Granny-in-chief the White House family guru

WHEN the strains of raising two teenage girls while serving as first lady get too much, Michelle Obama knows she has a place she can go to find support.

In a modest suite in the White House lives Marian Robinson, the first lady’s 77-year-old mother and a bedrock of stability for America’s most famous family.

“She’s been that shoulder for me to lean on,” Michelle Obama said. “I can always go up to her room and cry, complain, argue, and she just says: ‘Go on back down there and do what you’re supposed to do’.”

All three generations of the Obama-Robinson women will be in London this week when the first lady visits. She will be accompanied by her mother and daughters Malia, 16, and Sasha, 14.

While President Barack Obama remains in Washington tending to trade deals and seeking allies against the Islamic State, the rest of his family will be carrying out their own form of public diplomacy in Britain.

Michelle Obama will be hosted for tea at Downing Street by David and Samantha Cameron and will meet Prince Harry to discuss their shared commitment to the families of military veterans.

While the teenagers will be silent in public, the White House believes Malia and Sasha are still powerful ambassadors.

Marian Robinson, sometimes referred to as “granny-in-chief”, is Malia and Sasha’s only living grandpar- ent and has been a constant companion for her two granddaughters since their father first decided to run for president in 2006.

Audiences with the pope and the queen are just part of an extraordinary arc of life for Robinson, who never went to university and grew up as one of seven children on Chicago’s poor South Side.

But the elderly woman, who was still smoking as of 2012 and still does her own laundry, has still not become enamoured with White House life. – The Telegraph

FIRST LADIES: US President Barack Obama and his daughters Malia, left, Sasha, second left, wife Michelle, and mother-in-law Marian Robinson, aged 77 and known as ‘granny-in-chief’