Barack Obama was elected during my second year of college, and save for his skin color, he had much in common with Bill Clinton: Despite an unstable life with a single mother, aided by two loving grandparents, he had made in his adulthood a family life that seemed to embody my sense of the American ideal.
My parents separated when I was eight. I grew up with my mom alone.
I grew up in a little bit of a broken home.
When I was growing up, we never had much money. My parents were divorced young, but I was always surrounded by loving individuals. They couldn't give us riches, but they gave us their stories, their hearts, and their time.
My family comes from Panama, and I grew up in a single parent household with my mother, who barely spoke English. She couldn't get a good job, yet there were four of us for her to raise.
I'm still hungry. I'm still striving... You have to understand: my mum has worked hard to look after her children, but we have always been poor; we have always been at rock bottom. I want to change my family history forever.
I've always lived with my mom. My whole life.
I come from a home where my mother was the only emotional umbrella under which we found all the warmth and comforts and sustenance. My father would come and go, and not as often as we'd want him to.
My father died when I was five, but I grew up in a strong family.
I grew up in the South Bronx in the 1970s. My dad worked in IT, and my mom was a teacher.
I never really paid attention to sports, which, coming from the mecca of football in Texas, is kind of odd. I played sports, but I was nerdy. Having a single mother, the pressure was on me to get good grades and a scholarship and go to college.
I came from a broken home, so my mom was a major influence in my life.
We actually have a small family. It's just my father and I and my grandmother, who lives in Tokyo. I cherish my friendships.
When I originally came to the U.S., my mother came with a couple hundred dollars to her name. I didn't know we were struggling because she hid that from me. But it was definitely a struggle to get through life and get through school.
My parents, who were split up, were so good at keeping my environment strong and keeping everything around me not focused on the fact that we were poor. They got me culture. They took me to museums. They showed art to me. They read to me. And my mother drove two hours a day to take me to University Elementary School.
I lived with my mom and sister, so I'm more used to dealing with women.
My overwhelming memory of being a child is the huge amount of love I felt for my mum. She was my everything, because she was both my mum and my dad.
You do need parental guidance and I was in a great position with both my mum and dad. They split when I was a baby but even though I stayed with my mom they were both very much involved in my upbringing.
My parents separated when I was very small. I grew up with my mother, and I was a single child then. She was very independent, doing her things and having fun alone and working.
My parents are separated. My father left when I was six years old.
I did not give my daughter the kind of childhood anybody would want. The vision of the divided loyalty between a mother and father who don't live together and don't share in decisions is a great depravation for children.
We were not rich by any means. My dad was a plasterer and worked long hours - I hardly ever saw him when I was growing up. He had always gone to work before I woke up, and usually, I would be in bed before he came home.
I was on significant financial aid, an only child, with parents who didn't have much living in North Carolina.
Financial hardships were rough on us, even though Mom had a good job at G.M.
Growing up, I did not have many friends with parents who were together.
