Jeff Bezos' 4 Kids: Everything to Know

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos shares four children with his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott

Jeff Bezos might be known as one of the richest people in the world, but at home, he's just Dad.

The Amazon founder shares four kids — three sons and one daughter — with ex-wife MacKenzie Scott.

While Bezos is famous across the globe, he works hard to keep his children's lives private. Only his oldest son Preston's name is publicly known. Preston was born in 2000, so he is around 22 years old.

Few details are known about Bezos and Scott's three younger children, including their names and the years they were born. Bezos and Scott adopted their daughter from China, but it's unclear when.

During their children's younger years, the entrepreneur leaned heavily on Scott, a novelist, to raise the kids full-time while he built Amazon from the ground up.

"Writing is such a 'pretend' profession," she told Vogue in 2013. "Nobody is counting on you at all. You can't 'pretend' to be a lawyer or a teacher. It takes a lot of grit to continue. Kids, on the other hand, have an urgent need to be taken care of. After the third child, I knew I couldn't be the kind of parent I wanted to be and continue writing. Those years were just too busy."

Though Bezos and Scott announced their split in 2019 after 25 years of marriage, they continue to co-parent together. Bezos has since moved on with news anchor Lauren Sánchez. After taking their relationship public in January 2019, a source confirmed to PEOPLE that the pair got engaged in May 2023.

Though the Amazon founder has kept his children out of the public eye, he has shared a few anecdotes about parenting over the years. From their rare public family outing to the advice they received from their billionaire father, here's everything to know about Jeff Bezos' children.

Bezos' oldest son is named after him

Bezos' middle name is Preston — the name he and Scott gave their oldest child. The moniker was passed down from Bezos' great-grandfather, Lloyd Preston Gise, to his grandfather, Lawrence Preston Gise, before him, so it's a significant nod to their family history.

His father was his role model in parenting

Bezos often speaks about how much his father, Cuban immigrant Miguel "Mike" Bezos, inspired him throughout his life. While paying tribute to him at the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Awards in May 2022, Bezos revealed how his dad serves as his role model.

"I think in every immigrant you'll find a deep optimism and a deep resilience too," he said in a video from the event. "My dad is an intense hard worker. My dad is warm and he teaches an easy smile. My brother and sister and I could not have had a better role model."

His children are extremely private

Little is known about Bezos and Scott's four kids. The executive chairman has shared few details about his family life, though he and Scott did make a rare public appearance with their children at the premiere of Star Trek Beyond in July 2016. All three of the pair's sons and their daughter joined them for the event, where they posed for a family photo on the red carpet.

Bezos' oldest child Preston also accompanied him to the American Portrait Gala at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 2019, where the father-son duo smiled for a picture together.

His kids were part of his morning routine

Like many successful entrepreneurs, Bezos is an early riser. However, that doesn't mean he's all business first thing when he wakes up. "I like to putter in the mornings," he told the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., at an event in September 2018, according to CNBC.

"I like to read the newspaper, I like to have coffee, I like to have breakfast with my kids before they go to school," he continued. "My puttering time is very important to me."

As for the evening, Bezos made sure to leave some time in his schedule for family chores. "I do the dishes every night," he said during a 2014 interview. "I'm pretty convinced it's the sexiest thing I do."

He urges his children to pursue their passions

At a 2018 gala for global nonprofit FIRST, Bezos shared the best advice he's given his kids when it comes to their careers. "Whatever you do, choose something you can bring passion to," he said.

The Amazon founder added that following your passion is advice he'd give to any young person. "That's going to make it easier for you to make that choice to work hard," he added, per CNBC.

Bezos also admitted that figuring out his own interests took longer than he thought.

"I thought I wanted to be a scientist when I went to Princeton," he explained. "I thought I wanted to be a physicist and halfway through, I figured out I wasn't smart enough to be a physicist."

Through trial and error, however, Bezos was able to discover what he was truly passionate about. "You've gotta figure out what you love," he concluded. "And it's going to bring you great joy."

He instills a "self-efficacy" mindset in his kids

From a young age, Bezos and Scott encouraged their kids to get dirty and build things, even if it might have been a little dangerous at times. Speaking at a SummitLA panel in November 2017, the entrepreneur said he allowed his kids to use knives at age 4 and power tools by 7 or 8, according to CNBC.

Bezos explained that he grew up helping his grandfather fix things around the farm, which taught him resourcefulness — something he wanted to instill in his own children. "[My grandfather] would take on major projects that he didn't know how to do and then figure out how to do them," he said of the experience. "As a kid, I got to see him solve all these problems and be a real problem-solver."

Scott agreed about the importance of letting their kids be self-sufficient. Bezos said she told him she "would much rather have a kid with nine fingers than a resourceless kid," something he called a "fantastic attitude about life." Luckily the duo raised some seriously smart kids, "who so far have all their fingers."

He and Scott are focused on co-parenting after their divorce

When Bezos and Scott ended their 25-year marriage in January 2019, it was clear from the beginning that their main priority was co-parenting their kids successfully and amicably.

"We've had such a great life together as a married couple, and we also see wonderful futures ahead, as parents, friends, partners in ventures and projects, and as individuals pursuing ventures and adventures," Bezos wrote on Twitter at the time. "Though the labels might be different, we remain a family, and we remain cherished friends."

Four months later, the pair finished divvying up their assets and finalizing the divorce. Splitting shares and allocating millions of dollars is no easy feat, but they were most proud of the co-parenting work they'd done.

"Grateful to have finished the process of dissolving my marriage with Jeff with support from each other and everyone who reached out to us in kindness, and looking forward to next phase as co-parents and friends," Scott wrote on Twitter in April 2019.

"I'm grateful for [MacKenzie's] support and for her kindness in this process and am very much looking forward to our new relationship as friends and co-parents," Bezos tweeted the same day.

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