In addition to being President of the United States, Joe Biden takes on another very important role: dad.
He welcomed his first three children, son Beautiful And Hunter and daughter Naomiwith his late wife Neilia Hunter. Joe had his fourth child, daughter Ashley, during his second marriage to first lady Jill Biden.
Despite Joe’s busy schedule as president, he made it a point to fulfill his duties as a father. His family is an integral part of his life, thanks in part to a number of personal tragedies he was confronted, in particular, with the death of his late wife Neilia, his daughter Naomi and his son Beau.
Since his years in the United States Senate, he had an unwritten rule to fulfill family responsibilities. “If I discover that you are working with me while missing important family responsibilities, it will greatly disappoint me,” he wrote in a letter to his team in 2014.
His children recognized their father’s commitment to them over the years, often praising his good character. “Dad is so empathetic and has the ability to recognize pain, feel the pain of others and comfort” Ashley said Today. “We still have a rule today that no matter where Dad is, no matter what meeting he’s in, if one of the kids calls, you have to let him know.”
Keep scrolling to learn everything about President Biden’s four children.
Handsome Biden
Mark Wilson/Getty
Beau was Joe’s eldest son, born February 3, 1969, under the legal name Joseph Robinette Biden III, named after his father and grandfather. His mother was Neilia, Joe’s first wife, who died in a car accident in December 1972. Beau was also in the vehicle during the tragedy and was 4 years old at the time.
Although he survived the fatal sinking, Beau was seriously injured. When Joe was sworn into the U.S. Senate in 1973, he did so at the bedside of a hospital in Wilmington, Delaware – which he rarely left while his children were recovering from their injuries.
Beau graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 and from Syracuse University College of Law, like his father. After graduating, he worked as a legal advisor in the Office of Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Justice in Philadelphia and then as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office from 1995 to 2004.
In 2003, he joined the Delaware Army National Guard and rose to the rank of major in the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Beau was deployed to Iraq in 2008 and served on active duty overseas until late 2009.
After his military service, Beau ran for Delaware attorney general in 2006 and won. He was re-elected in November 2010 and served two terms.
Beau was diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer in August 2013 and received radiation and chemotherapy treatments over the next two years. In May 2015, Beau is dead at the age of 46.
Joe shared a very close bond with his eldest son and wrote a memoir in 2017 on his behalf. Title Promise me, daddythe book depicts the conversations between father and son during Beau’s final days.
Like Joe, Beau was a family man. He devoted much of his time to his wife, Hallie Olivierand their children, Natalie Biden and Robert Biden II.
Hunter Biden
Paul Morigi/Getty Images
Hunter, whose legal name is Robert Hunter Biden, is Joe and Neilia’s second son, born February 4, 1970. He was also in the car during the December 1972 crash that killed Neilia and survived alongside his brother Beau. Hunter was 2 years old at the time of the tragedy.
After graduating from Georgetown University in 1992, he met Kathleen Buhle whom he married in 1993. They share three children together: daughters Naomi, Finnegan and Maisy.
After graduating from Yale Law School in 1996, he worked as a lobbyist and in the private equity industry, which caused controversy within MBNA (a bank holding company) due to his father with the company.
Personal problems continued for Hunter in the years that followed. A month after being commissioned as a public affairs officer in the Naval Reserve, he was discharged in February 2014 after testing positive for cocaine use. (His addiction, among other controversies, later became a subject of much controversy. Donald Trump regularly attacked him the whole time his father’s 2020 campaign.)
Teresa Kroeger/Getty
Shortly after, Hunter joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, where he was reportedly paid up to $50,000 per month. His functions (which ended in 2019) has undergone careful scrutiny due to his father’s vice presidency and Hunter’s apparent lack of qualifications as a lawyer and former lobbyist.
In August 2015, Hunter faced controversy again when a data leak showed him as a registered user of Ashley Madison, a dating site aimed at people seeking extramarital affairs. (Hunter has vehemently denied ever registering with the website.)
That same year, Hunter and Kathleen filed a consent motion to end their marriage in a “dignified, respectful, and family-oriented” manner. They ended up finalized their divorce in 2017 after 24 years of marriage.
Following his separation with the deaths of Kathleen and Beau in 2015, Hunter developed a romantic relationship with his brother’s widow and former sister-in-law, Halliewhich he and the Biden family later confirmed in a statement to Page six in 2017.
Paul Morigi/Getty
In 2018, a woman named Lunden Roberts claimed Hunter fathered his daughter, Marine Joan Roberts. While Hunter denied paternity of the childDNA testing later confirmed Roberts’ claims.
Joe did his first public statement about his granddaughter in July 2023.
“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interest of their daughter, preserving as much of her privacy going forward as possible,” he told PEOPLE . “This is not a political issue, this is a family matter. Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including the Navy.”
The statement came a month after Hunter and Roberts settled their child support case.
When Hunter and Hallie split in 2019, he married to Melissa Cohen the same year just days after meeting (they share a son together, Beau, named after Hunter’s late brother).
Since early 2019, Hunter and his father have been the subject of unsubstantiated allegations of corrupt activities In a Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory pushed by then-President Donald Trump regarding The hunter’s affairs in Ukraine And Joe’s anti-corruption efforts there. Hunter was at the center of controversy surrounding his involvement in a Chinese investment companyher questionable artistic career And one investigation into his found laptop.
In June 2023, Hunter was indicted for federal misdemeanor charges failure to pay federal income tax and a felony charge of illegal possession of a weapon.
Hunter’s first plea deal with prosecutors, which would have seen him plead guilty to two tax charges and reach an agreement on felony gun charges, collapsed when a judge said She was concerned about tying the tax plea deal to the deal with prosecutors. hit on Hunter’s gun charge.
Hunter pleaded not guilty to federal misdemeanor charges for failure to pay federal income tax.
In September, Hunter was charged with three counts related to the possession of a firearm. Two of those charges related to his allegedly signing a form indicating he was not using illegal drugs when he purchased a gun in October 2018. The third charge alleges Hunter possessed a firearm while using a narcotic.
Naomi Biden
Joe and Neilia (pictured above) welcomed their third child, Naomi, on November 8, 1971. She died at age one in the 1972 car crash that also killed her mother. In the years since, Joe has spoken about his losses and how they affected him and his family.
More recently, he gave a moving speech on the Uvalde shooting at Texas Elementary School. “Losing a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped out of you. There’s a hollow in your chest, it feels like you’re being sucked into it,” Joe said. “And it’s never quite the same.”
Hunter’s daughter, Naomi, is named in his honor.
Ashley Biden
Ashley is Joe’s youngest child, born on June 8, 1981. She is the first and only child that Joe and Jill share together.
She received a bachelor’s degree from Tulane University and a master’s degree from the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. The same year, she met Howard Kerin through his late brother, Beau. They marry in a joint Catholic-Jewish religious service in 2012.
After graduating, Ashley began her career in social work. Through her parents’ political influence, she has dedicated her life to giving back to the underserved communities around her. Notably, she worked for the Delaware Department of Children, Youth and Families Services for 15 years and was executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice from 2014 to 2019.
In 2017, she combined her commitment to social justice with his passion for fashion. After launching Livelihood Inc., a “socially and ethically conscious clothing company,” she partnered with Gilt to sell a collection of hoodies with 100% of net profits going to Livelihood’s community development initiatives.
Ashley appeared with her father on the country path on several occasions before the 2020 election. Ashley could be seen dance on stage after his victory speech.
Recently, she came under investigation after his diary was stolen and sold to Veritas Project – A self-described “nonprofit journalism enterprise” with a history of undercover operations and other covert tactics that critics have been saying for a long time are much more manipulative than journalistic.