This may be no surprise to anyone but Grimes, but it turns out that Elon Musk isn’t the easiest person to raise a child with — or three children, as it turns out.
Musk’s alleged lack of co-parenting skills was revealed by the singer over the weekend, as she stirred up concern about her children’s well-being when she impulsively said on her former lover’s platform, X, that the mercurial billionaire wasn’t letting her see their oldest child, a 3-year-old boy they also called X, as Jezebel reported.
Grimes also said she was dealing with a situation that was “ripping her family apart,” which she suggested also had to do with her being cut out of communications over the twins Musk fathered in 2021 with his current partner Shivon Zilis.
Grimes issued this tweet on Friday, in response to a tweet by Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson, who shared two photos, Jezebel reported. One photo was of Musk with Zilis and their 22-month-old twins. The second was of Musk with his oldest son with Grimes, whose full name is X Æ A-12.
Musk, by the way, now has 11 children with three different women and has expressed the belief that declining birth rates are a threat to human civilization and that “smart people” like himself need to populate the earth with as many children as possible.
Ever since imbibing Isaac Asimov stories as a kid, Musk has worried that our robots could turn on us. This Time excerpt of https://t.co/7JGHd10lOC explains why and what he’s doing about it. https://t.co/EiXqmMi3E6 pic.twitter.com/loKKgwYoIx
— Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) September 6, 2023
In her tweet, which Grimes subsequently deleted, Grimes claimed that Zilis, whom she once considered a friend, had blocked her. She also threatened to take Musk to court.
“Tell Shivon to unblock me and tell Elon to let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer,” Grimes wrote, according to Jezebel. “I have never been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite the situation utterly ripping my family apart.”
Grimes subsequently posted another tweet on Sunday, confirming news reported by the New Yorker, that she had chosen to have a third child with Musk. The New Yorker reported that this child, a boy named Techno Mechanicus Musk, or Tau for short, was born in 2022, the same year the Tesla and Space X CEO acquired Twitter.
Grimes and Musk also are parents of a daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk (nicknamed “Y”), who was born in December 2021. The baby girl arrived via surrogate, several weeks after Musk had his twins with Zillis. According to Isaacson’s book, Grimes apparently only learned that Musk and Zillis had twins together at the same time as the rest of the public — even though Zilis gave birth while Grimes and Musk’s surrogate was just down the hallway in the same maternity ward, Jezebel reported.
On Sunday, Grimes returned to social media to despair of the “narrative” that blew up over the weekend about her supposed rivalry with Zilis after she threatened to take Musk to court. She confirmed the existence of their third child, Techno, and insisted that she and Zillis had enjoyed a “wonderful talk” and she isn’t to blame for the fact that “communication about the twins wasn’t handled super well in the past.”
“I truly apologize for responding to Walter like that,” Grimes said. “As u can imagine, that was a very gut level reaction to a thing that has been very hard for me.”
But now, Grimes said she and Zilis look forward to becoming friends and having “the kids grow up together.”
If Grimes is complaining about Musk being inflexible when it comes to parenting and other relationships, many would say she could have informed herself better before she chose to have three children with him.
Musk’s first wife, Canadian novelist Justine Wilson, has long characterized him as a difficult, controlling and patriarchal man to live with. Musk and Wilson, who were married from 2000 to 2008, had six children together, the oldest of whom died at age 10 weeks of sudden infant death syndrome.
Musk is reportedly estranged from their 19-year-old transgender daughter due to his polarizing comments about gender identity issues. Last year, the daughter petitioned a court in California to recognize her new name and gender. She also said she no longer wanted to “live with” or “be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
Musk didn’t seem to think that he was in any way responsible for their estrangement, telling the Financial Times that his child’s decision to distance herself from him was caused by “neo-Marxists” at educational institutions.
Musk first came under fire for his views on pronouns in July 2020, when he tweeted that “pronouns suck.” That’s when Grimes expressed outrage over his “hate.” She wrote on Twitter, “I cannot support hate. Please stop this. I know this isn’t your heart.”
Wilson didn’t have such loving views of Musk when she wrote about him in an essay for Marie Claire. She said Musk grew up in the male-dominated culture of South Africa.
“The will to compete and dominate that made him so successful in business did not magically shut off when he came home,” Wilson wrote. “This, and the vast economic imbalance between us, meant that in the months following our wedding, a certain dynamic began to take hold.
“Elon’s judgment overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking,” Wilson wrote. “‘I am your wife,’ I told him repeatedly, ‘not your employee.’ ‘If you were my employee,’ he said just as often, ‘I would fire you.’”