Barack Obama has discussed the importance of being a father to his two daughter Malia, 22, and Sasha, 19. The former US President, 59, opened up about why he dedicated his new 768 page memoir A Promised Land, to the girls in a sweet Instagram caption. “The fact that my own father was largely absent from my childhood helped shape my ideas about the kind of father I intended to be,” he captioned a throwback photo of his family when the two girls were just toddlers.