{"id":358686,"date":"2025-12-19T17:15:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/358686\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T17:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:15:13","slug":"why-bill-gates-children-were-not-allowed-to-use-his-surname-while-growing-up-reveals-his-daughter-phoebe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/358686\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bill Gates’ children were not allowed to use his surname while growing up, reveals his daughter Phoebe |"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WhyPhoebe Gates with her father Bill Gates When your father is Bill Gates<\/a>, one of the most famous and richest people in the world, it\u2019s easy to assume that your life would be anything but trite. After all, you would be getting all the perks. From elite schools to instant popularity, you would be welcomed everywhere. But according to Bill Gates and Melinda French\u2019s youngest daughter, Phoebe Gates, things were quite different. As children, they were not allowed to use that famous last name for a very long time, and deliberately so.In fact, Phoebe didn\u2019t use Gates as her last name until she reached high school. Until then, she went by her mother\u2019s maiden name, French. <\/p>\n

Effective tips to improve your parenting skills <\/p>\n

Why Phoebe Gates didn\u2019t use the Gates surname while growing upThe 22-year-old entrepreneur and Stanford graduate recently revealed this on her podcast, The Burnouts. Talking about her childhood as a Gates kid, Phoebe shared that her parents were intentional about keeping their children\u2019s identities separate from their father\u2019s global fame for as long as possible.\u201cMy parents were really intentional about making sure we didn\u2019t use my dad\u2019s last name, Gates, until we were in high school. We went by my mom\u2019s last name, and it really allowed me to make friends in a really authentic way,\u201d Phoebe shared.This, in turn, led to a simpler childhood with no added baggage of her father\u2019s fame and legacy. It meant no instant privileges and no classmates suddenly treating her differently because of who her dad was.Melinda French’s middle-class parenting rule\"Melinda<\/p>\n

FILE – Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, smiles as she leaves the Elysee Palace in Paris on June 23, 2023. (AP Photo\/Christophe Ena, File)<\/p>\n

Not letting Bill Gates\u2019 children use his last name while growing up wasn\u2019t some quirky family tradition, but a carefully thought-out decision by his now ex-wife, Melinda French.Long before her highly publicised 2021 divorce from Bill Gates, Melinda had already made up her mind about how she wanted to raise her children. In a recent joint interview with Vogue alongside her daughters, she spoke about her college days and the children of extremely wealthy parents she had encountered.\u201cI had been around a lot of kids from wealth in college, and I knew how I did not want my children to turn out,\u201d Melinda said.And so, to avoid her children turning out that way, she decided to raise them with middle-class values, without the privileges of being a Gates.Keeping Bill Gates out of the school drop-off duties\"BillApart from making their children use her maiden surname, French, to give them a simpler environment, Melinda also revealed that even Bill Gates dropping the kids off at school was carefully managed. For the first few weeks, he avoided school drop-offs altogether, giving classmates time to form friendships organically before realising they were sitting next to the children of one of the richest men in the world.It wasn\u2019t about keeping their children a secret. Instead, it was about timing and protecting their privacy and childhood. The Gates children were allowed to be just kids first.Phoebe Gates reveals about her childhoodFor Phoebe, her parents\u2019 strategy worked well while growing up.She admitted that being fully associated with her family name at a young age may not have been healthy for her. \u201cBefore I\u2019d be like, \u2018Oh, this is my family\u2019 or \u2018This is who I\u2019m related to,\u2019 I don\u2019t think it would have necessarily been good for me to be fully in the spotlight as a child,\u201d she shared.Bill Gates’ children chose his last name when they were really readyInterestingly, Melinda didn\u2019t enforce this rule forever. As the children grew older, they were given the choice to decide their last name.In a March Elle Women of Impact feature, Melinda explained that she wanted each child to decide when and if they felt ready to carry the Gates name.\u201cMy oldest daughter went in with Gates; she felt like she was ready to take that name on,\u201d Melinda said. \u201cMy son chose not to. He used French all the way through high school.\u201dAfter all, being the children of one of the most famous and richest people in the world is not just about privileges. It also comes with expectations and responsibilities.What are your views on this? Tell us in the comment section below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phoebe Gates with her father Bill Gates When your father is Bill Gates, one of the most famous…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,19415,196014,447,134,196015,196019,196016,196017,196018,23539],"class_list":["post-358686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bill-gates","tag-bill-gates-children","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-gates-surname","tag-how-to-raise-humble-children","tag-melinda-french","tag-melinda-french-gates-parenting-rule","tag-parenting-tip","tag-phoebe-gates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}