Page 49 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

Parents always have different effects on their children, no matter the dynamics of the family, but for the Trump children, the effects of Fred and Mary’s particular pathologies on their offspring were extreme. As the five, at different times and in different ways, got ready to go out in the world, their disadvantages were already apparent:
Maryanne, the firstborn, was saddled with being a smart, ambitious girl in a misogynistic family. She was the oldest, but because she was a girl, Freddy, the oldest boy, got all of her father’s attention. She was left to align herself with her mother, who had no power in the house. As a result, after having her heart broken when she was rejected by the Dartmouth home economics program, she settled for Mount Holyoke College, a “virtual nunnery,” as she put it. Ultimately, she did what she believed she was supposed to do because she thought her father cared.
Freddy’s problem was his failure to be a different person entirely.
Elizabeth’s problem was her family’s indifference. She was not just the middle child (and a girl) but separated by her brothers on either side by an age gap of three or four years. Shy and timid as an adolescent, she didn’t speak much, having learned the lesson that neither of her parents was really listening. Still she remained devoted to them until well into middle age, returning to the House every weekend, still hoping for “Poppy’s” attention.
Donald’s problem was that the combative, rigid persona he developed in order to shield him from the terror of his early abandonment, along with his having been made to witness his father’s abuse of Freddy, cut him off from real human connection.
Robert’s problem was that he was the youngest, an afterthought.
Nothing Maryanne, Elizabeth, or Robert did would gain Fred’s approval; they were of no interest to him. Like planets orbiting a particularly large sun, the five of them were kept apart by the force of his will, even as they moved along the paths he set for them.
Freddy’s plans for the future still entailed becoming his father’s right-hand man at Trump Management, but the first time Freddy took off from the airstrip of the Slatington Flying Club behind the controls of a Cessna 170 in 1961, his perspective shifted.
As long as he fulfilled the requirements of his business major and kept his grades up, he could fly, pledge a fraternity, and join the US Air Force