Mark Zuckerberg has announced he is expecting his third child with wife Priscilla Chan.
The Facebook co-founder took to Instagram on Wednesday to share the exciting baby announcement. “Lots of love,” he captioned a post of himself and his wife smiling as he placed his hand over her growing baby bump.
“Happy to share that Max and August are getting a new baby sister next year!” he added, referencing the couple’s two daughters – Maxima, seven, and August, five.
Back in 2003, the longtime couple met while waiting in line for the bathroom at a Harvard University party. Nine years later, the two tied the knot during a secret backyard wedding at their home in Palo Alto, California. Friends and family members who attended the surprise ceremony were under the impression that the party was to celebrate Chan’s graduation from medical school, where she studied to be a pediatrician.
In December 2015, the couple welcomed their first child together, daughter Maxima “Max” Chan Zuckerberg. In true fashion, Zuckerberg announced the birth of their daughter in a Facebook post. Along with the announcement, the tech billionaire revealed the couple will donate 99 per cent of their Facebook shares to the newfound Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, in honour of their daughter, to “promote equality for all children” in the next generation.
“Your mother and I don’t yet have the words to describe the hope you give us for the future. Your new life is full of promise, and we hope you will be happy and healthy so you can explore it fully,” he wrote.
In August 2017, the parents welcomed their second child, daughter August Chan Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg shared the announcement on Facebook alongside a sweet family photo, writing, “Your mom and I are so excited to see who you will become.”
During an interview with The Times published in October 2021, Priscilla Chan revealed her husband is already teaching her daughters how to code. According to Chan, she and Zuckerberg divide parenting duties, with her husband in charge of putting their children to bed.
“Sometimes they will read books together. Sometimes they’ll code together,” she explained, adding that there are numerous effective ways to teach children to code as it’s “very visual”.
She continued: “Mark has been doing that with August since she turned three.”
Zuckerberg’s bedtime routine with their children also includes teaching them Mandarin, although Chan admitted the parents haven’t been “terribly successful” in raising their daughters to be bilingual.
The Facebook co-founder recently opened up about his marriage to the former pediatrician, and how doing philanthropy work together through their Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has unfolded a “whole new side” of their relationship.
“It’s been really cool getting the chance to work with my wife Priscilla on this, it’s opened up a whole new side of our relationship, where it’s like we were partners and now we also get to work together,” he said while appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast last month.
“She’s brilliant, she’s a doctor and understands so many more things about biological science than I do and I can bring this whole engineering perspective, and we learn so much from doing that together,” he continued.
