When I was growing up, I worked in a grocery store, as a bus boy, bar back and waiter, and as a house painter. My parents reside in an assisted living community and our family likes to go out for ice cream on the weekends, so a lot of the people we meet are working in those kind of jobs. And, of course, you already knew that Barack Obama and I shared the experience of working for Project Vote and serving as community organizers in poor urban communities in the United States.
President Barack Obama and wife Michelle both worked minimum-wage jobs before they got law degrees: a character-building experience they said they also want their teenage daughters to share.
The president scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, waited tables at an assisted-living facility for seniors and also worked as a painter. The first lady worked at a book binding shop.
“I think every kid needs to get a taste of what it’s like to do that real hard work,” Michelle Obama said in an interview with Parade magazine, slated to run on Sunday.
“We are looking for opportunities for them to feel as if going to work and getting a paycheck is not always fun, not always stimulating, not always fair,” the president said. “But that’s what most folks go through every single day.”
Personally, I think this is a mistake by the Obamas. They are making a fine point and their intentions are good, but this puts a giant bullseye on their daughters who will now be criticized for taking jobs that pay anything above minimum wage.
The first couple has taken pains to keep their daughters Malia, 16, and Sasha, 13, out of the public eye while in the White House. But Malia was recently spotted on the set of a CBS television program, working as a production assistant for a day.
Needless to say, Barack and Michelle didn’t have the opportunity to work as production assistants for a day at a major television network. If they had had opportunities like that, they probably wouldn’t have been very interested in serving lunch to seniors or doing book-binding for minimum wage.
Taking jobs like that does build character, but it’s kind of an artificial experience if your father is the president of the United States of America.
What’s refreshing here is that the Obamas are not “taking on airs.” They don’t want their daughters to act like they are more important or powerful than other people, even though they actually are very privileged girls. Michelle and Barack want their daughters to share some of the experiences they went through so they will have respect for hard work and working people. And that’s admirable up to a point. But Malia and Sasha are not going to be painting my house or scooping my ice cream, and there is nothing wrong with that. They should not be set up to be criticized for enjoying advantages in life.
Parents work to make life easier for their children than it was for themselves, and when they succeed there should not be recriminations. Teaching your children where they came from and to have respect for folks at all scales of the economy is sufficient. They don’t have to live your lives to carry on your values.
I didn’t realize the President worked as a painter. I am now waiting for some RWNJ to make the comparison to someone else who worked as a painter and led a “socialist” party and was dictatorial.
Or they’ll scour through the records and be like “There is no record you worked as a painter. Were you paid under the table? Next at 5: was the president a tax cheat?”
Good point. Adolph was a lowly corporal from a broken home. And he painted stuff.
Like it or not, these two girls are top celebrities. They move in the heavens among the stars of the US top. Michelle and Barack Obama were ordinary US-ians when they took such jobs. The whole notion is either goofy or hyocritical. Whatever, they can’t be for real.
Their sentiment is authentic, but agree that they should have left their daughters out of it or expressed their struggle in how to find an appropriate alternative for their daughters to instill the values developed through real experiences that they so clearly view as necessary.
The truth is that no kid growing up with a certain level of financial privilege will have such experiences. A simulated version (ie if you want in iphone, get a job) is likely better than nothing, but its not real and therefore, lacks important life learning elements of the real experience. One being finding the freaking crappy job in the first place which for many begins before the one that comes with a paycheck. Mowing lawns, shoveling snow, babysitting, etc. Growing up in the WH during the ages when many find casual service work, the Obama daughters have been denied that first opportunity. And sending them off to some minimum wage job with their necessary Secret Service entourage is so artificial that it may be worse than nothing.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with volunteer work that’s actual work. After graduating from college, Jenna Bush seems to have done some of that. (Assume it was her natural interests and inclinations and not political PR, but I could be wrong. And even if it was PR, seems not to have harmed her.) However, not while they’re teens living in the White House.
I think you’re absolutely right and yet I really appreciate the Obamas’ impulse to not only want to give this experience to their children but also for the values they express and hold up as an example by so doing. Yes, one can never be artificially poor. Sasha and Malia know they’re not going to be stuck in a dead end job and they don’t have to worry about how to pay the rent if the car dies and they can’t get to work.
I think it’s a real problem for the rich that they cannot teach their children such values. I’m a divorce attorney, not wealthy but upper-middle class, and I think that’s the sweet spot for children. Both of mine strove to be more successful than me and have succeeded. They understood the importance and value of work but stood on a firm foundation that helped them to achieve success. It’s hard to be really poor and in many ways it’s hard to be really rich too.
What I neglected to include is that generally the age when kids get their first crappy job is related to the financial wealth or credit of their parents. The less wealth, the younger they seek a job. The work experience for a sixteen year old high school student will be different for an eighteen year high school graduate.
Part of school and first jobs is learning how to interact with those that will likely be part of one’s social milieu for many years to come. Malia and Sascha’s will remain wealthier kids that attend private schools. A more elite version of their father’s experience and why he so easily interacts with elites. Barack and Michelle seem to be doing very well, under their circumstances, in not over-indulging their daughters, setting age appropriate limits and boundaries, and having high expectations for their academic and life achievements. Whatever challenges they ultimately are forced to face in life, a crappy little job isn’t going to help them. Plus, for them to take one would deprive another kid of that needed job.
Yeah, the very concept makes me cringe. Even if the Obamas have the very best of intentions, and I want to believe they do, we all know how the Mighty Wurlitzer will play it. Whatever positive lessons the girls might gain from the experience would be totally overshadowed by the trauma of being thrust once again into that toxic fishbowl.
I actually think there are job they could where they could work without inflicting their celebrity on their co-workers.
In HS and college I worked at minimum wage in a windowless office processing student loans files and at another job coding market research surveys. Nothing about it would make for great tv and their being there would get boring to the public almost as fast as it would for the kids. Employers don’t even have to press crews on the property.
But I made friends at that job, learned how to deal with the drudgery and still work with pride.
And it taught me more than being shuffled off to a boarding school and learning how to order “the help” around correctly
The only thing I learned from working a minimum wage job was how to recognize the sound of my own screams: the minute I finished my physics PhD I started my high paying job at the research factory and never looked back.
Good for the Obamas that they want their children to be firmly grounded, but I suspect that they have already succeeded in this task. The kids who need this lesson are the trust fund babies who are insulated from the realities of ordinary life, who have absorbed the ways of success in the overclass, and who will never do an honest day’s work in their pampered little lives. Like Chelsea, Jenna and Not-jenna, less like Amy.
Don’t know about “not-Jenna,” but for a child of privilege, Jenna this isn’t too shabby:
Now, if she, like Chelsea, is paid $600,000/year by NBC for her less than part-time gig, fair game to criticize her as well. But she still chose to go to a public university and declined to have a WH wedding.
Couldn’t disagree more; it’s one thing to read about something, another to have some experience of it; Malia and Sasha will have a chance to meet people in ways of life they would otherwise know only indirectly. Andrew makes a good point upthread
Call me jaded, but just because someone works at a minimum wage job for a fucking summer doesn’t mean they’ve done their “hard work” and that their rise through the ranks based on nepotism should be overlooked.
Obama isn’t a sociopath and he isn’t an old-money oligarch, but holy shit, he’s 52 and is one of the most powerful people on the planet. His kids are going to be rich and “successful” regardless of working at a fast food restaurant or wherever they work as a token thrown to the rabble.
Ugh. Nepotism fucking sucks. I really get tired of having my nose shoved in it.
I don’t really understand the problem with this. Having them work minimum wage jobs will teach them things. If nothing else, gratitude for winning the birth lottery.
I have to agree with Andrew on this one. My first low-paying college jobs were babysitting wealthy people’s children and then bartending. I learned some of the behaviors to avoid if one wants an unspoiled child and I can still make a good Bloody Mary today. However, my last college job was clerking in an antique shop. The experience developed into a hobby after graduating and I still hit the yard sales today. I have learned so much cultural history the last 40 years and met some very interesting people. Also, when shopping for regular stuff, I try my best to be polite to sales associates.