First Dads

Every president has had some experience as a parent. Of the 43 men who have served in the nation’s highest office, 38 have fathered biological children and the other five adopted children. Each president’s parenting style reveals much about his beliefs as well as his psychological make-up. James Garfield enjoyed jumping on the bed with his kids. FDR’s children, on the other hand, had to make appointments to talk to him. In a lively narrative, based on research in archives around the country and interviews with members of several First Families, I show presidential character in action. Readers will learn which type of parent might be best suited to leading the American people and, finally, how the fathering experiences of our presidents have forever changed the course of American history.

The book, which was published by Grand Central on May 10, 2016, divides America’s First Dads into six types. The largest category, “the preoccupied,” describes those presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson who were consumed by politics. As James Roosevelt, FDR’s eldest son, put it, “Heads of state have little time to be heads of families... father was too busy building his political career to play a regular role in our upbringing.” Leaders such as Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt who connected with their children primarily through play are dubbed “playful pals.” The “double-dealing dads”—those who fathered illegitimate children—include Grover Cleveland and Warren Harding—plus a few surprises. Both John Adams and John Quincy Adams qualify as “tiger dads,” as they demanded perfection in their offspring. Among the “grief-stricken dads,” who were deeply affected by the loss of a child during their time in office, were Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, and Calvin Coolidge. And then there were “the nurturers” such as Rutherford B. Hayes and Harry Truman. As Truman wrote his teenage daughter, Margaret in 1941, “You mustn’t get agitated when your old dad calls you his baby, because he will always think of you as just that—no matter how old or how big you may get. When you’d cry at night with that awful pain, he’d walk you and wish he could have it for you. When that little pump of yours insisted on going 120 a minute when 70 would have been enough, he got a lot of grey hairs. And now—what a daughter he has! It is worth twice all the trouble and ten times the grey hairs.”