A Look Back at Presidential Families Through the Decades

Over the last century, when we look back at who has occupied the oval office, there is one thing each president has had in common despite party differences: they’ve all had what society considered to be a “presidential” looking family. Americans have become accustomed to seeing a married father and mother, kids they share together, and their pets. This month, for example, would’ve been Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s anniversary as well as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s anniversary too. Therefore, from the Kennedys to the Obamas, we’ve really only seen “traditional” family structures occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

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But, according to the Pew Research Center, “Two-parent households are on the decline in the United States as divorce, remarriage and cohabitation are on the rise. While in the early 1960s babies typically arrived within a marriage, today fully four-in-ten births occur to women who are single or living with a non-marital partner.”

And in 2020, for the first time, we saw candidates running for president that were representative of what American families look like today: candidates with children from previous marriages, candidates with stepchildren, remarried divorcés, or divorcées, and some without children. We also saw unmarried candidates and one candidate with a same-sex spouse.

The look of the “presidential” family is definitely changing so let’s take a look back at the presidential families through the decades.