolled
04:15at Brown University, she garnered a reputation as a troublemaker, after being arrested three
04:20times at political protests. The targets of her activist ire included racial segregation,
04:25apartheid, IBM, and the CIA. After her sophomore year at Brown, the school dismissed her over her
04:31incomplete coursework, though many believed that the real reason was her activism.
04:35In the years since, she's mostly remained out of the public eye,
04:38although she did appear at her mother Rosalynn's memorial service in 2023.
04:43Susan Ford was 17 when Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency,
04:47leading her father, Gerald Ford, to be sworn into office and become the country's 38th president.
04:52Thankfully for Susan, this development didn't cause as dramatic of a shift in her life as
04:56it did for other presidential children. As she told People magazine in 2021,
05:01I was a senior in high school, and the lucky thing is we lived in Washington,
05:04so I didn't have to change schools."
05:06A memorable perk for Susan during her father's presidency was that her senior prom was held at
05:11the White House in 1975, the first and thus far only high school dance to be held on the premises.
05:17In April 2017, she spoke with MLive about the pressures she faced during this time,
05:22as she admitted,
05:23It was difficult trying to manage being a first daughter and school. My parents were adamant
05:27that school and your education came first, so if I had too much homework, it was,
05:32you're not going to the state dinner."
05:34And sometimes I didn't want to go to the state dinner because
05:37I didn't like the entertainer or whatever."
05:41When Susan's mother Betty was diagnosed with breast cancer, she took over as the White House
05:45hostess and advocated for early detection. In 1982, the Betty Ford Center was founded to help
05:51people dealing with addiction, and Susan worked on many projects alongside her mother. She later
05:56joined the board of directors, and in 2005, she became a chairwoman.
06:00When 16-year-old Lucy Baines Johnson's father, Lyndon Johnson, was sworn into office following
06:05John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963, she became the first teenager in the White House
06:11since William Howard Taft's daughter, Helen. In May 1964, Lucy told Life magazine,
06:16I think my greatest responsibility as the daughter of a president is to be myself,
06:20and to be my best self."
06:22During her father's term, Lucy eventually moved out and enrolled at Georgetown University's School
06:26of Nursing. She had to drop out, however, due to the school's policy against married students.
06:31She later got her degree in communications and became involved in her family's business.
06:36Lucy revealed to People magazine in October 2021 that many of the first children have remained
06:41in contact through holiday cards and reunions at the funerals of loved ones. As she described it,
06:46It's a fraternity of not just first children, but first families. There is a sense of,
06:51you've walked my walk, you know my history, you care. We had an opportunity to be an eyewitness
06:56to history. And it was the privilege of a lifetime. But the facts are, every member
07:00of the first family serves. When John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election, his daughter Caroline was
07:06almost three years old. The press caught many of little Caroline's moments on camera, including
07:11her riding a pony on the lawn of the White House. Two weeks after her father was assassinated in
07:16November 1963, her mother Jackie moved the kids out of the White House. Caroline looked back on
07:21her time in the nation's capital during an interview with WFLA in March 2019. As she revealed,
07:27My mother always said it was the happiest time in our life because our family was together.
07:32I think that you really are brought closer because you're in this really unique situation together.
07:40Caroline eventually went on to study at several prestigious schools,
07:44and after working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a time,
07:47she graduated from Columbia Law School. She maintained her privacy while working as a lawyer,
07:52and she eventually became the United States Ambassador to Japan in 2017,
07:56before taking on the same position for Australia in 2022. As the only surviving child of her
08:01parents, Caroline has kept their memories alive and ensured that the country remembers
08:06what they stood for. Known by the affectionate nickname John John, John F. Kennedy Jr. was born
08:12just two weeks after his dad was elected president, and then he was just a few days
08:16away from turning three when his father was assassinated. One of the most enduring images
08:21of the president's funeral happened when his young son saluted the casket. JFK Jr. maintained
08:26a much more public life than his sister Caroline. He worked as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District
08:31Attorney's Office, and he was even named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive in 1988. During an
08:37interview on ABC's Primetime in May 1992, Kennedy was asked about his father's controversial
08:42personal life, but he chose not to directly answer, instead stating,
08:46"...I think the real question is whether or not given the tenor of the times,
08:50my father would have gone into politics at this point."
08:53At the time, there were rumors about Kennedy Jr. possibly following in his father's footsteps and
08:57running for office himself. Sadly, his life story became similar to that of the senior Kennedy in a
09:02much more tragic way in July 1999, when he, his wife Caroline Bessette, and his sister-in-law Lauren
09:09were killed in a plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard,
09:13Massachusetts. Kennedy had been piloting the small plane at night, and an investigation by
09:18the National Transportation Safety Board determined that,
09:21"...the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night
09:25was the result of spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident were haze and the dark night."