Michelle Obama child Sasha Obama
Family life
Michelle's mother Marian Robinson, was a stay-at-home mother. Her father was Fraser C. Robinson III, who worked at the city's water purification plant. Robinson's father, Fraser, died from complications from his illness in March 1991. She would later say that although he was the "hole in my heart" and "loss in my scar", the memory of her father has motivated her each day since. Her friend Suzanne Alele died from cancer around this time as well. These losses made her think of her contributions toward society and how well she was influencing the world from her law firm, in her first job after law school. She considered this a turning point.Robinson met Barack Obama when they were among the few African Americans at their law firm, Sidley Austin LLP (she has sometimes said only two, although others have noted that there were others in different departments). She was assigned to mentor him while he was a summer associate. Their relationship started with a business lunch and then a community organization meeting where he first impressed her.Before meeting Obama, Michelle had told her mother she intended to focus solely on her career. The couple's first date was to Spike Lee's movie Do the Right Thing (1989). Barack Obama has said the couple had an "opposites attract" scenario in their initial interest in each other, since Michelle had stability from her two-parent home while he was "adventurous". They married on October 3, 1992. After suffering a miscarriage, Michelle underwent in vitro fertilisation to conceive their daughters Malia Ann (born 1998) and Natasha (known as Sasha, born 2001).The Obama family lived on Chicago's South Side, where Barack taught at the University of Chicago Law School. He was elected to the state senate in 1996, and to the US Senate in 2004. They chose to keep their residence in Chicago after Barack's election rather than to move to Washington, DC, as they felt it was better for their daughters. Throughout her husband's 2008 campaign for US President, Michelle Obama made a "commitment to be away overnight only once a week – to campaign only two days a week and be home by the end of the second day" for their two daughters.
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