Obamas used as a role model

CHICAGO — Seven-year-old Ava Childers will soon be responsible for making her own bed every day.

And she can thank the Obamas for that.

Ava's mother, Danita, got the idea after hearing that the soon-to-be first daughters, Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10, are required to make their own beds in the morning.

"I hadn't given her any chores ... and I just mentioned it to my husband," said Danita Childers, recalling their recent parenting discussion. "Maybe she's old enough to do something like that."

Like others across the country who are looking to the Obamas as parental role models, the Childers family of Chicago's South Side are eating up stories about the Obama family's values: from the girls' 8 p.m. bedtime to the president-elect's "Harry Potter" reading nights to the task of selecting a pet dog.

The fascination with the future First Family is not new. The American public clamored to hear reports of Teddy Roosevelt's rambunctious children, and Benjamin Harrison's grandson, "Baby McKee," helped the president counter his image as a cold fish, said Richard Norton Smith, a presidential scholar at George Mason University. And of course there are the Kennedys, who introduced a new generation to White House family life with little "John John" and Caroline living in "Camelot."

But local parenting experts say the fact that the Obamas are the first African-American family to move to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., along with their well-known personal struggles growing up, make them even more appealing as modern-day role models.

"People just want to know everything about them," said Childers, a member of Chicago's Jack and Jill of America, a group aimed at fostering positive development of African-American families. "They feel like these two people are exemplary, and they didn't come from exemplary backgrounds." So how does an average, ordinary family raise an exemplary child?

Tamar Williams, 28, of Chicago's Bronzeville community, said interviews of Michelle Obama speaking about her children inspired her to begin home-schooling her own kids.

"When you look at the Obamas, you can tell that they spend a lot of one-on-one time with their children, even in the midst of their careers," Williams said. "It made me want to put my children first."

Some organizations whose goal is to instill good parenting habits recognize the Obamas' influence and are using it during meetings.

At a recent group discussion at the Teen Parent Connection in DuPage County, Ill., a parent mentioned how much he admired the fact that the Obama children had to go to school the day after the historic election.

The group's leader, Courtney Simek, seized the moment. She asked the class to list other examples of good parenting they'd heard about from the Obamas.

"Having him, as president-elect, share and come public with a lot of family values and family morals is really going to shape the way that parents in our own counties parent and discipline their children," she said.

Sensing that influence, leaders at the Early Reading First Project at the University of Illinois at Chicago hope that the president-elect will publicize the books he reads to his children. The project's leaders see those books flying off the shelves as parents buy them like they were in Oprah's Book Club.

Even the Obamas' Christmas card is giving people cause for reflection.

Lisa Henry-Reid received an e-mailed copy of their holiday video card and was struck with the way each family member had a say in the video. (After the adults speak, Malia says, "Merry Christmas," followed by Sasha saying, "Happy Holidays.")

Henry-Reid felt the sharing demonstrated their equal roles in the household, so she forwarded the clip on, as a parenting lesson.

"I've sent that around to several other friends to say, not only is this very nice, but this could be something that you could do yourself," said Henry-Reid, the chairwoman of adolescent and young adult medicine at Stroger Hospital.

The tendency to look to famous people for parenting advice is natural, especially in recent decades, when families often live geographically further away from their natural role models — their own parents — than in the past, said Jennifer Dubose, a marriage and family therapist and parenting columnist for Chicago Parent magazine.

But Dubose cautioned that, as with any celebrity, people should not fall into the habit of unfairly judging themselves based on the images we see in the media.

"They look wonderfully shiny, clean and bright," Dubose said of the Obamas. "They look like a wonderful family and frankly, they may well be. But who knows what happens when the cameras aren't rolling and the doors are closed?"