Grimes has voiced her upset about ex-partner Elon Musk’s recent public appearances with their children.
Last week, while the musician was fielding criticism about her parenting on X (formerly Twitter), she revealed that she feels pretty powerless when it comes to decisions Musk makes about their shared children – especially when it comes to him parading them around in public during photo ops.
“I have tried begging the public and my kids’ dad to keep them offline, and I’ve tried legal recourse,” she wrote in a post last week.
“The state of my children’s lives being public is of grave concern to me,” she added. “And I think about how to solve this every day. It’s insane to me that theres no way to deal with this.”
Grimes’ dilemma is arguably pretty unique.
The Canadian performer, whose legal name is Claire Elise Boucher, shares three kids with the tech billionaire — four-year-old X Æ A-Xii, three-year-old Exa Dark Sideræl and two-year-old Tau Techno Mechanicus.
Musk also has 10 other children whom he shares with three other women. One of Musk’s older children, Vivian Wilson, 20, has been particularly vocal about how absent Musk has been as a father throughout her life.
Ever since Musk was granted the very confusing title of a “special government employee” by Donald Trump’s administration in order to lead the ironically named Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, he’s been repeatedly pictured at public events with his four-year-old son, X
X was seen sitting on top of his dad’s shoulders while Musk did a truly awkward press conference in the Oval Office in February, and again earlier this month, while Trump was slinging Teslas in front of the White House.
Musk also had X in tow during other appearances he has made in the past for his electric car company.
Over on X, Grimes alluded that because of Musk’s role in Trump’s administration, she doesn’t feel like there’s anything she can do to gain some control over this situation.
“I would hope there was some law that would allow a parent to veto small children from living public lives but I don’t even trust the law to help me now if I tried to invoke it tbh,” she said.
“We are in the Wild West of information content and the dismantling of privacy and it’s very concerning.”
Although there are some state laws that protect child actors and kids in reality TV, there aren’t any laws that prevent a parent from doing what Musk is doing with X.
This is also not the first time Grimes has expressed concern over the way Musk brings their son out in public.
In February, she claimed that she wasn’t even aware that her son was going to accompany Musk during his Oval Office press conference — and only learned about it from a random social media user.
“He should not be in public like this,” the singer wrote on X. “I did not see this, thank you for alerting me. But I’m glad he was polite. Sigh.”
Grimes also spoke out in an interview with Time published last month, in which she said she “would really like people to stop posting images of my kid everywhere”, and added that she believes “fame is something you should consent to”.
“Obviously, things will just be what they are. But I would really, really appreciate that. I can only ask, so I’m just asking,” she said.