Barack Obama has said all young boys should have a mixture of male role models and friends, including a gay person so that they don’t grow up ‘ignorant’.
The former president spoke with his wife Michelle Obama on the podcast she hosts with her brother, Craig Robinson, called IMO, which stands for ‘in my opinion’.
Obama, 63, whose own father was absent in Kenya during his upbringing, said that even if boys have a ‘great dad’ they need more than one male role model.
‘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,’ the Harvard Law graduate-turned-Democrat politician said.
‘He became one of my favorite professors and was a great guy. He 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 gay or non-binary or what have you, they have somebody that they can go: “okay, I’m not alone in this”.
‘Creating that community, I know it’s corny but, that’s what we need’.
Obama, who has two daughters, was born in Hawaii to an 18-year-old American mother and 27-year-old Kenyan father. They divorced in 1964 when he was three years old.
Barack Obama has said all young boys should have a mixture of male role models and friends including a gay person so that they don’t grow up ‘ignorant’, while speaking on the podcast hosted by his wife Michelle and her brother Craig Robinson, called IMO (in my opinion)
Pictured: Obama at Harvard after he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990
His father, Barack Obama Snr., returned to Kenya where he worked for the government there. The diplomat visited his son in Hawaii only once before he was killed in a car crash in 1982.
Obama was brought up by his mother, Ann Dunham, and his stepfather Lolo Soetoro, in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Honolulu, Hawaii.
After graduating high school, he moved to the US mainland for college, studying at the Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, and Columbia University in New York City where he majored in political science.
Obama later studied at Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Law School.
He told Newsweek in 2008 that his stepfather Soetoro was ‘a good man who gave me some things that were very helpful’. ‘One of the things that he gave me was a pretty hardheaded assessment of how the world works,’ he added.
On his wife’s podcast, he also addressed rumors that their marriage was on the rocks, assuring viewers that they are still happy together.
Obama has two daughters with his wife Michelle. (Pictured: the couple and their daughters Sasha and Malia at Chicago’s Grant Park when they became the new first family in 2009)
The former President of the United States, 63, was a guest on his wife’s podcast IMO
‘What, you guys like each other?’ his brother-in-law Robinson joked, before Michelle replied: ‘Oh yeah, the rumor mill.’
‘She took me back!’ Obama light-heartedly chimed in, adding: ‘It was touch and go for awhile.’
The former first lady added that it is nice to be in the same room as her husband, sassily telling her brother: ‘When we aren’t, folks think we’re divorced.’
Michelle then made a heartfelt admission about her relationship with her husband of almost 33 years.
‘There hasn’t been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quitting my man,’ she said passionately.
‘And we’ve had some really hard times,’ she added.
‘So we 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.’
