Ask any parent of a toddler how they’re doing, and you’ll likely get a tired laugh. Those early years are beautiful, yes, but they’re also relentless: the sleepless nights, the constant vigilance, the sense that your only real job is getting everyone to bedtime in one piece. According to President Barack Obama, that feeling is completely normal, and there’s something wonderful waiting on the other side of it.
In an exclusive clip shared with Momé from his new Audible podcast, A Great Book, premiering September 24, President Obama sits down with Tom Hanks to discuss Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Gilead. Along the way, the conversation turns to something every parent can relate to: the stages of raising a child, and why age seven might just be the sweet spot.
Listen to the exclusive audio clip now
“I always tell young parents it’s tough those three years,” President Obama shares. “You need to keep them alive.”
It’s a refreshingly honest take from a father of two, and a reminder that the survival mode so many of us feel in the baby and toddler years is a season, not a permanent state. Once those early years pass, the Former President suggests, something shifts. Children become curious companions, full of questions and wonder, while still wanting to hold your hand. It’s what he calls the “golden age of childhood.”
The setting for this reflection is fitting. Gilead is written as a letter from an aging minister, Reverend John Ames, to his young son, a boy he knows he won’t see grow up. It’s a book about fatherhood, faith, and paying attention to the ordinary moments that make up a life, and it has long been one of President Obama’s favorites. Hearing him and Hanks connect its themes to their own experiences as fathers adds a tender layer to an already moving conversation.
About A Great Book with Barack Obama
Some books change the way you see the world. In A Great Book, President Obama is joined by six of the most compelling thinkers, writers, and artists of our time to revisit the books that shaped his life and his perspective. Reflecting on identity, power, memory, and culture, each conversation explores one central question: What do the stories we love tell us about the world we live in, and the world we want to create?
For parents, the takeaway from this episode is simple and comforting. If you’re deep in the “keep them alive” years right now, hang in there. The golden age is coming.
A Great Book with Barack Obama premieres September 24, exclusively on Audible. Listen at audible.com/greatbook.
