Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z have three children together: Blue Ivy Carter, Rumi Carter and Sir Carter.
While life is a little different from the norm when your parents are one of the music industryโs most influential couples, Beyoncรฉ spoke to GQ in 2024 about how she and Jay-Z try to protect their kids’ privacy.
โOne thing Iโve worked extremely hard on is making sure my kids can have as much normalcy and privacy as possible, ensuring my personal life isnโt turned into a brand,โ she said. โItโs very easy for celebrities to turn our lives into performance art. I have made an extreme effort to stay true to my boundaries and protect myself and my family. No amount of money is worth my peace.โ
And even the most famous woman in the world struggles at times with raising kids.
โRaising three kids isnโt easy,โ she said. โParenting constantly teaches you about yourself. It takes a lot of prayer and patience. I love it. Itโs grounding and fulfilling.โ
Fans of Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z are familiar with the couple’s efforts to include their children in their own career endeavors.
“My kids come with me everywhere I go,” she said. “They come to my office after school, and they are in the studio with me. They are in dance rehearsals. Itโs natural that they would learn my choreography.”
Blue, the couple’s oldest child, has joined her mom onstage as a dancer multiple times already.
Read on to learn more about Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z’s kids.
Blue Ivy Carter, 12
Blue Ivy Carter was born on Jan. 7, 2012. She is Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z’s first child and has shown interest in music just like her parents.
In 2021, at 9 years old, Blue became the second youngest person to ever win a Grammyย for her collaboration with her mother and Wizkid on the song โBrown Skin Girl.โ That same year, the song received anย MTV Video Music Awardย and aย BET Award.
Much to fansโ delight, Blue shared the stage with her mom during the โRenaissance Tour.โ Beyoncรฉ revealed in a September 2024 interview with GQ that Blueโs participation in the tour was her own idea.
“Sheโs a natural, but I did not want Blue onstage,” she said. “Blue wanted it for herself. She took it seriously and she earned it. And most importantly, she had fun! We all watched her grow more and more every night before our eyes.โ
On Dec. 25, 2024, Blue joined Beyoncรฉ’s halftime performance at the Ravens and Texans game in Houston. She stood alongside her mom during “Texas Hold ‘Em” to close out the set of songs from “Cowboy Carter.”
Beyoncรฉ honored her daughter’s guest appearance by sneaking in a small lyric change, adding: “Then spin me in the middle, Blue, I canโt read your mind.”
While Blue is the most public of Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Zโs three children, she has managed to maintain a balance between her public appearances and private life.ย On Feb. 20, 2024, she was seen supporting her mom at the launch of Beyoncรฉ’s new hair care line, Cรฉcred, in LA. Then, at the 2024 Grammys, Jay-Z brought his daughter onstage to accept the second annualย Dr. Dreย Global Impact Award that he received at the event.
In his acceptance speech, he gave Blue a shoutout, saying, โThank you very much. I used to say it was a sippy cup for Blue, but Blueโs grown up now. She doesnโt take sippy cups, and she has her own Grammys.โ
What does Blue Ivy do?
Carter’s eldest has been involved with voice work at a young age. In November 2020, Blue narrated Matthew A. Cherryโs audiobook โHair Love.โ In April 2024, Disney announced that she would voice cub Kiara, the daughter of King Simba and Queen Nala, in Disney’s new live-action prequel โMufasa: The Lion King.โ Beyoncรฉ will also star in the project, voicing Nala.
Beyoncรฉ’s mom Tina Knowles spoke to E! News in August 2024 and praised her granddaughter’s many talents.
“Sheโs self-taught and she sounds like a concert pianist,โ Knowles said of Blue. โShe paints, she draws, she does poetry. Sheโs just an artistic soul.”
“Iโm really, really proud of her. I canโt wait until the world gets to really hear.โ
One of the highlights of Beyoncรฉโs massive โRenaissanceโ tour was having her daughter join her onstage as a dancer during her performance.
Rumi Carter, 6
Rumi Carter is the elder of Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Z’s twins, according to a 2017 Vogue article. Like her twin brother, Sir Carter, Rumi was born on June 13, 2017.
In Beyoncรฉโs 2019 Netflix documentary,ย “Homecoming,” she opened up about the โextremely difficult pregnancy” that she went through when she had Rumi and Sir.
“My body went through more than I knew it could,โ she said in the documentary.
Beyoncรฉ noted that during her recovery, she became a vegan and started to accept that her body had become curvier.
“To this day my arms, shoulders, breasts, and thighs are fuller. I have a little mommy pouch, and Iโm in no rush to get rid of it,” she said at the time. “I think itโs real.”
Beyoncรฉ’s twins have since been featured in a few projects that she’s worked on like herย “Black is King”ย visual album, where they made an appearance. Rumi was also in the music video for โBrown Skin Girl,” along with her sister.
Rumi also took center stage in Beyoncรฉโs โCowboy Carterโ album. In the singerโs song โProtector,โ Rumi is heard asking her mom, โCan I hear the lullaby please?โ at the beginning.
The song appears to be a tribute to her children, with Beyoncรฉ singing about motherhood.
She says, โI first saw your face in your fatherโs gaze/ Thereโs a long line of hands carryinโ your name, mm/ Liftinโ you up, so you will be raised/ Even though I know someday youโre going to shine on your own/ I will be your projector, yeah.โ
Sir Carter, 6
Sir Carter is Beyoncรฉ and Jay-Zโs youngest, though only by a minute, according to a 2017 Vogue article. Sir was born on June 13, 2017, with his twin sister Rumi.
Beyoncรฉ revealed in an August 2018 interview with Vogue that she suffered from preeclampsia, a โserious blood pressure condition that develops during pregnancy,โ according to the Cleveland Clinic. On the day she gave birth to her twins, she weighed 218 pounds.
โI was swollen from toxemia and had been on bed rest for over a month,โ she said. โMy health and my babiesโ health were in danger, so I had an emergency C-section. We spent many weeks in the NICU. My husband was a soldier and such a strong support system for me.โ
โAfter the C-section, my core felt different. It had been major surgery. Some of your organs are shifted temporarily and, in rare cases, removed temporarily during delivery,โ she added.
In October 2023, the โ16 Carriagesโ singer shared a rare glimpse of her twins when she released a video announcing her 2023 movie โRenaissance: A Film by Beyoncรฉ.โ At one point in the short, 2-minute trailer, the mom of three can be seen kissing her son, Sir. Another clip shows Beyoncรฉ holding Sir while on a golf cart.
Why did Jay-Z name his daughters Blue Ivy and Rumi? And why Sir?
In an interview that Jay-Z did with โRap Radarโ hosts Elliott Wilson and Brian Miller that was posted on his streaming service,ย Tidal, he explained how he and Beyoncรฉ came up with the names Rumi and Sir.
โRumi is our favorite poet, so it was for our daughter,โย he said, per ABC News. As for Sir? โSir was like, man, come out the gate. He carries himself like that. He just came out, like, Sir,” he said.
While the Carters have never explained the significance of Blue Ivy’s name, fans think her middle name, Ivy, may be a reference to the couple’sย favorite number, four โ in Roman numerals, IV.
The number is significant in their lives: Beyoncรฉ was born on Sept. 4, Jay-Z was born on Dec. 4 and they were married on April 4.
CORRECTION: (Dec. 26, 2024, 11:17 a.m.): An earlier version of this story misstated the age of Blue Ivy Carter when she won her first Grammy Award. She was 9 years old, not 10.