why are the kennedys cursed
People say “the Kennedys are cursed” because the family has had an unusually long string of high‑profile tragedies, so it feels more like a dark pattern than normal bad luck.
Are the Kennedys really cursed?
From a historical point of view, there is no evidence of a literal supernatural curse on the Kennedy family.
The “Kennedy curse” is a media and pop‑culture label people use to describe a series of deaths, accidents, scandals, and illnesses affecting multiple generations of the family.
Many historians and biographers argue that what looks like a curse is really a mix of risk‑taking behavior, intense ambition, constant public scrutiny, and simple probability amplified by fame.
Big events that made people talk about a “curse”
Some of the key moments that fuel the “why are the Kennedys cursed” idea include:
- Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
- Assassination of his brother Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 while running for president.
- Multiple wartime and aviation deaths among family members, including Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. in a World War II mission and John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash in 1999.
- The secret 1941 lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy, which left her permanently disabled and institutionalized, seen as the start of a tragic pattern inside the family.
- Accidents and scandals like the Chappaquiddick car crash involving Ted Kennedy, which he himself once linked, in his own mind, to the idea of “some awful curse” over his family.
Because these events involved young deaths, public violence, and shocking accidents, they stuck in the public imagination and made the “curse” narrative feel emotionally convincing.
Why people think “this can’t be just bad luck”
Several factors make the tragedies seem more than random:
- High visibility
The Kennedys are often called “America’s royal family,” so every accident, illness, and scandal gets national or global coverage, unlike most families’ private suffering.
- Sheer number of events
The family is large and has spanned multiple generations in public life; with so many people constantly in the spotlight and taking on high‑risk roles (war pilots, politicians, frequent travel), statistics alone mean more visible tragedies.
- Violent and dramatic nature
Murders, plane crashes, and mysterious incidents are more memorable than ordinary causes of death, so they reinforce the feeling of a curse much more than, say, quiet illnesses would.
- Storytelling and myth‑making
Books, documentaries, podcasts, and online essays keep framing these events as “the Kennedy curse,” which turns random events into a single shared story in people’s minds.
Other explanations people give (beyond superstition)
Writers and commentators often point to deeper, non‑mystical reasons when discussing why the Kennedys seem cursed:
- Intense ambition and pressure
- Patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. pushed his children to win at any cost and to live highly driven, public lives.
* A biographical view is that this culture encouraged risk‑taking, overwork, and sometimes reckless decisions, leading to more danger and more scandals.
- Power, enemies, and risk
- Being at the center of politics and power brings security risks, political enemies, and constant travel, all of which increase the chance of assassination attempts or accidents.
- Mental health, stigma, and secrecy
- Rosemary Kennedy’s lobotomy is often cited as a tragic example of how the family prioritized image over transparent care, illustrating how stigma, secrecy, and control created long‑lasting personal damage.
- Human need for patterns
- Psychologists and commentators note that humans naturally look for patterns in chaos; clustering a series of tragedies under “a curse” makes random misfortune feel like a story with a theme.
How people talk about it today (news + forums)
In recent years, the “Kennedy curse” still pops up in:
- News retrospectives and timelines that list every major tragedy in the family, often updating the idea whenever a new event affects a Kennedy.
- Opinion pieces and essays that argue the curse is really about legacy, trauma, mental health, and pressure rather than anything supernatural.
- Podcasts and forum discussions that treat it as a mix of true‑crime, political history, and modern myth, debating whether it’s fate, karma, or just statistics.
So when people ask “why are the Kennedys cursed,” the grounded answer is: they’re not literally cursed, but a rare mix of repeated, dramatic tragedies, huge public visibility, and powerful storytelling has turned one family’s painful history into a lasting legend.
Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.