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Ill will between Nancy Reagan and Stepdaughter Maureen extended well into the first term. In 1981, when Maureen announced her candidacy for the G.O.P. Senate nomination in California, her stepmother and father offered no help. (Maureen finished fifth in the primary with 5% of the vote.) Since then, animus between the two women has subsided. Maureen, 44, now calls Nancy Reagan Mom or Mama. The First Lady recently gave her a small doll dressed as a cheerleader, to thank her for her work on the Reagan campaign last fall.
Michael Reagan, 39, the President's adopted son from his first marriage, has had recent and serious problems with his father and stepmother. He complained that Reagan had never seen Michael's daughter Ashley, who is almost two. Then, just before Thanksgiving, the First Lady told a reporter that the President and Michael did not get along. "There is an estrangement and has been for three years," she told the interviewer. Michael counterpunched in the press on Thanksgiving Day. Said he defensively: "I think it's not an estrangement as much as a jealousy Nancy might have toward me and my family --you know, being the son of another marriage." One of the President's advisers thinks the brouhaha has singularly troubled his boss. "For the first time," says the aide, "Ronald Reagan is really finding out what's on the heart and mind of one of his kids." Finally, ten days ago, a holiday truce was called. Michael Reagan, his wife and two children spent three hours visiting his father and stepmother at their Los Angeles hotel suite. "All is resolved," the First Lady declared in a communique. "Everybody loves each other."
While women can identify with Nancy Reagan's problems as a mother, they do not necessarily see eye to eye with her as a woman. The disapproval is almost ironic. The country expects its First Lady to represent some approximate ideal of American womanhood, and that perfectly modern superwoman is, in the 1980s, powerful but feminine, romantically alive and socially engaged. So what's wrong with Nancy Reagan? Her ancien regime air and the covert style of her power rile the critics. "She has not advanced the cause of women at all," complains Feminist Author Betty Friedan, who was one year ahead of Nancy Davis at Smith. "She is like Madame Chiang Kai-shek, doing it the old way, through the man." The detractors would be no happier if she sat quietly and played cards like Mamie Eisenhower--or even if by some magic she were President. The distaste for her is deeper, more visceral: she seems to epitomize the very model of womanhood--dressed to the nines, well-behaved, wifely--that feminists have specifically rejected for themselves. "Her personality and values don't necessarily fit in with what a lot of people consider to be those of the contemporary woman," says young Ron. "When she first got to Washington, people did not like the idea of a woman who said, 'My life began with Ronnie.' That's not a real popular notion these days, but she feels it. This is a woman who was born in 1921."