Parasocial baby mama drama

Yesterday, singer Miguel shared on social media that he privately welcomed a baby boy a year ago in a collaborative post with Margaret Zhang, who made headlines after stirring up controversy when she became the youngest person to be appointed editor-in-chief of Vogue China at the tender age of 27 and when she stepped down. 

Fans of Miguel seem to be having a hard time connecting the dots between her, Miguel and their one-year-old baby. “Are we all confused!?” reads one comment on the post, which was picked up and reshared by multiple media outlets.

“Prime example of don’t let ANYONE waste your time”, reads another.

“he stayed with that lady nearly 2 decades and in less than 2 years started a family. whew, nothing beats a man,” another comment with more than 20,000 likes read.

The confusion seems to be stemming from the fact that Miguel had been in a relationship with model and wellness community founder Nazanin Mandi for nearly 20 years. They married in 2018 but quietly separated three years later. In 2022, she filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. 

Elsewhere throughout comment section on the post, or at least on the reshared versions of it since he disabled comments on the original, people began speculating whether the reason for the split between him and Nazanin was over a difference in her wanting children and him not having any interest in that. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, it appears to be the other way around.

In 2019, in an episode of the Ladies Like Us podcast, which Nazanin co-hosted with her friend Nadia from 2019-2020, she got candid about whether she and Miguel would be having children. According to Nazanin, it was something that Miguel was ready for, but she was the one who wanted to spend a bit more time being child-free, travelling, and making money. 

“It’s not happening right now. I can’t right now. I owe too much to myself,” she said during the episode. “We’re not trying…we’re having a good time. If it’s meant to be it’s meant to be.”

It’s not unnatural that fans have questions when unexpected news like this breaks, especially considering that they had a relatively quiet split compared to other high-profile divorces. Even I found myself asking: Why was he keeping his fatherhood a secret? When did he and Margaret even get together? But as always, context is important, and that seems to be what’s missing for a lot of people. 

Nazanin and Miguel didn’t share any children together. So with no kids and a prenup, the divorce was not nearly as messy as it could’ve been. Even after their separation, Nazanin lauded Miguel for sticking around to support her after she underwent LASIK eye surgery. So all of the second-hand anger over her “time wasted” is not only unwarranted, but unnecessary.

This is yet another reminder of the illusion parasocial relationships can create. I get it - people loved following this couple’s journey on social media. They were unproblematic, hot as f-ck, and they went against the grain by having as long of a relationship as they did without kids. We got a closer look at their life when Nazanin was cast on The Platinum Life in 2017, she became an instant fan favourite. 

Coincidentally, Nelly’s former longtime girlfriend, Shantel Jackson, also appeared on that show alongside Nazanin. And after her split with Nelly, he got back with Ashanti, who he dated in the early 2000s, and within a few months, the pair announced they were expecting a baby. I wrote about that here.

This was another thing that people romanticized. When the couple made their announcement, people celebrated what, by most measures, looked like a successful case of what can happen when you spin the block. But when their reality TV show premiered and Nelly revealed that as a man, he didn’t feel like changing diapers was his responsibility, it was a rude awakening for all of us, but primarily Ashanti, now stuck with the lion’s share of parenthood, a situation so many women find themselves in. She’s no better off than most women despite her wealth, fame, or (the illusion of) partnership. 

Someone that moved on even faster than Miguel did is John Mulaney, who raised a lot of eyebrows in 2021 when he and Olivia Munn announced they were expecting a baby mere months after he announced he and Anna Marie Tendler divorced in 2021. We have no clue what went on behind closed doors, but the specificity and desperation to publicize his and Olivia’s timeline made it pretty obvious that something went down. 

In the last 24 hours, Nazanin has shared a few cryptic updates to her Instagram story. The most notable one being an image of a woman who appears to be dancing with her arms out, and her shadow, instead of showing just arms, shows wings instead. The song accompanying the photo is Free by Florence + The Machine. 

As Tracee Ellis Ross revealed earlier this year, there is a sort of “nuanced grief” that comes from not having kids. She described navigating a wide range of emotions having not become a mother, and I imagine that this is one of the moments that Nazanin is doing the same. Just because she revealed not wanting children at the moment she did in the past doesn’t mean this doesn’t affect her. And we can all empathize with the fact that 17 years is a long time to spend with someone, and when that’s not the person you end up with in the end, it hits a little different. 

But I hope that women like Nazanin and especially women like Shantel and Annemarie see, over time, that the men they might have parented with, were perhaps not the right people for them for one reason or another. Whether it be not having the decency to give things time to cool off or understanding that as a parent, it is just as much your job as it is the mother’s to change a f-cking diaper. 

But for Nazanin specifically, if her split from Miguel was in fact due to her needing to stay true to herself about not wanting kids, I hope that at least a tiny sliver of whatever she is feeling right now is relief and pride. And I especially hope that she collects every last thing she said she owes herself.