Barack Obama reflected on the challenges of understanding his children while discussing fatherhood with Tom Hanks on the first episode of his new podcast, A Great Book with Barack Obama.
The former president, 65, spoke about raising his two daughters — Malia, 28, and Sasha, 25 — with his wife Michelle Obama on the Audible original, in which he discusses some of the books that have had the biggest impact on his life.
Hanks joined Obama as his first guest on the podcast to speak about Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, a 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel centered on the themes of mortality, compassion and father-son relationships.
In the episode, released Thursday, the two men discussed a passage from the book in which Robinson reflected on how people can love each other deeply while failing to understand one another. She wrote: “A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”
Reflecting on the quote, Obama began: “I don’t have sons.”
“You know my daughters,” he told the actor. “I’ve always said that I think — I can’t know this for sure, but I suspect — it would have been harder for me to raise a son than a daughter.
“Because somehow, there’s a way of bridging some of that incomprehension [with daughters],” he went on. He added that there is no “lion cub” territoriality in his relationships with his children.
“And I didn’t know my own father. But I did know my grandfather, who was a complicated figure. Who I loved but did not comprehend. And he did not comprehend me,” Obama continued.
“There’s great affection and memories, but there was, at some basic level, just a sense of ‘Who is this guy?’”
Obama’s parents divorced when he was two years old. He was raised by his mother, Ann, and maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
He went on to say that his relationship with his grandfather became an “object lesson” of what not to do as a caregiver.
The famous Democrat, who served as president from 2009 to 2017, shared a similar sentiment about raising daughters on his wife’s podcast last July.
While appearing as a special guest on IMO, Michelle’s podcast with her brother Craig Robinson, Obama discussed the challenges that men and boys face today.
“I think we did a pretty good job of raising our girls, but I've said often that I think I would have had more difficulty raising a son,” he said on the July 16, 2025 episode. Michelle added, “I agree.”
He continued: “I think I might've been more judgmental, harder, and I would've tried to — I'd like to think I would have been more self-aware enough to combat that, but I just think father-son relationships, for me, particularly if I don't have a dad around to show it to me, might've been more difficult.”
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