Heartbreaking Facts About Madonna’s Son

It should come as no surprise that Rocco Ritchie, son of Madonna and Guy Ritchie, is a talented and creative artist. The young man spent years both studying and perfecting his craft, and has developed a unique painting style that has taken the art world by storm. “I was fortunate enough to know what I wanted to do at a young age and once I had settled into art school, it kick-started my work,” Rocco told Vogue Hong Kong. The artist has since then taken part in a number of exhibitions, including one which he held in the Miami Design District in April of 2024.

Rocco’s work has earned many fans of the years, but arguably his biggest supporter is his pop superstar mother. “The long and winding road through all your many moods and incarnations has been tumultuous and full of surprises,” she wrote on Instagram on his 24th birthday in 2024. “But through it all — your curiosity, and Artistic Soul has been the glue that held us together. Thank God for Art.”

While his life might sound charmed on paper, things haven’t always been easy for Madonna’s son. Rocco’s faced legal troubles, weathered a lot of family drama, and been subjected to the harsh gaze of the public eye.

On August 11, 2000, Rocco Ritchie made his entrance into the world, though the hours leading up to the infant’s birth were far from easy. Earlier that day, his mother, Madonna, was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, as the singer was experiencing severe abdominal pain in addition to abnormal bleeding. As it turned out, Madonna was dealing with the likes of a detached placenta, which in turn was cutting off Rocco’s oxygen. In order to save both the baby and his mother, doctors would need to perform an emergency C-section, which is exactly what they did. “Madonna lost a lot of blood,” a hospital source shared with the BBC. “For any mother, just seeing that amount of blood is terrifying.” Luckily, the star would have the support of her then boyfriend, Guy Ritchie, who stood by her side for the entirety of the procedure.

Though he ended up being born three weeks early, Rocco was nothing short of a happy and healthy baby. He weighed in at 5 pounds, 9 ounces. “Madonna is overjoyed,” the singer’s spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg told the BBC, sure to share the most important details with the outlet following the stressful day for all. “She is safe, as is little Rocco,” Rosenberg continued. “Guy and Lourdes are by her side.”

When raising her eldest children, Madonna implemented some household rules to try to keep things on the rails. Evidently, she could be a little tough. On a 2012 episode of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” (via USA Today), Rocco Ritchie was asked about his mom’s parenting style. When DeGeneres suggested Madonna might be “strict,” he replied, “She’s a good mother. Yes. That’s all I have to say. She’s very strict but in a good way,”

In a 2021 chat with Debi Mazar for Interview, Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon offered a glimpse into how strict their mom could be. “The list of things I wasn’t allowed to do is never-ending,” she said. “My mom is such a control freak, and she has controlled me my whole life.” A source told Page Six that the kids not only had to stick to Madonna’s strict sugar-free, dairy-free, salt-free, and preservative-free diet, but watching television was also a no-go.

Evidently, Rocco grew frustrated with his mother’s rules when he was a teen. As a result, this drove a wedge between them, and Rocco began favoring his father more and more. “When he stays with his father . . . Rocco is allowed to play guitar until the early hours of the morning. Guy does have rules, but he had zero confidence growing up and wants his son to feel as empowered as possible,” one of Guy Richie’s colleagues told Page Six.

When he was just 14 years old, Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s son sparked controversy when he uploaded a graphic video of members of ISIS killing civilians. In the caption, Rocco Ritchie urged his Instagram followers to gain some perspective and recognize that there are unspeakable things happening around the world. “I think if you’re still being a d**k to people, I would stop,” he wrote (via Express). “We’ve got a little worse of a problem on our hands here guys. We don’t need more negative a** holes here.”

His post did not go over well, and it was not long before a number of angry comments flooded the teen’s account. “A 14-year-old boy really shouldn’t be watching & posting things like this. Very disturbing,” one comment read. “Rocco Ritchie has problems. WTF was he thinking posting that video,” another person wrote.

Rocco deleted the video in the wake of the backlash. After the video was taken down, his mom took to her own Instagram account to stand by her child’s message. “I applaud my son’s desire to express his outrage by posting footage of ISIS on Instagram. Humans are becoming numb to this violent imagery,” Madonna wrote. “He is saying our problems are nothing compared to what’s going on around the world. Freedom Fighting is in his blood. Let’s pray for PEACE!”

It’s totally normal for kids to be embarrassed of their parents’ antics, but imagine being the kid of a super famous pop star who tends to put it all out there on social media. Apparently, Madonna’s Instagram content became a serious issue for Rocco Ritchie. So much so, he reportedly blocked her.

As an unnamed source told The Sun in January 2016 (via Cosmopolitan), “It’s not a great sign that Rocco is blocking his mum on social media, especially after all the rumors that she was embarrassing him with her posts about him.” To make matters even messier, this was going on while Madonna and Guy Ritchie were in the middle of their custody battle.

Whispers regarding Rocco’s negative feelings regarding Madge’s IG account had been simmering for some time. In 2015, a source claimed to TMZ that Madonna’s posts about him apparently made him feel like a “trophy” rather than her son. Rocco has not called out any of her posts specifically, but TMZ did note that the teen probably wasn’t happy about his mom including an inappropriate hashtag alongside a video she took of him doing a backflip in his underwear. Later that year, the Daily Mail reported that Rocco didn’t want to spend Christmas with his mom. There was a lot of speculation about what was going on behind the scenes; some suspected the IG drama was to blame.

When Rocco Ritchie was 12 years old, he joined his mother on her 2012 MDNA Tour. A few years later, Rocco was ready to hit the road with Madonna again. However, his time on the Rebel Heart Tour would be cut short. According to an insider, the teen and his mother began butting heads after only a few months into the tour. “M and Rocco were having bad shouting matches. She’d be crying and yelling at him,” the source claimed to RadarOnline. When the show reached London later that year, Rocco apparently ditched Madonna and headed to his father’s house.

According to unnamed sources, Rocco apparently did not like the way things were going this time around. “Rocco spent most of the second half of 2015 on tour with his mother and got upset about not spending enough time with her,” one of Guy Ritchie’s colleagues told Page Six. “Even by her ruthless standards, Madonna has been particularly driven on the tour, and when Rocco did see her, he felt like she was trying to micromanage his life.”