Since Donald Trump's inauguration, Melania (R) has not been seen at official events and is not living in the White House, raising questions on what kind of first lady the former model will be (AFP Photo/Nicholas Kamm ) 
 
 New York (AFP) - Two weeks after her husband's inauguration, questions are mounting about what kind of first lady Melania Trump will be. 
 
 The 46-year-old former model wowed the crowds at his swearing-in ceremony and inaugural balls dressed in Ralph Lauren powder blue and a vanilla crepe, ticking fashion boxes and suggesting that the mother of one was anxious to step up to her new role. 
 
 Since then, however, she has not been seen at official events, is not living in the White House and is still putting together her staff. 
 
 She was last spotted by the president's side at an inter-faith church service on January 21 before making the reported 90-minute commute home to New York by helicopter, plane and motorcade the following day. With no imminent plans to move to Washington, she's said to want the couple's 10-year-old son Barron to stay at his school at least until the end of the academic year. 
 
 On Tuesday, she was conspicuously absent when Trump announced his Supreme Court pick. Vice President Mike Pence and Neil Gorsuch brought their wives. Even Trump's sons Donald Jr. and Eric made the journey from New York. 
 
 On Wednesday, the president's daughter Ivanka accompanied him to Delaware to honor a fallen Navy SEAL. Unlike her stepmother, Ivanka has already moved from New York with her husband, White House advisor Jared Kushner. 
 
 Asked in December if he would be lonely rattling around the White House on his own, then president-elect Donald Trump told Fox News: "No, I'll be working." 
 
 Never in modern times -- when Americans are accustomed to having visible and active first ladies -- has a president's wife not moved straight to Washington. 
 
 "Certainly in that time we haven't seen a phenomenon such as this where the first lady delays for at least several months moving into the White House," said Katherine Jellison, history professor at Ohio University. 
 
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 - Quiet start common - 
 
 Melania's absence has prompted speculation in the media, which Trump's senior advisor Stephen Bannon has likened to "the opposition" for its tough, critical coverage of the president's campaign and his first two weeks in office. 
 
 "Whither Melania Trump?" 12 days without a public sighting," CNN said. "Where is Melania?" asked The Washington Post. "Separate Lives," ran a headline in celebrity magazine US Weekly. 
 
 The White House announced Wednesday that the first lady had appointed a chief of staff -- Lindsay Reynolds, who previously served there under George W. Bush. 
 
 "I am putting together a professional and highly experienced team which will take time to do properly," the first lady said in the statement. 
 
 Still, first ladies tend to maintain low profiles at the start. Hillary Clinton and Rosalynn Carter proved exceptions to the rule. 
 
 "The first lady often sets out her policy agenda in March or April, complementing and reinforcing the 100-days agenda of the president," said Connecticut College government professor MaryAnn Borrelli. 
 
 But beyond admiring Michelle Obama and Jacqueline Kennedy and mentioning a potential campaign against cyber bullying, Melania has given little indication so far of what kind of first lady she wants to be. 
 
 - Reframing the job? - 
 
 Since Trump assumed office, her official Facebook and Twitter accounts have issued just one update -- on January 21 -- proclaiming her "deeply honored" to serve. 
 
 Just one appointment to her staff has been revealed besides Reynolds: longtime friend and New York event planner Stephanie Winston Wolkoff as senior adviser. Other positions such as press and social secretaries have yet to be filled. 
 
 The absence is not helping her lackluster approval ratings, partly a by-product of her husband's deep unpopularity among half the electorate. She was also mocked during the campaign for a major speech that plagiarized Michelle Obama. 
 
 But Borelli believes her unpopularity is not entirely unusual. 
 
 "I think that first ladies often enter the White House with a mix of support and suspicion and then the job is -- because they do public outreach -- how to capitalize on the support and manage suspicion," she said. 
 
 Michelle Obama, the first African-American first lady, and Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt, who both defied the meek housewife stereotype, also came in for heavy criticism particularly at the start. 
 
 Others say it is time for an independent first lady who reflects reality in the 21st century, when few American women are defined by their husbands. 
 
 Should Melania continue to keep a low profile, future generations may credit her as a modernizer who broke free from the confines of her position. 
 
 "It may lower expectations for the next woman," Jellison said. "She won't feel that she has to be the perfect American wife and mother role model." ||||| Future first lady Melania Trump and son Barron will not be moving to the White House after Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, The Post has learned. 
 
 The president-elect’s 46-year-old wife and their 10-year-old son are staying put at the family’s glitzy Trump Tower penthouse so that Barron can continue attending his Upper West Side private school, sources told The Post. 
 
 “Melania is extremely close to Barron, and they have become closer during the campaign,” said a source close to Trump’s transition team. “The campaign has been difficult for Barron, and she is really hoping to keep disruption to a minimum.” 
 
 Another source said Melania Trump will travel to the White House as needed, but that her primary focus is on Barron. 
 
 “Melania is very supportive of her husband and is fully on board of doing everything that’s needed as first lady,” said the second source familiar with the Trump transition. 
 
 That source said also that there is a possibility that Melania and Barron may move to the White House at the end of the school year, but no plans are in place. 
 
 “She is really devoted to Barron,” said a source close to the family, adding that Melania has not relied on nannies to raise the child and is frequently seen picking the fourth-grader up from his prep school, where annual tuition is north of $40,000. 
 
 The decision to remain in their Midtown home will increase the security presence around Trump Tower — an effort that will involve both Secret Service and the NYPD, an expert familiar with high-level security told The Post. 
 
 “That building is going to become the White House of New York,” said Jim Reese, a former Delta Force commander and president of TigerSwan, a global security company based in North Carolina. 
 
 “The Secret Service is going to have to keep that whole area cordoned off so that some wacko can’t get close and detonate a car bomb.” 
 
 Strict security measures around Trump Tower will remain in place, with two of the five lanes on Fifth Avenue between East 56th and 57th streets closed because of barriers, said officials at a joint NYPD, Secret Service and City Hall news conference Friday. 
 
 Following the presidential election, the area around Trump Tower has turned into a traffic nightmare, with East 56th Street closed to traffic between Fifth and Madison avenues, and shoppers having to go through a security cordon and subject to bag checks. 
 
 Barron and Melania will each have an unknown number of Secret Service agents assigned to them in addition to a driver and armored vehicle to take Barron to school, Reese said. An advance team of agents will swoop down on the school each morning to make sure it’s safe, he added. 
 
 Additional reporting by Daniel Halper ||||| Play Facebook 
 
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 Melania Trump and son Barron are expected to move to the White House and in Washington, D.C. "right after" Barron's school year is completed, president-elect Donald Trump told NBC News. 
 
 Yesterday, the New York Post reported that there was uncertainty surrounding the prospect of Mrs. Trump and her son leaving New York City. Trump himself prompted doubt about the family’s plans to fully relocate with his continued preference to return home to Trump Tower whenever possible, but confirmed to NBC News on Sunday that he intends to live in the White House. 
 
 Related: Ivanka Trump's Company Scrambles Over '60 Minutes' Bracelet Criticism 
 
 Though Trump’s transition team has an office in Washington, D.C., Trump has remained ensconced in his Trump Tower suite and held most of his transition meetings over the past two weeks in the building, as well. 
 
 The issue of Donald Trump's residency has been just one of many questions surrounding his family's potential involvement in his presidency, which include what critics says are conflicts of interest when it comes to the real estate mogul's business. 
 
 Even as Melania and Barron plan to move to the White House, the president-elect is expected to spend part of his time at Trump Tower and his vacation time at his various properties around the United States. This weekend, he retreated to his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., for a change of scenery, but continued meetings with cabinet prospects. 
 
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 The first lady has historically played a prominent public role in a president’s administration by advocating on an issue of national importance and appearing in the president’s stead at various events and media interviews. Melania Trump largely avoided the spotlight of her husband’s campaign and stayed off the trail but has indicated she’s open to taking on more of the traditional activities of a first lady now that her husband has been elected. 
 
 And while presidents have emphasized privacy for their young children in the past, Trump’s adult children and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have taken outsize roles as campaign strategists, confidantes and surrogates and look likely to fill similar roles in his White House. 
 
 Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump have all been in and out of Trump Tower this week along with a stream of campaign advisers and potential cabinet appointees, but the depth of their involvement with the transition is unclear — and has already sparked controversy. 
 
 Trump’s children are expected to manage his business in his stead as he focuses on the White House, but those plans have raised questions over whether Trump will truly be free of conflicts of interest or the influence of his business interests with close family members overseeing them. The Wall Street Journal in an editorial Thursday urged Trump to liquidate his stake in the Trump Organization to avoid the appearance of impropriety. 
 
 Related: Jared Kushner Could End Up at the Heart of Trump White House 
 
 Critics worried about the intertwining of Trump’s White House, family and business interests found cause for concern in Trump’s decision to let his daughter Ivanka sit in on his recent meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. 
 
 Some former government officials told the New York Times that Ivanka’s presence was inappropriate, in part because she’s an executive at an international corporation and topics discussed there could influence her business, but also because of national security concerns. 
 
 A source close to the family, when asked by NBC News about the appearance of conflict from Ivanka Trump's presence at this week's meeting with the Japanese prime minister, provided the following statement: 
 
 "Mr. Trump has always encouraged Ivanka and his children to attend meetings with him. This meeting in question was very informal. However, they obviously need to adjust to the new realities at hand, which they will." 
 
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 NBC News' Chuck Todd questioned incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, about additional reports raising similar conflict of interest questions, such as a Washington Post report on foreign diplomats being wined and dined at Trump's D.C. hotel and a New York Times story on Trump's meeting last week with three Indian business partners. Todd asked if a blind trust, which would require an independent manager rather than Trump's children to run the business, or divestment was on the table. 
 
 "We're not going to get into the details of that, but that is being handled, and there is nothing being discussed of any import, the meeting was simply cursory," Priebus said. 
 
 "How do we know that?" Todd asked, noting that the press had not been allowed to attend the meeting. 
 
 "There is going to be no violation of any of these rules," Priebus said. "I can assure you of that." ||||| Melania Trump has hired a chief of staff, a move that puts her first official mark on the White House, but the first lady’s office is likely to be pretty lonely for the foreseeable future. 
 
 Trump herself hasn’t been in Washington since her husband’s inauguration weekend, and it’s not clear when she will return. She has said she plans to continue living in Trump Tower in Manhattan while son Barron finishes out the school year. 
 
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 And even though Lindsay Reynolds, a private fundraising planner and former official in President George W. Bush’s visitors office, will be joining the second floor of the East Wing, there’s little insight on when she’ll get co-workers. 
 
 Key roles still open in the first lady’s office include the press operation, scheduling, correspondence and the social office. 
 
 The relatively empty first lady’s office is a break from Melania Trump’s predecessors. Laura Bush and Michelle Obama each assumed the role with a chief of staff and a social secretary at the ready. 
 
 But some say it’s not surprising that Melania Trump hasn’t staked her claim on the office of the first lady, since she has yet to settle into the White House. The first lady’s role comes with a budget and a staff that technically reports to the office of the president, but there’s no statutory authority and its contours have been shaped by tradition. 
 
 “We have become accustomed with the activism of the first lady, but there’s nothing that is required and there really is no specific job description for the first lady,” said Anita McBride, former chief of staff to Laura Bush and an executive in residence at American University. “Each occupant gets to rewrite how they want to handle it.” 
 
 Reynolds was involved in planning the inauguration under former Vogue events planner Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who is acting as a consultant to the first lady. Key roles still open in the first lady’s office include the press operation, scheduling, correspondence and the social secretary’s office, which plans state dinners and other formal events. 
 
 Residence staff had to step in and organize the swearing-in ceremony for White House appointees and the lunch with British Prime Minister Theresa May last week. “The most important person in the first lady’s office is the social secretary,” said McBride. She cautioned that working without a social secretary is not a “long-term solution.” 
 
 “Clearly you’re going to have a lot of social events that will require the expertise of a social secretary,” she said. 
 
 Ebs Burnough, former deputy social secretary to Michelle Obama, said it’s not necessary to have an active first lady’s office as long as the social secretary has access to the Oval Office. “The social secretary can conceivably not see the first lady and just deal directly with the president,” he said. 
 
 Transition officials sought guidance from staffers who worked for Obama and for Laura Bush, according to sources, which is customary. Since the transition, Jessica Boulanger, a Washington-based communications executive and the founder of a line of maternity wear, has been helping the first lady field press requests pro bono, she said. 
 
 Obama’s East Wing was largely staffed by Inauguration Day, and even staff attracted an unusual degree of attention — including social secretary Desiree Rogers, who scored a spread in Vogue. Obama used her role to promote exercise and healthy eating, a campaign that required a staff to manage and execute. 
 
 Melania Trump said during the campaign that she would fight online bullying. 
 
 Melania Trump’s stepdaughter Ivanka joined her father on his trip to Dover Air Force Base, where they were present as the remains of a Navy SEAL killed in a weekend raid in Yemen were returned to the U.S. It was the first time Ivanka Trump, who’s moved with her family to Washington and whose husband, Jared Kushner, is a senior White House adviser, had taken on any of the symbolic duties usually reserved for a president’s spouse. 
 
 Ivanka Trump was a vocal presence on the campaign trail and was in the West Wing last weekend as her father made calls. A source close to her says she doesn’t have a desk in the East Wing “for now.” 
 
 White House aides have said Melania Trump will move to Washington in the summer, once Barron, the president’s youngest child, finishes the school year in New York. 
 
 People in Melania Trump’s Upper East Side set haven’t been surprised to see her take a low-key approach to her new role. “She's sort of like Rapunzel in the tower,” said one New York City socialite who knows Trump from her infrequent appearances on the New York social and charity scene. 
 
 Annie Karni contributed to this report.
– Melania Trump is holed up in New York City until at least the end of son Barron's school year, already redefining the role of first lady. The New York Times reports on that upended role, and whether Melania will even play much of one at all, noting it was Trump's daughter Ivanka, not his wife, who accompanied him to Dover Air Force Base to honor a US Navy SEAL killed during last weekend's Yemen raid. A first-lady historian tells the Times that Melania is "far behind the curve" in terms of conventional duties, including organizing the tour requests that are already stacking up. People said to be close to Mrs. Trump, though, say she'll eventually increase her presence but is in no rush to do so. Other ruminations about the first lady from around the web: AFP expands on the "low-profile" first lady, with a Connecticut College professor observing that the first lady's agenda has traditionally emerged in March or April of inauguration years. Melania has made one major move: She hired Lindsay Reynolds, a private fundraising organizer, as her chief of staff, per Politico, which calls the first lady's office the "loneliest place in the White House." Despite an Us Weekly report earlier this week that Melania and 10-year-old Barron may never leave New York, an aide to the first lady tells ABC News that Melania (and presumably Barron) will indeed relocate to DC at the beginning of the summer. The rep adds Mrs. Trump takes "the role and responsibilities of the First Lady very seriously." Melania's defamation lawsuit against the Daily Mail was tossed by a Maryland judge because the state court did not have jurisdiction to take on a foreign entity, BuzzFeed reports. Her suit against a blogger continues.