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Obama 'obtuse" on sharing family duties

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-22 06:23

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama says his family is like a lot of others - in which the men "need to be knocked across the head every once in a while" in order to see imbalances between the time mothers and fathers put into childrearing.

"There's no doubt that our family, like a lot of families out there, were ones in which the men are still a little obtuse about this stuff," Obama said Wednesday in an interview with NBC television.

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He acknowledged things are different now for his wife, Michelle, and him given that they live in the White House with all its creature comforts and army of residence staff.

"Today's Obama Family is obviously not typical," he said. "Five years ago, six years ago, though, we were having a lot of negotiations. Because Michelle was trying to figure out, OK, if the kids get sick why is it that she's the one who has to take time off of her job to go pick them up from school, as opposed to me? If you know, the girls need to shop for clothes. You know, why is it that it's her burden and not mine."

The president said he tried to learn to be better - "to be thoughtful enough and introspective enough that I wasn't always having to be told that things were unfair. That once in a while, I'd actually voluntarily say, 'You know what? Let me relieve this burden on you. Let me make some sacrifices, in terms of how I'm using my time."'

He's the first to acknowledge his efforts were not entirely successful.

"The truth is that Michelle still had to make sacrifices of the sort that I did not have to make," Obama said.