The Truth About RFK Jr.'s Relationship With His Late Mom, Ethel

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s relationship with his late mother, Ethel Kennedy, was tumultuous, to say the least. In biographer Jerry Oppenheimer's 1991 People interview, he shared that when Ethel married Robert F. Kennedy Sr. in 1950, she devoted her entire life to the betterment of the Kennedy family and raising their children. However, her perspective on life greatly shifted following her husband's shocking assassination in 1968. 

In Oppenheimer's 2015 book, "RFK Jr.: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream," he wrote that Ethel couldn't bear the grief of the Kennedy family tragedy and subsequently couldn't care for her grieving children either. And young RFK Jr. only added to his mother's woes with his rebellious streak. Their relationship eventually became yet another tragic detail of RFK Jr.'s life since she reportedly beat him with a brush to punish her son for his increasingly bad behavior. Ultimately, although Ethel enrolled RFK Jr. in one boarding school after another, he got kicked out of all of them. 

In the environmental lawyer's own memoir, "American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family," he acknowledged his part in their fractured relationship. "My rebellious nature, and my inclination for pointing out her caprices may have sharpened her disfavor," RFK Jr. wrote. "My involvement with drugs after my father's death certainly inflamed it." However, the divisive politician and his siblings found it difficult to decipher Ethel's swiftly changing moods, with him admitting, "From my angle, her love didn't always feel unconditional." Despite everything, RFK Jr. tried to fix their complicated family dynamics. 

Elsewhere in "American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family," Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed that he apologized to his mother, Ethel Kennedy, after being sober for about a year. The future health secretary recalled candidly discussing his shortcomings with her, alongside apologizing "for the anguish, anxiety, and embarrassment I had caused her; for falling short of my father's ideals, of hers, and of my own; for failing to be the person whom both she and I wanted me to be." Although RFK Jr. didn't go into the conversation expecting his mother to admit her mistakes, sadly, she didn't pleasantly surprise him. However, time and his sobriety healed their relationship. And eventually, Ethel started wholeheartedly supporting her son's efforts for environmental conservation. 

After RFK Jr.'s mother died at 96 in 2024, he took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to pen a heartfelt tribute that touched on their complicated relationship. While noting that Ethel wasn't afraid to give her children some "tough love" if they didn't live up to her high standards, the controversial politician also gushed, "She was also intensely loyal, and we always knew that she would stand fiercely behind us when we came under attack by others." It's worth noting that in RFK Jr.'s book, the author confessed that in his younger years, he couldn't see his mother's formidable qualities amidst everything else that was going on at the time, so the fact that he subsequently spoke so highly about Ethel is a testament to how far their relationship had come at the time of her passing.