This week, Madonna hosted a fancy Thanksgiving dinner at her mansion in New York City. She posted a rare photo of all six of her children together on Instagram to show what it was like.
The artist who is currently at the top of the charts for “Vogue” shared a series of photos with her 18.6 million followers with the following caption:
What I’m thankful for………….
In the pictures, she was surrounded by her six children: Lourdes, who is 26 years old; Rocco, who is 22 years old; David, who is 17 years old; Mercy James, who is 16 years old; and the twins, Estere and Stelle, who are 10 years old.
The woman, who is 64 years old, can be seen in the group photo wearing a bone-colored waist cincher, a black dress, black tights, and pointed booties. Her long, wavy, auburn hair was left long, and she wore a lot of sparkly necklaces and rings.
Lourdes, a successful model, posed for a picture with her famous mother while wearing a black bustier and slacks.
The Savage x Fenty model was born when Madonna was in a relationship with fitness trainer Carlos Leon in 1996. Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s first child, a son named Rocco, was born in the year 2000.
Ritchie and Madonna adopted David from an orphanage in Malawi when he was 13 months old. They adopted him in 2006. Mercy James and her twin sisters, Stelle and Estere, were all adopted from Malawi in 2009 and 2017, respectively.
The adoptive mother of six children has been honest about the difficulties she has faced during the adoption process. She told PEOPLE that it had been hard. When she brought David back to the U.S. from Malawi for the first time in 2006, she said the following:
Every newspaper said I kidnapped him. In my mind, I was thinking, ‘Wait a minute. I’m trying to save somebody’s life. Why are you all s****ing on me right now?’ I did everything by the book. That was a real low point for me. I would cry myself to sleep.
During the time that David was being adopted, questions started to be asked about whether or not it was moral to do so. In 2006, Madonna went on the Oprah Winfrey Show and talked about the controversy surrounding the claim that she had adopted her son against the wishes of his biological father. She said:
The Minister of Children and Mother’s Welfare went and found his father and asked him permission and told him exactly what he wanted to do, and he agreed to it orally but we also had to get his written consent,
via a source.
He had to be brought to court and he came into the courtroom with [Guy Ritchie] and I, and we had a hearing all together. He looked into my eyes and said to me that he was very grateful that I was going to give his son a life and that had he kept his son with him in the village, he would have buried him. I didn’t really need any more confirmation that I was doing the right thing and that I had his blessing,
she added.
The time when she tried to adopt Mercy James, in 2009, Malawian authorities stopped her because she was in the process of ending her marriage to Ritchie at the time. They told her she “couldn’t possibly be able to raise a child.”
The way I was treated – that sexist behavior – was ridiculous,
Madonna said this and added that she had challenged the Malawi Supreme Court and won, which gave her the right to adopt Mercy James in 2009.
Because I’m a public figure, people don’t want to be perceived as giving me any kind of special treatment, so I get the hard road,
she admitted, adding that motherhood has been “complicated” but “so worth it.”
