“A key reason why George Washington was unanimously elected as our first president was because he had not fathered any children of his own.” This distinction would prevent him from establishing a monarchy to pass the reins of power to an heir. Of the 43 presidents including Washington, only five have not produced progeny. Award-winning journalist Joshua Kendall examines how these men have handled a job that has arguably the greatest responsibility of any in the world, while developing and sustaining a role as parent.

"Joshua Kendall examines how these men have handled a job that has arguably the greatest responsibility of any in the world, while developing and sustaining a role as parent."

Kendall divides his exploration into six parenting categories. The “Preoccupied” certainly included Franklin Delano Roosevelt, content to leave the treatment of his children to his mother and his wife, the former an autocratic spoiler and the latter a frustrated disciplinarian. After he was stricken with polio, FDR’s withdrawal from fatherhood was more marked, and his children grew up unfocused and impulsive. Theodore Roosevelt, though, was solidly in the “Playful Pals” group, with Christmas a central family-focused season. TR was in many ways like a kid himself, and a vocal proponent of large families. “Double Dealers” include the privately manipulative, domineering John Tyler, who fathered more than 50 children among his slaves, a sin not unique among men of high office in America, but Tyler boasted of it. His sexual indiscretions went so far as “staging wild sex parties with his two adult sons.”

Dwight Eisenhower was a “Tiger Dad,” unable to control his temper and frequently disparaging and humiliating his son, John. Ike’s fits of anger were so notable that behind the scenes, he was called “the terrible-tempered Mr. Bang.” Presidents who carried with them the scars of sorrow are the “Grief-stricken Dads,” notable among them Abraham Lincoln, who lost three of four sons, and Calvin Coolidge, who, though famously reticent in public, shouted hysterically and sobbed uncontrollably at the loss of Calvin, Jr.

Last are the “Nurturers,” a group that has been recently joined by Barack Obama, who, noting the proximity of his White House office to his “home,” decreed that he would be present at family dinners five nights a week. According to Kendall, Obama has made a campaign out of his own experience of being a black man who grew up with an absent father, asserting that many of the ills of our blighted cities “can be addressed if more black men can be inspired to do for their children what their fathers never did for them.”

Kendall concludes by looking to a future when Americans inevitably will elect our first female president, suggesting that “Our first First Mom will have to work even harder than her male predecessors to prove she can hold her own” in the highest office in the land.

Audiobook available, read by Johnny Heller