Will Barron Trump Ever Stop Growing?

Barron Trump, Donald Trump’s rarely seen youngest son, was photographed at his maternal grandmother’s funeral a few weeks ago. The biggest takeaway from these photos? The now-17-year-old former first kid is really, really tall. You might have already known this, if you’ve been paying close attention, but if you hadn’t seen or thought about Barron in a while, it may have come as a bit of a shock. Humans, myself among them, are simple creatures, and sometimes we can’t resist the urge to say, “Man, that kid shot up like a weed!”

So how tall is Barron? And while we’re asking questions, would that make him the tallest former president’s kid ever? Plus, surely his father is either weirdly proud or weirdly jealous of his height, so which is it? When it comes to Barron’s height, there’s a lot to be curious about, so I set out to find some answers.

First, the facts, which aren’t as simple as you’d think: Donald Trump has been quoted as saying Barron is either 6 feet, 7 inches or 6 feet, 8 inches—yes, he’s said both recently. While it’s possible for one’s height to vary depending on who measured it, how, and when, it’s a little funny that Trump hasn’t settled on a firm answer, because the former president has long been suspected of lying about his own height. With regard to Barron, is he boasting? Downplaying? Does he truly not know? All strong possibilities.

Reports are mixed as to what Trump thinks of his very tall son. His fibbing about his own height would indicate that he respects being tall, and he certainly brings it up a lot. (Barron’s mother, Melania Trump, is also on the tall side at 5 feet, 11 inches.) When asked about Barron’s bout with COVID-19 in 2020, Trump reportedly said, “My Barron. My tall Barron. He’s very tall. My beautiful Barron.” One of his more poetic riffs, honestly! But there have also been reports indicating that Trump resents Barron’s stature: A 2019 book by Michael Wolff contained an anecdote about Trump being jealous of his son at 12 for already being so tall.

So let’s assume Barron is actually 6 feet, 7 inches, as Trump was most recently quoted saying. That must break some sort of record or be otherwise historically notable, right? Largest presidential son! We keep track of things like which president was the first to be left-handed (Garfield) and which was the first to ride in a car (Theodore Roosevelt), so there’ve gotta be records about who produced the lengthiest offspring … or so you’d think. Alas, there are not, according to Peter Kastor, a professor at the University of Washington in St. Louis who specializes in presidential history. He told me we’re lucky to have any information on the heights of the presidents themselves, much less their kids. In previous centuries, “people didn’t necessarily keep records like that,” Kastor said.

We know that Lincoln was thought to be the tallest president, at 6 feet, 4 inches. “Was Robert Lincoln tall because his father was?” Kastor asked, and endeavored to answer for me. “I tried to figure that out. I couldn’t find anything about that.” The same was true for FDR’s sons: no info to speak of. “As a historian, I would say we do not have sufficiently accurate records to draw a conclusion,” Kastor lamented. In the absence of facts, all he was able to offer was conjecture: “Eisenhower’s son John, he looks like he was kind of tall.”

Kastor also pointed out that compared with other recent first children, the public knows very little about Barron. “Barron was really off the radar in a way that the Obama, Bush, and Clinton girls weren’t,” he said. “They were much more a part of the president’s story than Barron was.”

“I think people lost sight of that because Donald Trump’s older children, especially from his first marriage, loomed so large,” he went on. “We got zilch about Barron. We didn’t know if he liked sports or not when he was going to school. We didn’t know if he was involved in any extracurricular activities.” Maybe this lack of information helps explain why Barron’s height seems so remarkable—it’s literally one of the only things known about him.

Despite an absence of historical comparison points, given that people are taller today than they used to be, it seems reasonable to assume that Barron is one of history’s tallest presidential sons, but sadly we can’t prove it. As for who held that maybe-title before being maybe-displaced by Barron, the likeliest suspect as far as I can tell hails from the same gene pool: Some sources on the internet—which of course must be taken with a grain of salt—place Eric Trump at a hearty 6 feet, 5 inches. Who knew? (If you have any information on taller presidential kids, send us a tip!)

What’s it like to be so tall as a first kid? That we don’t know, but plenty of people can speak to what it’s like to be so tall in general. Nicholas Russell is an essayist and critic who has written eloquently about the downsides of being very tall—he is Barron’s exact maybe-height of 6 feet, 7 inches, in fact. Russell hadn’t yet reached that height when he was in high school, but he remembers the awkwardness of being really tall so young: “It can be kind of tough to have your body be changing that quickly and to have it be so noticeable to people,” Russell said. “To me, it’s pretty apparent that [Barron] is still getting used to it and is not super comfortable. But that could also be an artifact of just not liking being in front of the cameras and freezing up a little bit.” Russell didn’t want to go so far as to say he felt sympathy for Barron’s plight. “His height is sort of just an added layer of surreality to his existence. He’s still Donald Trump’s son. He’s probably got a very cushy life.”

Well, in some ways. “If he’s not done growing, his life is gonna suck,” Russell added. “Because I feel like 6’9 is when it sort of becomes untenable and you’re truly exceptional in a way that you probably don’t want to be. I’m glad I stopped at 6’7. Frankly, I would take off an inch if I could. Any taller than that, it would become even more of a headache than it already is.”

Russell raised an interesting point: What if Barron isn’t done growing yet? How tall is this kid gonna get? I asked a few experts, and unfortunately, if unsurprisingly, they told me there’s no real way to know. “Barron is nearly 18, by which time he may well be near his adult height,” Tim Cole, a professor at University College London who studies children’s growth, said in an email. “Both extremes are possible—that he has already finished growing, and that he will continue to grow—slowly—for several years.”

Emily R. Dodwell, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, told me that the majority of boys have completed the majority of their growth by 16 or 17. “It is not possible to know if any given 17-year-old has growth remaining just based on their age and height,” she wrote in an email. “At 17 some males are still growing and many have stopped growing.”

Jill Castle, a pediatric dietician who runs a nutrition education website, said, “It really depends on when he started to grow. Most boys have their growth spurt. It lasts for about three years. It can start, on average, around age 14. So theoretically, he could be sort of at the end of his growth spurt. But again, it depends on where he started.”

Barron’s growth spurt seems to have started quite a while ago. References to him being 6-foot-7 go back a few years—last year, several outlets put his height at 6 feet, 7 inches, and it was a topic of discussion in 2022 as well. The earliest reports of his height being 6-foot-7 may have come from the New York Post all the way back in 2021. It’s an uncommon height for any age, but it must be said, it’s really tall for 15. While it seems likely that Barron’s done growing, you never know. “Any boy at the age of 17 may grow another half inch or quarter of an inch, maybe an inch,” Castle said.

It’s as good a place as any to stop. According to Russell, there’s something special about the height 6 feet, 7 inches, something that people can’t help but pay attention to. In Barron Trump’s case, this is definitely true. “This is borderline numerology on my part, but 6’7 is such a specific height. It’s like the lower limit for being really tall,” Russell said. “For some reason, 6’7 means something to people.”