Pop star Janet Jackson gave birth on Tuesday, December 3, 2017 to her first child, a boy, at the age of 50, her publicist said.
“Janet Jackson and husband Wissam Al Mana are thrilled to welcome their new son Eissa Al Mana into the world,” the singer’s representative said in a statement to People magazine.
“Janet had a stress-free healthy delivery and is resting comfortably,” the statement said, without adding where the child was born.
According to The Telegraph, Jackson and Qatari businessman Al Mana married in 2012, and the singer in April postponed her Unbreakable world tour so they could focus on starting a family.
Other than a single magazine photoshoot, Jackson, the fiercely private youngest child of the famed singing family, did not give any details of the pregnancy.
The singer, who has 27 nieces and nephews, had long spoken of her desire to have children. But she fought to keep the news of her own pregnancy under wraps.
Janet Jackson with her husband Wissam Al Mana in 2013 Credit: Getty Images Europe
Her marriage to Mr. al Mana was not made public until a year after it had happened.
The couple met at a party to launch a hotel in Dubai, in April 2010.
The same year, aged 44, she said: “I’d love to have a family. But really, it’s in God’s hands. So, if it’s meant to be, I’ll have one. I hope it does.”
Janet Jackson has long spoken of her desire to have children Credit: Chriz Pizzello
A year later, she returned to the subject, telling CNN: “I hope I’d be a good mother.”
She continued: “Everyone tells me, for the longest time they’ve told me: ‘Oh, you’d make a great mother.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’
“People would tell me: ‘You’re very nurturing. You’re very mothering and you take care of people all the time.”
