Some people just look like Dads, don’t they? Everything about them is paternal. Other people surprise you when you find out they are dads.
For me, Michael Jackson was one of those second types of people. He always seemed more like a child himself than a father, even well into his 40s. But Michael Jackson had kids, 3 of them, and he didn’t want them to have the sort of childhood he had.
He once said he “grew up in a fishbowl” and he didn’t want the same for his own children, so he did his best to maintain their privacy. He had them wear masks in public, and rarely let them appear on camera. Unfortunately, this only heightened media interest.
When Jackson died of an overdose in 2009, the focus on his children surged.
People wanted to know what would happen to them and who would be their guardian, and this interest spiked if they ever attended public events.
The more exposure they got the more the mystery evaporated, and eventually, over time, people’s interest dissipated. So much so that ten years later people began asking what happened to Michael Jackson’s kids?
Now adults, the three of them have remained close despite all following separate paths, and this is everything we know about them.
Prince Jackson
Prince’s real name is Michael Joseph Jackson, but everyone knows him as Prince. His Dad was the King of Pop, after all.
Prince was Michael Jackson’s first child, born in 1997. His mother, Debbie Rowe, and his father divorced two years after he was born, and Jackson got full custody, so Prince grew up on the famous Neverland Ranch.
As a young adult he went to study business administration at Loyola Marymount University, graduating in 2019. While there, he and a friend set up Heal Los Angeles, a charity which provides toys, meals and educational tools. It began is 2016 and is still running today, and Prince won a Motif Lifetime Medal of Honor for his work through the charity.
His father was a philanthropist, too, and Prince has said his Dad would have been proud of his work.
Away from philanthropy, Prince toyed with the idea of working in media but moved away from that after the documentary, “Leaving Neverland”, was released. The accusations against his father were too much for him, so he took a step back. With an estimated inherited fortune of $100 million, he doesn’t exactly need to work.
He’s no LA brat, though. By all accounts he is a polite, well mannered man and not particularly flashy with his cash. He is still friends with lots of his childhood bodyguards if rumours are to be believed, plus, he is in a committed relationship with his long time girlfriend, Molly Schirmang, who he met at university, although he keeps this side of his life mostly private.
Prince isn’t the sort to hide from the media, but he doesn’t court it, either. He’s always happy to attend events in his father’s honour, or those that celebrate him such as the opening of MJ the Musical, and he often attends charity gigs.
He is a huge motorbike enthusiast, and even ran a Youtube channel for a number of years documenting his rides around California. It seems to have gone quiet now, though.
Paris Jackson
Paris is Michael Jackson’s second child with Debbie Rowe, born in 1998.
Her full name is Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson, with Katherine Jackson being her grandmother, and also the children’s guardian after Michael passed away.
It was Paris who broke everyone’s heart at the end of her father’s memorial service in 2009, when she asked to speak to the crowd and said:
“I just wanted to say, ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine. And I just wanted to say I love him so much.”
Before bursting into tears and throwing herself into the arms of her family.
Paris is the only one of Jackson’s kids who followed in his footsteps. There are unearthed home videos showing her expressing her wish to be a dancer and a singer like her “Daddy”. She has come good on that wish. Paris started out as a model, but writes her own music and sings, just like her Dad. She has dabbled in acting, too.
She has over 5 million followers on Instagram and often posts videos of herself playing the guitar and singing:
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It hasn’t all been fame and fun times for Paris, though. She struggled a lot with her mental health as a teenager, attempting suicide at 15 and dealing with a lot of self hatred.
This developed into a heroin addiction which she thankfully beat in 2020, celebrating 5 years of sobriety in 2025. After lots of therapy, she finally seems settled now.
She is also happily engaged to a music producer called Justin Long, with the pair announcing their news in December 2024. She has a lot of love for her family, and has said publicly that she looks up to her older brother, Prince.
Bigi Jackson (formerly Blanket Jackson)
The youngest of Michael Jackson’s children also keeps the lowest profile.
He was born via surrogate in 2002, so is the half brother of Prince and Paris, and his real name is Prince Michael Jackson II. The name Bigi only came about in 2015, after he himself changed it due to bullying. Previously he had been known as ‘Blanket’, a nickname given to him by his father, but on top of being who he was it made him a target for ridicule.
It was Bigi that Michael Jackson famously dangled over a hotel balcony in Berlin to the baying press and fans below.
Bigi was only 7 years old when he lost his father, and always seemed like the more reserved of the three children even before 2009. He is an adult now, but there is still precious little information about him out there.
We know he loves films. He has done a small amount of producing and even did some film reviews on Youtube with his brother and his uncle, but the channel was short lived.
In 2020, he bought a home in a guard gated community in Calabasas, California, costing $2.62 million, so he isn’t short of money. He doesn’t seem to do anything to earn more though, likely living off a trust fund of some sort. This house purchase was apparently another attempt to maintain his privacy.
He has stepped out of the shadows to attend events remembering his father, though, including the opening of the MJ musical I mentioned previously. He also hit the headlines in 2024 when he filed a legal motion opposing his grandmother’s request to use funds from Michael Jackson’s estate to finance her legal battle against the estate’s executors. Bigi argued that funding the appeal would not benefit the estate or its heirs, one of which is obviously him.
