Every parent with a big career gets asked some version of the same question. Will the kids follow in your footsteps?
For Michael Jackson, that question came with a lot of weight. He was the King of Pop, after all. So when Vibe magazine sat down with him for its March 2002 issue, the writer asked it straight out.
“How would you feel about your children becoming pop icons, based upon your experience?”
Vibe had met Michael at his Neverland home. He greeted the writer and then went off to see his 5-year-old son Prince and 3-year-old daughter Paris. That was his life right then. He was a dad raising two little ones, and he sounded happy about it.
“I never had so much fun in all my life. That’s the truth,” he told Vibe about being a single parent.
His first reaction to the pop star question was honest. He didn’t pretend to have it figured out.
“I don’t know how they would handle that. It would be tough. I really don’t know.”
Later that year, Michael took the two of them to Disney World in Orlando. This real footage of that family day shows the little ones he was talking about.
Michael with Prince and Paris at Disney World in December 2002
Then Michael did something you might not expect. Instead of talking about his own childhood, he told Vibe about somebody else’s son.
Fred Astaire was the great Hollywood dancer of films like “Top Hat,” and Michael idolized him. Astaire had a son, Fred Astaire Jr., who didn’t follow his father onto the dance floor.
Michael remembered how people treated him.
“People used to always say to Fred Astaire Jr., ‘Can you dance?’ And he couldn’t,” Michael said. “He didn’t have any rhythm, but his father was this genius dancer.”
You can hear what he was getting at. Being the child of a legend means everybody expects you to be a legend too, whether that’s who you are or not. Michael didn’t want that for Prince and Paris.
So he told Vibe what he said to them at home.
“I always tell my children, You don’t have to sing, you don’t have to dance.”
And then he finished the thought.
“Be who you want to be, as long as you’re not hurting anybody. That’s the main thing.”
That’s quite a thing to hear from the biggest singer and dancer of his time. He wanted his kids to have a choice.
As it turned out, they did find their own way into the business. Prince works as a producer, and Paris sings and acts. But they got there on their own terms, which is exactly what their dad had hoped for when he talked to Vibe back in 2002.
Any parent or grandparent who has ever told a child “just be yourself” will probably hear a bit of their own voice in that answer.