During a speech at the Obama Foundation Summit on Wednesday, Michelle Obama voiced some concerns about the current and upcoming generation of men. On the second day of the Chicago summit, Mrs. Obama sat down with poet Elizabeth Alexander and discussed gender differences.
After relaying the strength of intimate bonds in female friendships, she turned to the men in the audience to advise them to be more open with one another.
“Y’all should get you some friends,” Obama laughed. “Y’all need to go talk to each other about your stuff, because there’s so much of it! Talk about why y’all are the way you are.”
She then shifted the discussion to discuss how parents enable male entitlement.
“We raise our girls to be strong, and sometimes we take care not to hurt men,” she said. “And I think we pay for that a little bit. Are we protecting our men too much, so that they feel a little entitled, a little self-righteous?”
.@MichelleObama: "Are we protecting our men too much, so that they feel a little entitled, a little self-righteous?" pic.twitter.com/EyAaCJP5AW
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 1, 2017
“That’s on us as women too,” Obama continued. “We nurture men and push girls to be perfect.”
She added sons shouldn’t be raised much differently from daughters. Obama even acknowledged she almost gave into the temptation to be overprotective of daughters Sasha and Malia.
“But you can’t be so afraid that life will break them,” she said. “That you don’t prepare them for life.”
