He's just 10 years old. And already, Barron Trump, a lad blessed with his mother's fine facial features who appears poised to grow to his father's impressive height, has the weight of the world on his slender shoulders.
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Before finishing elementary school, the young boy has been subjected to public ridicule so intense, an adult would buckle under the pressure. As a mother, the thought of the abuse he's forced to endure at the hands of strangers makes me want to scream.
During the inauguration ceremony of the man he calls Dad, President Trump, "Saturday Night Live" writer Katie Rich tweeted a mind-numbingly cruel "joke"—"Barron will be this country's first homeschool shooter." She apologized, took the message down, and was suspended indefinitely from the TV show. But the fact that she ever felt entitled to use Twitter, a weapon wielded by Barron's father against grown-ups, to inflict potential psychological harm on an innocent minor speaks volumes about the new rules of decency.
The Slovenian-born former model, 46, Donald Trump's third wife, who has said she sometimes calls her son "Little Donald," is breaking with custom. She's living apart from her husband, 70, at least for now, remaining in the family's penthouse triplex atop Trump Tower in Manhattan with Barron until the end of his private school's semester.
Last week, a report swirled claiming that she was considering steering clear of Washington, DC, permanently. But her acting senior adviser threw cold water on the story, announcing that the first lady is hiring staffers in anticipation of moving to the nation's capital, after ensuring that her son's education isn't disrupted.
Go, Mama!
Long considered off-limits as media and comedic targets, presidential kids have become fair game — particularly if they're born into the political right.
Barron is exponentially vulnerable. With his planned move to the White House with his mom, he's to be the first male child to live in the presidential digs since John F. Kennedy Jr. in the early 1960s. Despite decades of feminism and supposed advances in gender equality, societal expectations for boys still outdistance those for their sisters, experts in the field of parenthood told me.
"The culture expects a boy to be strong, brave courageous, always to be able to fix things and do things on his own — not showing his feelings, because that's what boys do," said Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil, Ph.D., a New York-based family therapist and author.