Children of minors are not citizens???
OMG
Yes, the children of some minors cannot inherit the mother’s citizenship due to legal incapacity.
At the time the U.S. Constitution was adopted, there was no such thing as a wife having a citizenship different than her husband’s citizenship. At the moment of marriage the wife’s former citizenship is expatriated and her husband’s citizenship became her own citizenship. When the father naturalized to another citizenship, the citizenship of the wife and the minor children in the household automatically naturalized to the husband’s new citizenship as well.
Fast forward to the 20th Century. Adult women were granted the right of emancipation upon reaching majority age the same as men. As emancipated person, the adult women gained many legal capacities denied them when they required a father, husband, or other male for a legal guardian to conduct legal affairs. This came to include the right of suffrage, the right to vote and participate in the political community. This new legal capacity also began to change their ability to maintain a citizenship different than their husbands’ and minor children.
At the time Obama was born in 1961, Stanley Ann Dunham was still considered to be a minor in the eyes of international law and U.S. law. Consequently, she was witout the emancipation of a minor required to qualify for the legal rights of an adult. Her father was her legal guardian for purposes of legal affairs, until her adult and emancipated husband became her new legal guardian for conducting her legal affairs. Under these laws, the adult father’s citizenship is inheritable by the child, but the minor mother’s citizenship is no inheritable. This was reflected in the law where it required the mother to be of a required age a specific number of years before the birth to convey the mother’s citizenship to the child. So, yes, in certain circumstances a specific minor cannot giver her citizenship to her child, even in the 20th and 21st Centuries.