Presidential kids who were estranged from their parents

Born into a wealthy and prominent family (he’s related to President Theodore Roosevelt), Franklin Delano Roosevelt won his first election in 1910, a seat in the New York State Senate. Three years later, President Woodrow Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, which required him to spend most of his time in Washington, D.C. His sixth and youngest child, John A. Roosevelt, was born in March 1916, and the Roosevelt clan elected to spend the summer at the family’s retreat on Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada, according to Jean Edward Smith’s FDR. Well, not Franklin Roosevelt. 

Per Smith, the future president stayed behind in Washington, D.C., where he started up a decades-long affair with Lucy Mercer, his wife’s social secretary. That reportedly began a pattern of distance between FDR and John — not only was dad not around much, busy with work and politics, but he also developed polio when the boy was about five. While they were cordial, they were not close, and nowhere was that more evident that in political ideology. Franklin Roosevelt is an icon of liberal democrats for instituting a social safety set during the Great Depression, while John, according to Smith, was “a closet Republican” who didn’t publicly divulge this until after his father died in 1945.

Written by: Nicki