Ann Dunham not only raised a future president of the United States but also broke barriers by nurturing the first Black American to occupy the Oval Office. However, she made significant sacrifices along the way. Barack Obama’s childhood was marked by witnessing his mother’s struggle to make ends meet while pursuing her academic ambitions. Though challenging, it was likely Dunham’s hardships that shaped her into a determined woman and helped raise an equally resolute son.
Dunham became a single mother just two years after giving birth at 18. Following her divorce from Obama’s father, he saw him only once when he was 10 years old, yet his mother always spoke positively about Barack Obama Sr. This wasn’t the only time Dunham faced the challenge of raising a young child alone; when she and her second husband separated, Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro, was still a toddler.
But Dunham never allowed her struggles to hinder her fight for what she believed was best for her children. For her, education was a top priority. She made the difficult decision to live apart from her 10-year-old son so he could receive what she deemed the education he deserved. This determination remained strong until her tragic end; she passed away from cancer in 1995 while battling her insurance company for the medical care she needed. Witnessing his mother’s relentless resilience as she forged her own path became Obama’s greatest inspiration.Ann Dunham was a young single mother. She was barely out of her teens when her husband left her to raise their 2-year-old son alone. Barack Obama’s mother had him at 18 and became a single parent by the age of 20. This reality starkly contrasted with the Dunham that her family, friends, and even a younger Obama knew. Before meeting Barack Obama Sr., she had shown little interest in domestic life, instead pursuing her ambitions to become an academic.
The sudden shift in her life did not go unnoticed. “She was a very intelligent, quiet girl, interested in her friendships and current events,” her friend Maxine Box told Time in 2008. “She wasn’t particularly interested in children or getting married.” However, after falling in love and becoming pregnant, she had no choice but to become the best mother she could be to Obama with limited resources. After Obama Sr. left to attend Harvard University, Dunham returned to school and graduated four years later.To make this happen, she relied on her parents for help with her son and on government assistance to put food on the table. She became an anthropologist, conducting research that took her halfway across the world to Indonesia. Her struggles, hard work, and determination were crucial in shaping Obama. “My mother, Ann Dunham, was the biggest influence on my life. She had a core belief in our common humanity,” he captioned a 2022 video shared on Instagram.When Barack Obama was 10, Ann Dunham made the difficult decision to send him away. She had moved to Indonesia with her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, when Obama was just 6 years old. For four years, she made sacrifices to ensure her son received a proper education, which included supplementing his local schooling with English lessons at home. To achieve this, she would rise before dawn to teach him his correspondence course before sending him off to school.Despite her efforts, Dunham felt that Obama was missing out on the quality education she had been fortunate enough to receive—an education she wanted for her son as well. After years of this routine, she concluded that it would be better for Obama to return to the U.S. while she stayed behind for another year. It was a tough decision, but Dunham believed it was the only viable option.
She had an Indonesian husband, a 1-year-old daughter she couldn’t leave behind, and a son who needed to return home. “She was juggling a number of things,” biographer Janny Scott, author of “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” told NPR in 2011. Dunham kept her promise to Obama and joined him in Hawaii, where he was living with his grandparents, in 1972. A few years later, when she returned to Indonesia to complete her anthropological fieldwork, her teenage son chose to stay behind.
Ann Dunham passed away from ovarian cancer in 1995, just months after receiving her diagnosis earlier that year. Those final months were not spent focusing on her health or coping with her condition. “[She was] more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well. She wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality,” Barack Obama said in a 2007 campaign ad (via Chicago Tribune).
Dunham was diagnosed shortly after returning to the U.S. from her work in Indonesia, with a new job and newly acquired health insurance. She worried whether her insurance company would classify her cancer as a pre-existing condition and deny coverage for her essential treatment. “I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms,” Obama recalled.
At the time of her diagnosis, Obama was writing “Dreams from My Father,” his 1995 memoir exploring his identity as a Black man with an absent Black father. In retrospect, he somewhat regretted focusing so much on his father instead of his mother. “I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book—less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life,” he prefaced the book.
When Ann Dunham became pregnant with Barack Obama and agreed to marry Barack Obama Sr., she believed he had divorced his first wife, Kezia Aoko. She later discovered that this was not true. “He had told me they were separated, but it was a village wedding, so there was no legal document to prove a divorce,” she told Obama in “Dreams from My Father.” This was part of the reason Obama Sr.’s family opposed his relationship with Dunham.
While Obama Sr. and Aoko may have been separated, divorce was uncommon in Luo culture. “You could get a divorce, but it required a complex process involving the couple sitting before a council of elders and the return of the dowry,” Sally H. Jacobs, author of “The Other Barack: The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father,” explained to NPR in 2011.
Even if Obama Sr. and Aoko had mutually agreed to separate, the absence of proper documentation was a significant issue. His immigration files contained a memo from his student adviser noting that he likely had two wives. His wedding to Dunham coincided with his efforts to renew his visa, and he grew increasingly anxious when Dunham became pregnant. “The last thing they were going to look kindly on, if they chose to see it this way, was a bigamist with a mixed-race baby,” Jacobs said.
Ann Dunham spent years apart from her second husband. When she fulfilled her promise to Barack Obama by joining him in the U.S. in 1972, she left Lolo Soetoro behind. They remained married for several years but would never live together again. Lolo visited the family frequently, but that was the extent of their physical contact. In 1980, Dunham filed for divorce a second time, seeking no child support. She maintained a connection with her ex and encouraged Maya Soetoro to have a relationship with her father.
Although she had her share of negative feelings about the marriage and its end, Dunham was not one to hold grudges. “She was no Pollyanna. There were certainly moments when she complained to us,” Maya told Time in 2008. “But she was not someone who would take the remnants of those divorces and make judgments about men in general or love, nor would she allow herself to grow pessimistic.” However, it wasn’t just distance that caused Dunham and Lolo to drift apart.
Lolo’s involvement with oil companies in the early ’70s created tension in their marriage. Dunham disapproved of the lifestyle and the influence it had on him, Maya shared with The New York Times. Additionally, the 1965-66 Indonesian mass killings forced Lolo to return home from the U.S. to support the government, which took a toll on their relationship. “Power had taken Lolo and yanked him back into line just when he thought he’d escaped,” Obama wrote in “Dreams from My Father.”
