Former first lady Michelle Obama said in a new Netflix documentary that having kids was a “concession” that cost her “aspirations and dreams.”
In the documentary “Becoming,” which was released Wednesday, Obama, 56, describes her life from childhood until her time in the White House as first lady.
“My relationship with Barack was all about our equal partnership,” she recalls. “If I was going to have a unique voice with this very opinionated man, I had to get myself up and set myself off to a place where I was going to be his equal.”
But the birth of their two daughters — Malia, 21, and Sasha, 18 — “changed” the dynamic of their relationship, she said.
“The thing that really changed it was the birth of our children. I wasn’t really ready for that. That really made it harder,” Obama says. “Something had to give and it was my aspirations and dreams.”
She continues: “I made that concession not because he said ‘you have to quit your job,’ but it felt like ‘I can’t do all of this so I have to tone down my aspirations, I have to dial it back.’”
Obama also said she and her husband “do not want to be at the forefront forever” — and appeared to suggest that they would take a step back from the limelight at some point.
“Barack and I don’t want to be at the forefront of it all forever … not even for much longer,” she says.
She refrained from criticizing President Trump in the documentary, which shows her speaking at her book shows, including one where she said she “sobbed” when she boarded Air Force One after Trump’s 2017 inauguration.
“When I got on the plane, I sobbed for 30 minutes. I think it was just the release of eight years trying to do everything perfectly,” she said in a 2018 interview with Oprah.