Family and personal life

Family and personal life

Barack Obama together with his family, as they wave from the South Portico of the White House to guests attending the White House Easter Egg Roll.Main articles: Early life and career of Barack Obama and Family of Barack Obama
In a 2006 interview, Obama highlighted the diversity of his extended family: "It's like a little mini-United Nations", he said. "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher."[188] Obama has seven half-siblings from his Kenyan father's family, six of them living, and a half-sister with whom he was raised, Maya Soetoro-Ng, the daughter of his mother and her Indonesian second husband.[189] Obama's mother was survived by her Kansas-born mother, Madelyn Dunham[190] until her death on November 2, 2008[191] just two days before his election to the Presidency. In Dreams from My Father, Obama ties his mother's family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.[192] Obama's great-uncle served in the 89th Division that overran Ohrdruf,[193] the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops during World War II.[194]

Obama was known as "Barry" in his youth, but asked to be addressed with his given name during his college years.[195] Besides his native English, Obama speaks Indonesian at the conversational level, which he learned during his four childhood years in Jakarta.[196] He plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school's varsity team.[197]


Obama playing basketball with U.S. military at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti in 2006[198]Obama is a well known supporter of the Chicago White Sox, and threw out the first pitch at the 2005 ALCS when he was still a senator.[199] In 2009 he threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the all star game wearing a White Sox jacket.[200]

In June 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson when he was employed as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin.[201] Assigned for three months as Obama's adviser at the firm, Robinson joined him at group social functions, but declined his initial requests to date.[202] They began dating later that summer, became engaged in 1991, and were married on October 3, 1992.[203] The couple's first daughter, Malia Ann, was born on July 4, 1998,[204] followed by a second daughter, Natasha ("Sasha"), on June 10, 2001.[205] The Obama daughters attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. When they moved to Washington, D.C., in January 2009, the girls started at the private Sidwell Friends School.[206]

Applying the proceeds of a book deal, the family moved in 2005 from a Hyde Park, Chicago condominium to a $1.6 million house in neighboring Kenwood, Chicago.[207] The purchase of an adjacent lot and sale of part of it to Obama by the wife of developer, campaign donor and friend Tony Rezko attracted media attention because of Rezko's subsequent indictment and conviction on political corruption charges that were unrelated to Obama.[208]

In December 2007, Money magazine estimated the Obama family's net worth at $1.3 million.[209] Their 2007 tax return showed a household income of $4.2 million—up from about $1 million in 2006 and $1.6 million in 2005—mostly from sales of his books.[210]

Obama is a Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that he "was not raised in a religious household". He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents (whom Obama has specified elsewhere as "non-practicing Methodists and Baptists") to be detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known". He describes his father as "raised a Muslim", but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful". Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change".[211] He was baptized at the Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988 and was an active member there for two decades.[212] Obama resigned from Trinity during the Presidential campaign after controversial statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright became public.[213]

Obama has tried to quit smoking several times,[214] and said he will not smoke in the White House.