Parents often joke about reaching for a cold one or a glass of wine after a day with the little ones. Everyone is entitled to unwinding in their own way. For some people, however, it comes at a cost. George W. Bush was one of those people. In his 2010 book Decision Points, the former president revealed that his drinking got away from him. Laura Bush didn't present her husband with an ultimatum, but she made him aware of his options. When asked to choose between alcohol or fatherhood, he chose his family.
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In a conversation about actor Ben Affleck's frank discussions about his struggles with alcohol, Jenna Bush Hager revealed her father once had a conversation with her about drinking. He opened up to her following a family wedding when Jenna was in her early 20s. The conversation changed her perspective not only on alcohol but what it means to be a parent as well.
On a 2020 episode of Today With Hoda & Jenna, Jenna and cohost Hoda Kotb discussed a recent Ben Affleck role. In his movie, The Way Back, Ben plays an alcoholic high school basketball coach who ends up in rehab. In discussing the film, Ben has been candid about how the role mirrors some of his own struggles with alcohol.
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"People with compulsive behavior, and I am one, have this kind of basic discomfort all the time that they’re trying to make go away,'' Ben said in an interview with the New York Times.
"You’re trying to make yourself feel better with eating or drinking or sex or gambling or shopping or whatever. But that ends up making your life worse."
"Then you do more of it to make that discomfort go away," he continued. "Then the real pain starts. It becomes a vicious cycle you can’t break. That’s at least what happened to me. I drank relatively normally for a long time. What happened was that I started drinking more and more when my marriage was falling apart."
Jenna applauded Ben for so candidly discussing his struggles in the interview. "He has little kids who can think like, 'Dad talked about with honesty and transparency how hard it is to be addicted to something, how hard it is to deal with pain by doing something that's not good for you,''' she said. "To have that conversation, he doesn't even know how many people he's probably helping."
Jenna revealed a discussion with her own dad about drinking that changed her perspective. George W. Bush had a conversation with Jenna following a family wedding when she was in her early 20s. During the talk, he opened up to Jenna about his own struggles with drinking.
"We went for a walk, and he said, 'I just want to talk to you about drinking — and I found in my life it got in the way of the things that mattered most — and I want to make sure that you just know that it can and be aware of it," Jenna recalled.
The former president also opened up about his struggles with alcohol in his 2010 book, Decision Points. "I do know that I have a habitual personality," he wrote. "I was drinking too much, and it was starting to create problems."
"Alcohol was becoming a love and it was beginning to crowd out my affections for the most important love – if you’re a dad – and that’s loving your little girls," he continued. "Fatherhood meant sobriety from 1986 on." Contrary to popular belief, he did not quit due to an ultimatum from Laura Bush.
"I was not going to leave George and I wasn't going to let him leave me with twins," the former first lady revealed in her own memoir, Spoken From the Heart. "Our marriage was enduring, we loved each other and we were two people who did not have divorce in our DNA. But I was disappointed and I let him know that I thought he could be a better man."
For Jenna, that conversation with her dad didn't just teach her about drinking. It also taught her how to approach difficult conversations with your kids as a parent.
"I think at the time I probably was like, 'I'm not even that hungover,'" she recalled. "But I do think it was such a model to me about how I want to parent, which is to be transparent about either things that have happened in our family's past or things that you know that can happen to your kids."
"He said, 'I just want you to know that there was a point in my life where I thought like this is interrupting what's beautiful,''' Jenna said. "He didn't go to AA. He didn't, although it's helped so many people. He just knew that it was interrupting his dreams and interrupting his parenting."
Hoda pointed out how powerful the conversation must have been because it's so uncommon to see parents get that vulnerable with their kids. For Jenna, it made a lasting impact. "I always appreciated it, and I still do," she said.
The conversation was also extra meaningful due to what was going on in Jenna's life in the years prior. Though this conversation took place in her early 20s, Jenna had some brushes with the law in college for underage drinking and using a fake ID. Understanding her family's history with alcohol very well may have helped her take a different path.
"Parenting is tedious and can be difficult, and it can be easy to open that bottle of wine at 5 o'clock on a Monday,'' she continued. It's a feeling so many parents can identify with.
"But I catch myself because I had those conversations (with my father), and I try not to — for my kids and for me."
For the former president, his last drink was on his 40th birthday in 1986. He quit cold turkey and acknowledged how difficult it was.
"At first it was hard to watch other people enjoy a cocktail or beer … but being the sober guy helped me realize how mindless I must have sounded when I drank," he wrote. "The more time passed, the more I felt momentum on my side. Not drinking became a habit of its own — one I was glad to keep."
