Rose’s lack of emotional nourishment left its scars on her children. Jack, who was a sensitive boy, remembered: ‘My mother never really held me or hugged me. Never! Never!’21 The only time she touched them was to spank them. Kick, like Jack, was uncomfortable with physical demonstrativeness, which was another legacy of Rose’s emotional sterility. Later in life, Kick sought out several maternal substitutes, most notably Nancy Astor, with whom she developed deeply affectionate relationships. Older women were drawn to her, sensing that she lacked that special mother’s love.
Rose left the hugging and kissing to the children’s nanny, a working-class Irishwoman called Katherine Conboy, known to the family as ‘Kico’. Kick and her sisters adored her, and they would spend hours in the kitchen chatting to her. She in return adored the Kennedy children. Rose was perfectly happy with this arrangement. She simply did not see it as her role to kiss and hug for fear of ‘(s)mother love’. Respect was her by-word. The children always called her ‘Mother’, and they feared and loved her in equal measure.
Thus the Kennedy children were raised as upper-class British children were, by the nanny, and emotionally distant from their parents. It made them tough and independent, but it also left psychological wounds. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why Kick and Jack understood and sympathized with their English aristocratic friends. Rose’s strategy was to encourage the eldest son and daughter to take on the role of nurturing and shaping the other children. Joe Jr took to this role of little father with aplomb. Jack later said, ‘I think if the Kennedy children amount to anything now, or ever amount to anything, it will be due more to Joe’s behavior and his constant example than to any other factor.’22
The surrogate-mother role was more difficult for Kick because of Rosemary. Kick had to assume the role of eldest sister and was encouraged to take responsibility for all of her sisters, but, although she loved them, she was not naturally suited to the role. She was too wild, too free-spirited. Eunice, just one year younger, was much more temperamentally suited to that role, and she felt especially responsible for Rosemary. All of the girls mothered Teddy, the baby of the family, who was born in 1932. ‘It was like having an army of mothers around me,’ he recalled.23
Kick worshipped her father. He was a forceful presence in the lives of the children, despite the long absences caused by his work. He approached his duties as a father with great seriousness, and he loved children, but only his own. When he was away from home, every Sunday the children would line up in order of age and speak to him on the telephone.24
When he returned from business trips, it was a moment of high excitement for the children. ‘He would sweep them into his arms and hug them, and grin at them, and talk to them, and perhaps carry them around,’ Rose recalled. As each child became able to talk he would ‘want that child in bed with him for a little while each morning. And the two of them would be there propped up on the pillows, with perhaps the child’s head cuddling on his shoulder, and he would talk or read a story or they would have conversations.’25 Joe struggled with Rosemary’s mental incapacitation. He wanted his children to be perfect Americans, and that was one of the reasons he especially doted on Kick, who was so lively and smart. She later called him a ‘powerhouse, a force of nature’.26
He believed in treating the small children as young adults, refused to talk down to them and was plain-speaking and blunt, though loving. He was very tactile with the children, unlike Rose. They knew, however, not to overstep the mark, and if they did, one ‘Daddy’s Look’ was all it took: ‘ice-cold steel blue, piercing right into and through you and stripped you to the soul’.27 But if the children were ever in trouble, Joe insisted always on hearing the truth: ‘tell me the truth. Tell me everything about it, the whole truth. Then I’ll do everything I can to help. But if you don’t give me the truth, I’m licked.’28
Joe had his own inimitable way of speaking, which the children long remembered, with amusing phrases and aphorisms that became part of family lore: ‘applesauce’ (bullshit) was not tolerated, nor would he accept ‘monkey business’. ‘He doesn’t have the brains of a donkey’ or ‘He doesn’t have enough brains to find his way out of a telephone booth’ were Daddy expressions. ‘All my ducks are swans,’ he would say of the children, adding that Kick was ‘especially special’.29 ‘No crying in this house’ was another favourite, along with ‘You’d better believe it’, ‘Things don’t happen, they are made to happen’ and ‘I don’t want any sour pusses around here.’30 In later years, the children, now adults, would have cushions made with his aphorisms embroidered on them.31
Joe was not one for self-pity. Teddy revealed the key to his character when he described his father’s support and optimism, especially when things went wrong: this was when Joe was at his best. ‘The greater the disaster, the brighter he was.’ When things went really badly, Joe would declare, ‘That may be one of the best things that ever happened to you!’ But, most of all, Joe wanted his children to strive. Not necessarily to be the best, but to ‘strive’ for excellence. And then: ‘After you have done the best you can, the hell with it.’32
This interest and devotion exhibited by a father towards his children was highly unusual in those days, when fathers were often remote and women were left to run the house and family. As well as the telephone calls, the children were encouraged to write letters to their father, and he admonished them whenever they forgot to write. Kick’s earliest letters to him are full of affection and love, funny stories, and kisses, hearts and pictures. In preparation for writing her memoirs, Rose looked back over her papers and noted that Kick’s ‘early letters seemed so warm and affectionate, perhaps more so than the other children’.33
Kathleen also missed her father and worried about him when he was away: ‘Dear Daddy, I hope you have got rid of your cold … We are all fine and we miss you very much.’34 She told him jokes, reported that she had joined the Girl Scouts, that there had been ‘peachy skating’ at the Field Club, and asked ‘are you coming home soon?’35 Her letters to Rose were much less effusive.
In 1925, Joe set up a trust fund for each of his children that would increase to $10 million by the mid-1940s. All of the children were ‘trust fund’ babies. They had the cushion of money, which also bestowed confidence, but also carelessness.
In May 1927, when she was seven, Kick made her first Holy Communion. Her parents were in California, but she wrote to tell them that she had been preparing for it by going to church every day for the week leading up to the ceremony. It’s surprising to discover that Rose and Joe were absent. For Catholic children it’s a very special ceremony, a watershed moment in which the Holy Eucharist is taken for the first time. Little girls are dressed to look like mini brides in white dresses and veils, symbolizing purity. Shortly before Holy Communion, the child makes their First Confession, a daunting experience in which the heart is opened in a dark booth. The priest, who sits behind a screen or grille, gives absolution; the child says an act of contrition and is given penance in the form of prayers.
It was left to Joe Jr to take on the paternal role, writing to his parents to inform them that little Kathleen was preparing herself for the sacrament.36 By this time Rose had seven children and was pregnant again. Joe Sr was about to become even busier, and Hollywood was beckoning.
3