Michelle Obama Reveals Who's Most Active on the Family Group Text and Opens Up About Sasha and Malia Adulting

Mar. 15, 2025

Michelle Obama, like any wise parent, had to check her bubbling-over glee when her daughters,MaliaandSasha, announced they were moving in together.

“You try not to react too much because it’s like, you don’t want to go, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so happy for you!’ because then they think, ‘Well, maybe this is not a good thing if my mom likes it,'” Obama tells PEOPLE in aninterviewpreviewing her new book,The Light We Carry.

“So I just said, ‘Okay, well that’s interesting that you guys are going to try living together. We’ll see how it goes.’ But yeah, it feels good to know that the two girls you raised find solace at a kitchen table with one another. It’s like the one thing you want for them.”

In the book Obama shares personal stories of how she’s learned — and practiced — overcoming everything from heranxiety over the pandemic and racial and political unrest, and anytension in her marriageto thechanges she is experiencing in menopause.

For more on PEOPLE’s interview with Michelle Obama, listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.

The mother of two, always fiercely protective of her daughters’ private lives, also gives a glimpse into how she and Barack now parent from afar. She writes of being on a video call with Sasha and keeping quiet as she watches — with a mix of maternal pride and maternal judgment — Malia in the background dusting some shelves without moving any of the stuff on those shelves.

“But hey, she was halfway dusting! My heart felt ready to burst,” Obama writes.

It’s the closeness between the young women that Obama treasures most, havingworried for years— ever since 2007, when her husband decided to run for president — overproviding them “normalcy"in their childhood.

“I think that they realize that they have a unique bond because they’re the only two who know what they just went through — growing up in the White House with the brightest spotlight in the world on you as you were going through adolescence and puberty. They uniquely know what that means for them.

“I think they become even closer now that they’re out on the other side. But yeah, it makes me feel really, really good. Not just that they’re living together, but they’re thriving together — and they’re thriving on their own as individual young women,” Obama says.

Barack Obama/instagram

As for howBarack, 61, is handling his daughters living almost 3,000 miles away, Obama chuckles about her husband being the most active on their family text chain.

“He’s still typical [Dad]. You have these weird panic thoughts that your girls are out living in this messy world. And so, you think about crazy things you want to make sure you tell them. It’s like,‘Remember, don’t walk alone at night!’ Barack sent them an email about earthquake preparedness because they’re living in California. He’s a big article sender and we all just read ‘em and laugh.”

But, Obama adds wryly, their youngest is having the last laugh.

“Now Sasha’s starting to share some articles because she’s a psychology major and I think she’s slowly psychoanalyzing us,” Obama says. “Some of the articles are specific to what she thinks are our individual neuroses.”

For more ofPEOPLE’s interview with Obama—including a first-look excerpt from her book—pick up the new issue on newsstands Friday.

source: people.com