Historically, the richest and poorest men on the planet tend to father a lot more children than the men in the middle. With the former, its because there’s so much for the spawn to inherit, hence all the aristocratic Fitzes; the latter, because so many offspring die in infancy. The men in the middle tend to look disapprovingly – not without reason, as they pay so much of the taxes the other two dodge – at both. It comes as no surprise then that plenty of people have poured scorn on the announcement by Elon Musk’s partner Shivon Zilis that the pair have welcomed the tech billionaire’s fourteenth child.
A man who has a string of children with different mothers and then moves on often finds that it adds to his manly mystique in the eyes of his fanboys. See the likes of Bob Marley (eleven children with seven women), Rod Stewart (eight by five), Paul Weller (eight by four) and the daddy of (almost) them all, Eddie Murphy (ten by five).
Lone mothers – especially rich and famous ones – on the other hand, aren’t covertly envied in the same way.
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