Sasha and Malia Obama’s parents are Barack and Michelle, not anyone else

The Obamas are no strangers to being the subject of conspiracy theories, including one that their children aren’t theirs.

A Sept. 14 Facebook post shared that claim with a collage that shows an image of Malia and Sasha Obama, alongside a photo of another couple. President Barack and former first lady Michelle Obama are pictured at the bottom. 

"They rented their kids out to two gay pedophiles," text on the post reads. "Anita Blanchard & Martin Nesbitt are the REAL parents of Sasha and Malia." 

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) 

That claim is unfounded, and it’s an old one. It dates to at least 2013, when a blog post asked, "Where are Obama’s daughters’ baby pics and birth records?" and suggested that those items don’t exist. 

Since then, other blogs and videos have repeated the false claim, citing the 2013 blog post as a source. The claim also has ties to the conspiracy that Michelle Obama is a man. 

Both of the Obamas have shared images of their daughters as babies on their social media accounts, and wrote about their births in their autobiographies. 

Featured Fact-check

Instagram posts

stated on October 27, 2024 in an Instagram post

Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz “says that if Democrats win they’ll make (U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) speaker of the house.”

Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir that she encountered fertility problems and that she suffered a miscarriage before having Sasha and Malia. She also talked about it in an interview on "Good Morning America" and explained her decision to go through in vitro fertilization to have children. 

Martin Nesbitt and Dr. Anita Blanchard are longtime friends of the Obamas. They met through Michelle Obama’s brother, Craig Robinson, when Robinson and Nesbitt played for the same basketball team at Princeton University. When Michelle Obama gave birth to her daughters, Blanchard delivered both of them. 

A Facebook post said Barack and Michelle Obama are not the real parents of their children.

Both of the Obamas have shared photos of their children as babies, and Michelle Obama detailed her fertility experience in her memoir. There is no evidence to support this ridiculous and frequently debunked claim.

We rate it Pants on Fire!