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Michelle Obama has revealed she felt unprepared for life in the White House, and that there were many things she wishes she had known beforehand.
In a bombshell interview withy Steven Bartlett on Diary Of A CEO, Michelle has opened up about everything, from the pain of going through IVF to the realities of political life.
She said they were thrown in at the deep end following Barack's success with the presidency back in 2008.
Michelle says there are many things she would do differently now if she had the chance.
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"I didn’t enough to know what to ask for. I mean, we were flying blind. I didn’t know what that journey was going to be or what I would need to negotiate for myself - and that was a bit problematic," she confessed.
"It was problematic not to know what I needed," the former first lady explained.
Steven asked what she should have said.
"I should have said that I needed his team to really, truly value that he had a family," said Michelle. "I shouldn’t have just said, 'Well, this is what it takes to get this done.'
She said that many of those surrounding Barack didn't seem to know what to do with a young family.
"It was almost like the consultants sitting around saying, 'This is the way it has to be', and remember, the legacy of the presidential office doesn’t recognise families. It’s not designed for them."
"When you get in there, it all revolves around the Commander-in-Chief — who has always been a man. The whole system doesn’t really take into account the wife, the kids, and their needs and the demands placed on them," explained Michelle.
This unwillingness, or inability, to cater for a young family put a lot of pressure on Michelle to make things work.
"I wound up having to fight for a lot of things on my own. If I had known then what I know now, I would have asked for different accommodations — ways the West Wing just did not think about or work to fully protect all of us as a unit," she revealed.
The way things were in the White House just weren't set up to cater for a young family, and Michelle and Barack share two daughters, Sasha and Malia.
Sasha Obama, aged just seven, was the youngest person to live in the White House since John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1961.
Malia Obama was 10 when she moved into the White House.
Michelle recalls: "Even when it came down to how the Secret Service protected us — I had to push for things we needed just to function as a family.
"Maybe Laura Bush knew more than I did. The Bushes had been in the White House before. Maybe there’s a world where people knew more about what to expect than we did.
"But there are also generational differences. I was a very different First Lady — not terribly different from Hillary Clinton, but it was a different time.
"We had small kids in the White House, and that didn’t happen very often. That changed everything."
She has also confessed in the interview that she used to use physical discipline with her daughters, but then changed her mind and stopped.
Topics: Politics, US News, Michelle Obama
Jen Thomas