‘There’s No Perfect Parent, No Perfect Child’ : Reagans Hurt, Angry Over Patti’s Book

President and Mrs. Reagan admitted they have been hurt, angry and annoyed at apparent descriptions of their parenting in their daughter Patti Davis’s autobiographical novel “Home Front.”

They acknowledged their feelings in an interview with Barbara Walters, taped for ABC-TV to be shown tonight.

“I thought I was a good father,” Reagan said, adding that being in show business gave him more time to spend with his children than if he had had a 9-to-5 job.

“And maybe there were times when I should have been sterner than I was,” the President said.

“I tried to be a good mother,” First Lady Nancy Reagan said. “I don’t think anybody’s perfect, but then, you know, there’s no perfect parent, there’s no perfect child.”

Walters reminded the Reagans that in her book Patti talks about a father “who’s interested in his political career to the exclusion of his children and a mother who was a clothes horse, and so protective of the father that she won’t let the kids give their own feelings.”

In response, Reagan said, “I’ll have to answer that because Nancy hasn’t read the book.”

A few weeks ago, the First Lady’s press secretary, Elaine Crispen, said Mrs. Reagan had read the book and agreed with her husband that it was “interesting fiction.” Crispen said today that Mrs. Reagan had read the book since the interview with Walters.

Reagan said, “I didn’t recognize anyone in (the book) and certainly the happenings never happened.”

As for their son Ron dancing on “Saturday Night Live” in his underpants, Mrs. Reagan said she thought he showed “a presence and a warmth and a humor and a timing in something he had never done before.”

“We were kind of surprised because we had never seen him do anything,” Reagan said.