Leaders from Broken Homes: Obama, Clinton, Lula da Silva

Barack Obama, William Jefferson Clinton and Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, are leaders with exceptional ability to share feelings and communicate empathy to large publics. All three charted their own course in life instead of following a family history or tradition. They may owe their success, in part, to having been raised by mothers who were single parents for many of their critical childhood years. All three took their moth-

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ers’ side in conflicts with their fathers or stepfathers.

Lula da Silva was born into severe poverty in a rural shack in the northeast of Brazil. His family bought rice only when someone was too sick to digest manioc flour and walked to the river to wash their clothes. They had no electricity or household appliances other than a wood stove. Lula’s father had eight children with his mother before running off to São Paulo before Lula was born to start another large family with his wife’s cousin. Lula was the sixth of his father’s twenty-three children, and the only one of his siblings to finish primary school.

Bill Clinton’s biological father, William Jefferson Blythe, was killed in an automobile accident before Bill was born, leaving Bill and his mother in difficult financial circumstances relieved by help from his grandparents. His mother later remarried, but his stepfather had a drinking problem and abused his mother. Bill supported his mother in seeking a divorce.

Barack Obama’s father left him and his mother in Hawaii to pursue a doctorate in economics at Harvard, and then returned to his native Kenya without either of them. His mother later married another foreign student, an Indonesian, and she and Barack lived for a time with him in Indonesia before returning to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.

These mothers did not have time to smother their children or dominate their lives. All of them had to work for a living and relied on grandparents or older children to help with childcare. None of them pressured their sons to follow a particular career path, but all of them strongly encouraged their sons to get a good education.

Lula da Silva’s mother took her children to São Paulo on the back of a truck to reconcile with his father, only to find that he wanted to share her with her cousin. His father didn’t want him or any of his brothers or sisters to get an education because he himself was illiterate. His mother separated from his father and encouraged Lula and his siblings to go to school. He won admission to a technical school and became a lathe mechanic and then a union leader and politician.

Barack Obama’s mother got up at four A.M. every morning to give him three hours of correspondence lessons before he went to Catholic parochial and Indonesian public schools. When he was age ten, she then sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents and he won admission to an elite private school. Bill Clinton excelled in the Arkansas public schools where his political skills were nurtured with extracurricular activities. As young Protestants these boys had been sent for a year or two to Catholic parochial schools because of their reputation for offering a very good education. Both mothers expected great things of their sons—according to Barack’s half-sister their mother even joked with him about his becoming America’s first black president.

All three leaders felt anger or resentment with their fathers or stepfathers, and all three had close and warm relationships with their mothers. But none of them became overly dependent on their mothers or remained in their mothers’ homes after reaching adulthood.

None of these leaders modeled their lives or their careers on their fathers. Lula da Silva described his father as a “well of ignorance” and rebelled by getting an education against his father’s wishes. As a teenager Bill Clinton decided on a career in politics although his father and stepfather were both businessmen. Barack Obama pursued a career in law, community organizing and politics instead of following his father’s example of a career in economics and public administration.

Modeling themselves on their mothers may have helped these leaders develop skills in human relations and practical problem solving. Not having to compete with their fathers for their mothers’ attention may have helped them build self-confidence. Not having to compete with their fathers, or being expected to realize their fathers’ ambitions, may have helped them to move quickly through adolescence into a career path that suited their own talents and inclinations. The exceptional political abilities of William Jefferson Clinton, Barack Obama, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have many roots, including their experiences in growing up without their natural fathers.

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