Whose Children Are Michael Jackson’s, Really?
Let’s all hop on the zeitgeist train and talk about Michael Jackson since he’s dead. It seems callous and rather opportunistic to talk about the poor man after what was clearly a brutal and surreal life, but I am, as it were, thinking of the children, here. According to the indisputable source, Wikipedia, Jackson had three children: two, Michael Joseph Jackson Jr. and Paris Katherine Jackson with his ex-wife Debbie Rowe who was implanted with donor sperm, and a third child, Prince Michael Jackson II, who was conceived with donor sperm and a surrogate mother.
My question is simple: who do these children belong to? Whether we like to admit it or not, children are legally closer to property with basic human rights than straight up human beings. Children are described in the possessive for a reason. There are three possible candidates.
1. The biological parents. In this case, we have two mothers and two sperm donors, all of whom relinquished full custody of the children to Michael Jackson at some point.
2. Michael Jackson himself, who is the legal guardian. That’s right, the state decided he’d be a reasonable caretaker.
3. The actual, hired caretakers.
Now lets take this little hypothetical to worst case scenario so that our heart-strings don’t get the better of us. While it’s pretty easy to cast the surrogates and donors as opportunists and Jackson himself as a terrible parent, it’s very difficult to assume that the hired caretakers, who have probably been with these kids since birth, are nasty and uncaring. But for the sake of argument, they stop caring when they stop getting paid.
To whom do these children belong? If the parents are the ones who raise you and love you, as every good after school special taught us, do these kids have any? In the hypothetical situation, I’d have to say the answer is no. Like children in any uncaring and deranged upbringing, these kids would be raising themselves, trying to garble together what few life lessons they have and to leverage the incomprehensible wealth into which they have been born to make the best of their existence. Despite having three sets of parents: biological, legal, and caretakers, these children would be on their own.
Just as RU Sirius pointed out in his post about Michael Jackson’s potential candidacy for transhuman, this situation is neither the necessary nor the desired result of reproductive technology. What Jackson did in having these children, despite his absurd wealth, is a reckless display that is no more depressing than McMansion millionaires or politicians who have children (via regular old sex) as items for showcase and manipulation. Even “natural” parents can be terrible, how the child is conceived, gestated, and born has nothing to do with the love it experiences in life.
What Jackson did show us, however, was that a framework for family can exist well beyond the nuclear. My parents have often argued with me that a mother and a father are necessary for a child because the two perspectives are important for healthy psychological development. I agree. But imagine if there was a situation like Jackson, with multiple surrogates, donors, legal guardians, and physical caretakers, who all had a deep love for and interest in the children. For those of us lucky enough to grow up with an extended family, biological or not, know how important and meaningful it can be. I pray and suspect that Jackson’s children have excellent caretakers (the man did love the kids after all, despite his oddity) and that they are intelligent enough to recognize that their parentage is not fatalistic.
Pop Transhumanism | Kyle Munkittrick | 
July 1, 2009 1:00 pm
