{"id":842,"date":"2009-06-08T07:04:14","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T13:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=842"},"modified":"2009-06-08T07:04:14","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T13:04:14","slug":"the-obamas-date-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/06\/08\/the-obamas-date-night\/","title":{"rendered":"the obama’s date night"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/a> ran a story over the weekend about how our President and his wife Michelle are able to find time for date night, illustrated in their highly-publicized trip to New York for dinner and a show, and what that means for the rest of us.<\/p>\n

The Times reports:<\/p>\n

THEIRS is a seasoned marriage, 16 years and counting. They are middle-aged. Life is that modern-crazy haze: two girls in the windstorm of year-end school activities, the puppy that must be walked twice daily, the live-in mother-in-law. They both work long hours. Standard recipe for a drive-by relationship.<\/p>\n

At the gala celebrating the crowning achievement of his career, he showed her off to cheering throngs: \u201cHow good-looking is my wife?\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet… In his lock-step schedule, he sets aside daily \u201cMichelle time.\u201d<\/p>\n

And last weekend, he fulfilled a promise to her. They got all gussied up and flew to New York, took a limo to dinner and a Broadway show, then flew home. Date night, just the two of them. Michelle and Barack. And their security detail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And people’s reactions?<\/p>\n

While some commentators were grousing about the presidential date\u2019s undisclosed cost to the taxpayers, news of the romantic evening prompted many wives to glare across the breakfast table, trying to remember the last time their husbands made a fuss over them.<\/p>\n

Elbowed sharply in the side, husbands felt betrayed by the commander in chief. On \u201cThe Daily Show,\u201d\u00a0Jon Stewart\u00a0reviewed the Obamas\u2019 glamorous foray and screeched, \u201cHow do you compete with that?\u201d He warned Mr. Obama, \u201cTake it down a notch, dude!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Times even has a sociologist weigh in on the event…<\/p>\n

But relationship experts are applauding the first couple for giving life to the modern fantasy that longtime spouses can still be passionate about each other. Intentionally or not, the Obamas have become ambassadors for date night, a term that is a creature of these times. A generation ago, when Saturday night rolled around, parents simply went out. Now parents need to be prodded to date each other, as if they\u2019re singles: take a break from the children, already!<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Obamas really are products of the culture,\u201d said Christine B. Whelan, a sociologist at the\u00a0University of Iowa\u00a0who studies the American family. The Obamas exemplify what sociologists call the \u201cindividualized marriage,\u201d she added, where a thriving relationship is marked by love and mutual attraction, not just duty to family and social roles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times ran a story over the weekend about how our President and his wife Michelle are able to find time for date night, illustrated in their highly-publicized trip to New York for dinner and a show, and what that means for the rest of us. The Times reports: THEIRS is a seasoned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[39112,320,39115],"class_list":["post-842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-culture","tag-marriage","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}