The first child of his marriage to Nancy Reagan, Patti Davis, as she calls herself professionally, turned her long-running feud with her parents into a literary career. Throughout the '70s, Patti flouted her parents' conservatism, living with a member of the rock band the Eagles and participating in the nuclear freeze movement. After years as a struggling actress, Patti tried her hand at writing. In 1986, she published "A House of Secrets," an undeniably autobiographical novel about a liberal young writer whose conservative father is the governor of California and then the president of the United States, and whose mother is an exacting woman obsessed with appearances and propriety. A long estrangement between Patti and her parents followed. In recent years, Patti has voiced regret at her rebellious behavior and accusatory writing. She and her parents reconciled briefly in 1993, shortly before Reagan's diagnosis with Alzheimer's, while she was writing "Angels Don't Die: My Father's Gift of Faith.".

Ron Reagan's relationship with his parents has been characterized as the smoothest. Born in 1958, Ron lived his entire life as a politician's son. (By this time, Reagan was edging toward politics, capitalizing on his position as a recognized conservative spokesman in his role as host of "G.E. Theater.") Ron, following the lead of his three siblings, none of whom completed college, dropped out during his first semester at Yale in 1976 to pursue what he said was a lifelong dream (heretofore unknown to his parents) to become a ballet dancer. Ron Reagan drifted among careers, leaving the ballet to become a print journalist and then a TV newsmagazine correspondent. Perhaps his background in journalism has allowed him to speak with more objectivity than his siblings about his parents' remoteness from everyone but each other.