The story continues to get more bizarro: In an interview with a British paper it states that Debbie Rowe says she is the "adopted daughter of a millionaire couple from Malibu."
She continues to claim that she is the biological mother but Wendy Murphy, feminist lawyer and commentator, writes otherwise:
"Latest claims are that although Rowe gestated Prince and Paris, she used an egg and sperm donor. Rowe denies the claim and says they are HER biological children - but not Jackson’s. It’s an interesting legal dilemma in theory because neither Rowe nor Jackson formally "adopted" the kids, which is the typical way parenthood is established in situations where children are born at the request, but without the genetic material, of mom and dad. But it's a moot point because a court long ago declared Rowe and Jackson the legal parents of Prince and Paris.
The more curious issue is the way Rowe has described her children as a "gift" to Jackson. Most people who give “gifts” don’t demand millions of dollars as a quid pro quo. Oh, and then there’s that quirky problem in law that says you can’t sell your children.
In fact, it’s a felony.
Ironically, however, Rowe has priority seating in the current custody dispute because a few years ago, a judge refused to enforce Rowe's “kids for cash” deal, which means she automatically regained her parental rights – though she got to keep all the money."
sick sick sick
Why is FMF fascinated by this weird tale? Because it is what happens when money outweighs common sense, natural law, reproductive ethics. What of these children? Not only is Jackson's mother 79, she is apparently in failing health. The woman with whom the children have the longest relationship is Grace Rwaramba, who has literally raised the children for more than a decade. The kids have reportedly been asking for her and would probably choose Grace to be their guardian.
The only good that could possibly come out of this would be for tough legislation that would somehow put the brakes on making babies in petrie dishes and then going to Rent-A-Womb for gestation. --lorraine
The Debbie Rowe/Michael Jackson story continues to change, hour to hour. Last night Rev. Al Sharpton was on the tube talking about how Rowe, the mother of his children, does not deserve to get them because Michael wanted his 79-year-old mother, or 63-year-old Diana Ross to be their guardian, and that Ms. Rowe really is hardly worth considering.
This morning one "legal expert" on one channel was saying that she has almost no chance of getting the two oldest children--her children--while on another the legal expert was announcing that under California law, she has a very good claim indeed. Jackson's spokesman said that the children did not even know she was their mother [so who did they think was?], and dismissed Rowe as if she were no more than the "reproductive agent" that we at Birth Mother, First Mother Forum have in fact been accused of being to the children we surrendered to adoption. How involved Rowe has been in their lives appears to be little, especially after the divorce six or eight years ago. (FMF blogger does not pretend to be a celebrity hound, so that the exact number of years since the divorce escapes us.)
And then this morning, Rowe's lawyer was saying that she had not yet decided whether or not she will sue for custody. We do not know what kind of mother Ms. Rowe has been, or if, as it has been suggested, she is making noise now to get a better stake of Jackson's assets. But what is making us crazy is that some of Jackson's supporters and others are beginning to slime her. Jackson's former and current PR spokesman dismisses her as if she were not related to the children. He did admit that Jackson restricted visitation to the degree that it "irked" her. One legal expert said that her getting the children were "certainly not in their best interests."
Wait a moment--did anybody notice that Jackson's sainted mother is 79? That Diana Ross may not want to be their guardian-mother? Again, we are not saying that Rowe is a saint, but we do know that a child's real mother (and now we do think that Ms. Rowe supplied more than the womb) has a connection to that child that no one else has. Whether she is the right person to raise them we are not going to say, but we take this moment to speak up for her. As a final note: the two children she is the mother of are 12 and 11, and will almost certainly be asked by the judge in the case whom they would prefer to live with. Their preference will not necessarily decide the case, but should have an impact. The third child, Prince Michael, known as Blanket, has a murkier future, to our mind, as no mother is listed anywhere. Ah, the glories of the new reproductive technologies: a child without a mother! And now, no father!
What comes to FMF's mind is a case that involved two children adopted from Russia by a very wealthy couple who lived in the fabled Hamptons in a multimillion dollar house. The adoptive mother had an affair with one of the contractors working one the house and the couple divorced; the father stayed involved, but the mother had day-to-day custody. The father was apparently killed by the contractor...(he is in jail for the murder), and about a year or two later, the mother died of breast cancer.
The children--twins as I recall, a boy and a girl--were left in the guardianship of their English nanny, whom, as the story went in Vanity Fair, did not treat them well. And what did she do when all was said and done? Send the kids--who were 12 or so by then--to separate boarding schools. This sordid story eventually became a Lifetime movie, but FMF has no idea what happened to the kids, who must be in their late teens by now. Very wealthy, but probably very screwed up.
Yet another happy adoption story. Soon, very soon, FMF will leave this story and return to normal. FMF seems to have a case of Jacksonitis, which is quite surprising as we were never huge fans....as we were the wrong age group to be his groupies.
Let me eat my words before anything else: Debbie Rowe, the purported mother of Michael Jackson's two oldest children was announcing that she was going to ask for custody of the two children she bore at the very time we were posting our last blog. She added that she did not think she would get custody of the third child, Prince Michael, or "Blanket," but would make the case that keeping the siblings together would be best for their mental health. So.......we were wrong.
And in a further reassessment of the situation: checking out her picture, she does have that cute upturned nose that the other children have. So.........we were likely to be found wrong.
What can I say? Mea culpa.
I understand Perez Hilton, who does this kind of up-to-the minute blogging, gets very little shuteye during the night. That is not how we first mothers are going to run this little blog that we do for fun? because we certainly are not doing it for profit....
Anyway, good night all. I think I will leave the Jackson journey to other blogs. The Fourth of July is upon us. I've sent my draft of Hole in My Heart to my agent (as of Sunday evening) and am waiting to here what she has to say. And I'm going to enjoy the Fourth with friends. --lorraine
PS: That's me and my granddaughter, who was ten or eleven at the time.
Michael Jackson and his three kids at Prince Michael II's (aka "Blanket") first birthday party. Seated left-to-right: Prince Michael Jackson II, Michael Jackson, Prince Michael Joseph Jackson I, and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson.(Zuma Press)
The purported mother of the first two children, Debbie Rowe, does not even seem to be in the mix as a candidate for custody, and she certainly has not stepped up to the plate demanding any kind of rights or contact with her "offspring." She reportedly has said (when she was pregnant with Prince, the oldest) that she was going to carry a child "for a friend," so my supposition is that she was merely the surrogate, and the ova was from another donor. (When she signed over all rights to the children, she reportedly got $8 million, plus a house, and $750,000 a year.) Whether the sperm is his or not is up for debate because the delicate facial features of the kids are not like Jackson's--that is the Jackson before he had several surgeries to change his facial structure with his slender upturned nose and cheekbones to die for. Another point: the two oldest children resemble one another, so maybe they do share some of the same "genetic material," that is their DNA. Perhaps they have the same biological mother. If their eggs were purchased, it is highly unlikely that the woman knows who they were for, as Jackson would have had good financial reason for not disclosing his identity to her.
The fact that Prince and Paris, the two oldest, look quite "white" is in fact, less of an issue since that skin tone is genetically possible (though not likely) with a white mother and because both of his parents are obviously mixed genetically. My guess: ova from elsewhere; Rowe the surrogate mother, sperm...unknown. There is some speculation that the genetic material came from Rowe's boss at the time, Jackson's dermatologist. But he does not have fine facial features, nor does Rowe. I would imagine that Jackson picked out the egg donor from a book of pictures, looking for the "white" features that he obviously craved and eventually, created for himself.
The third child, Prince Michael, aka Blanket, has more of Michal's features and is also darker than the other two, and apparently on his birth certificate there is no mother listed. Ova and womb, rented; sperm, possibly Jackson's.
One can debate endlessly where the genetic material (which is what sperm and ova are called by the legalese) came from, but what we are Birth Mother, First Mother Forum are concerned about is the mental and emotional void that this kind of engineering leads to. One can appreciate Jackson's dancing (innovative, mesmerizing, influential) and music (excellent) but we are appalled at his, or anyone, making children this way. Simply because he (and Sarah Jessica Parker) had enough money to do so is not reason enough.
If we have learned anything in all the years we have been involved in adoptee-rights work, it is that where one comes from--whose DNA one carries--is a crucial facet of one's emotional bearings, and the psychic confusion that results from not knowing this is the cause of endless ennui and angst. While these children are not adopted, are they going to feel, completely and wholly, that they are the King of Pop's children? Or will they have that niggling and persistent sense of lack of completion that adopted people speak of?
While there have been reams of literature written about the adopted person's quest to know his true parents, his genetic, biological parentage and heritage, as far back as 1972 the American Academy of Pediatrics had this to say:
"Determining identity is a difficult process for someone brought up by his natural parents; it is more complex for the individual whose ancestry is unknown to him....To state that a 'feeling of self' is paramount in the development of a strong and functioning individual is not an exaggeration. The driving need for identity and independence is not only indigenous to the individual but it is also a dominant force in entire national and ethnic groups. Minorities within national states express these needs; examples of this are painfully evident in our country and in other parts of the world....
What [the adopted person] is really seeking is to achieve a unity and persistence of personality in spite of the break in the continuity of his life. The struggle with this problem may reach its peak in adolescence and, in the extreme, result in running away in search of real parents."
As readers of FMF know, I found my daughter when she was fifteen and reunited with her, with her adoptive parents blessing, within the week. Was it the right thing for Jane? Yes, yes, and yes.
All through the years, my daughter Jane collected bits of data about who she was through how we were alike, and while I enjoyed coming upon these similarities, only occassionally would I become aware how important these pieces of connection were to her, even though they all seemed so small and unremarkable at the time. We sang off key, could not snap our fingers on our left hands, wore the same makeup shade (and like to wear makeup, which is why this meant something to her), had the same taste in what we wore, overcame our fears of public speaking. We frequently stood the same way, one foot crossed in front of the other, we both had a heavy step. We had the same kind and color of hair, the same eye color. And other "coincidences" kept adding up: we both had affairs (she married him, I did not) with men more than a decade older than we were; liked to garden, and collect stuff--a trait she did share with her adoptive mother.
If the makeup reference seems frivolous, note this: she once commented offhandedly that what she lost by being adopted was not learning how to apply makeup at her mother's side when she was a teenager; one of the fun things we did when the first time she came to New York was to have makeup applied by the masters at Saks in Manhattan. Yes it was a treat for both of us. I'm not saying she could not have done this with her other mother at a department store counter in Madison, Wisconsin; but the likelihood of this occurring with her other mother, who paid makeup and clothes little mind, was zero to none. We've written about what character traits are inherited before, what we can never write enough about is what the lack of them means to the person who is cut off from them.
I am sorry for Michael Jackson's children. All the riches and baby lions in the world can not make up for what they appear to be without: a known genetic connection to their heritage. We can only hope only the best for them.
