Early Life of Caroline Kennedy:
Her father was a junior Democratic senator from Massachusetts when Caroline Kennedy was born in New York City on November 27, 1957. The young couple, who also had lofty political aspirations, were quite happy when Caroline was born because her mother had previously experienced a miscarriage and the baby was stillborn.
Nov. 1960 was a significant month for little Caroline Kennedy because her father was elected president on the 8th, her brother John F. Kennedy Jr. was born on the 25th, and she celebrated her third birthday two days later. When the Kennedys moved into the White House on January 20, 1961, Caroline and John Jr. infused the presidential mansion with a sense of humor.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis spent most of her time with her children because she wanted their time in the White House to be as normal and enjoyable as possible. She told a reporter just before she was appointed First Lady, “I don’t think anything else you do really matters if you mess up raising your children.” The White House solarium was converted into a kindergarten as a result, and Caroline was renowned for receiving a pet pony named Macaroni, which she occasionally rode on the White House lawn. (Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson gave the First Daughter macaroni.) This vibrant young first family charmed the majority of Americans.
Caroline Kennedy’s dreamy White House childhood came to an end on November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. On John Jr.’s third birthday, she and her brother went to some of the president’s funeral with their mother while wearing similar powder-blue coats.
The family first lived in a house in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., but in 1964, Jacqueline Kennedy bought an apartment in New York City and relocated the children there. In a 2017 film for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library honoring the 100th anniversary of JFK’s birth, Caroline, who hardly ever discussed losing her father, said:
Caroline Kennedy attended a private school in New York City. Favorite Uncle Bobby, Robert F. Kennedy, who had become the children’s substitute father after the murder, was slain on June 6, 1968, while running for president. Soon after, Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis to give her children more security. “If they are killing Kennedys, then my children are targets too,” she said after RFK was killed. I want to leave this country.
After high school, Caroline Kennedy enrolled in Harvard University’s Radcliffe College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1980. She studied law at Columbia University and received her degree in 1988.
Caroline Kennedy married Edwin Schlossberg, a writer and museum display designer, in 1986, but she never took on the last name Schlossberg. Her only surviving uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, performed the ceremony, and her best man was John F. Kennedy Jr. Caroline Kennedy and Schlossberg have three adult children: Rose Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1988), John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1993), sometimes known as Jack Schlossberg, and Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg (1990–2025).
After being diagnosed with cancer, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died in May 1994. She was buried at Arlington National Cemetery beside the president. In 1999, a plane disaster off the coast of Massachusetts claimed the lives of John F. Kennedy Jr., her sister Lauren Bessette, and his spouse Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. At age 41, Caroline Kennedy was the last person left alive in her immediate family.
In 2025, her 35-year-old daughter Tatiana revealed that she had acute myeloid leukemia, a rare and fatal disease. Tatiana Schlossberg, a writer, journalist, and mother of two young children, died on December 30, 2025. That same year, Jack Schlossberg announced his plan to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from New York City in the 2026 midterm elections.
The majority of Kennedy’s adult life has been devoted to continuing her family’s legacy and commitment to public service. In 1989, she co-founded the Profile in Heroism Award, named after her father’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, to honor political heroism. She served as the honorary president of the foundation for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and served as an adviser to Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government until 2020. She has also authored a number of books on subjects including her mother’s favorite poetry and the right to privacy.
The former First Daughter increased her political involvement in the early 2000s and spoke at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. She and Senator Edward Kennedy called Barack Obama “a candidate who inspires the same hope and inspiration that my father did” when they endorsed him for president in 2008. Caroline Kennedy briefly indicated interest in taking Hillary Clinton’s vacant New York Senate seat when Obama won the election and named her secretary of state. Some were taken aback by the decision because she had no prior political experience outside of familial ties. Citing personal concerns, she removed her name from consideration in January 2009.
Obama proposed Kennedy as the U.S. ambassador to Japan in 2013. She collaborated extensively with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and received a lot of accolades in Japan despite having no prior management or diplomatic experience. In a nation where women are still underrepresented in leadership roles, she acknowledged the significance of being a woman in that capacity and claimed that having prominent female leaders helps shift attitudes. Kennedy was later nominated by Joe Biden to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Australia, a position she took up in 2022.
When Caroline Kennedy publicly opposed her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s selection to head the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2025, she created history. The day before his confirmation hearing, she sent a strong letter to Congress, saying, “Healthcare scientists deserve a secretary committed to advancing modern medicine to save lives, not rejecting the advancements we have already achieved.They have a right to a leader who is trustworthy, honest, and ethical for this important organization. They deserve someone better than Bobby Kennedy, just like the rest of us.