Former first lady Michelle Obama said in her new Netflix documentary that having daughters Malia and Sasha was a “concession” that forced her to give up her “aspirations and dreams.”
Obama’s documentary Becoming was released Wednesday and is “an intimate documentary looking at her life, hopes, and connection with others as she tours with ‘Becoming,’” her book that was released in 2018, according to Netflix.
“My relationship with Barack was all about our partnership,” Obama said. “If I was going to have an equal voice with this very opinionated man, I had to get myself up. I had to set myself off to a place where I was confident that I was going to be his equal.”
“The thing that really changed it was the birth of our children. I wasn’t really ready for that. That really made it harder,” she said. “Something had to give, and it was my aspirations and dreams.”
She added, “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.'”
Before the documentary’s release, it was teased with reports that Obama blamed people who didn’t vote in 2016 for President Trump’s election.
“So, the day I left the White House, and I write about how painful it was to sit on that [inauguration] stage,” Obama said. “A lot of our folks didn’t vote. It was almost like a slap in the face.”
She continued, “I understand the people who voted for Trump. The people who didn’t vote at all, the young people, the women, that’s when you think, man, people think this is a game.”
