Tragic Details About Elon Musk's Childhood

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When we think of the tragedies tech billionaire Elon Musk has had to weather, his former friendship with Donald Trump immediately springs to mind. The two men went from BFFs to bitter enemies barely six months into Trump's second term, even after the Tesla CEO helped secure his win. Elon's apparent obsession with Trump came into focus after White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles revealed that the tech billionaire saw the president as a father figure. Elon's relationship with his own father is as rocky as they come; he grew up in a highly dysfunctional household, and to this day, has to deal with his family's issues. 

Try as he might, Elon just can't escape his roots. Every now and then, his father, Errol Musk, will stir the pot, yielding another scandal for the SpaceX founder to contend with. Elon's childhood was no picnic, and in 2018, his father made headlines after it came to light that he'd married his ex-wife's daughter, Jana Bezuidenhout, who is a whopping 42 years his junior. The kicker? He also fathered a child with her and told the Daily Mail he could "barely remember" her mother, even though Errol was married to her for almost two decades. Elon, who grew up with Bezuidenhout, was reportedly appalled by the move.

When doing a deep-dive into Elon Musk's family, you can almost understand why he would consider the Trumps fine folks in comparison — and why he's dedicated his life to building an empire. The same year news of his father's relationship with his stepsister broke, Elon did an interview with the New York Times in which he admitted he was working 120-hour weeks and barely sleeping. The Tesla grind was tame compared to his childhood, however.

These days, Elon Musk's mother, Maye Musk, lives an extremely lavish life, but that wasn't always the case. While Elon's father, Errol Musk, is a very rich man, in 2019, Maye pointed out to Harper's Bazaar that his alleged abuse towards her extended to ensuring that she had no money of her own. "Everybody I knew called him 'the Pig' because he treated me so badly in public. And I was too scared to tell anyone [about the deeper violence]. Like every abused woman, I was embarrassed, and I knew I had made a mistake, you know?" Maye explained. "He told me over and over that I was stupid, ugly, boring. He was very rich, but he made sure I had nothing." Elon reportedly witnessed his father's physical abuse of his mother first-hand and even once tried to intervene when he was only five years old. 

Little Elon beat his father's knees in an attempt to defend his mother. Errol acknowledged being unfaithful in his marriage to Maye but he hasn't confessed to any abuse. Elon, meanwhile, made it clear during a 2017 chat with Rolling Stone that there's no love lost between the two of them. "He was such a terrible human being," Elon said. "You have no idea. My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil. He will plan evil." The Tesla CEO added that, fortunately, Errol's abuse didn't extend to him, clarifying, "My dad was not physically violent with me. He was only physically violent when I was very young."

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

When Elon Musk's parents divorced, the future tech billionaire found himself feeling sorry for his father, even despite everything he'd done. Elon initially lived with Maye Musk along with his two siblings, Kimbal and Tosca Musk. But, at the age of 10, he moved in with Errol Musk instead. "That's because of his evil grandmother," Maye told Harper's Bazaar. "She made him feel guilty. She said, 'Oh, your mother has all of you kids. Your father's so hurt because he's all alone. Do you want him to be alone and sad?' It was an awful trick." Elon's decision to move in with his father came as a shock but she let him make his own mind up.

The SpaceX founder echoed his grandmother's feelings during his interview with Rolling Stone, noting that he felt bad for his dad after the split and believed him to be lonely. Then-10-year-old Elon thought he could ease his pain. "I was sad for my father. But I didn't really understand at the time what kind of person he was," the Tesla CEO shared, conceding, "It was not a good idea." Elon didn't elaborate on what happened while he lived with him.

Aside from growing up in a broken home, Elon Musk also had to deal with many other challenges at school. He was the youngest pupil in his class and a scrawny kid who bullies considered an easy target. "I was a late bloomer. So I was the youngest and the smallest kid in class for years and years. [...] The gangs at school would hunt me down — literally hunt me down!" he recalled to Rolling Stone. Eventually, Elon learned how to hit back — hard.

It's not clear whether the future tech billionaire started defending himself before or after he was beaten up and thrown down two flights of stairs. The injuries he sustained required hospitalization and, according to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, Elon was the perfect target. "He grew up in South Africa as a scrawny kid on the autism spectrum, so he had no social input-output skills. He [had] no friends, and he was beaten up quite often," he told "The Diary of a CEO" podcast in 2024.

And yet, Elon's father informed "Podcast and Chill with MacG" that very same year that his son was partially responsible for the scary incident. "Some boy's father had committed suicide and everyone knew, and Elon said to this boy, 'Your father was stupid,'" Errol Musk recalled, adding that the boy beat Elon after he pushed him down the stairs. His son spent almost two weeks in the hospital as a result, with Errol noting, "He was severely injured. I'd never seen anybody looking so badly hurt."

While speaking to "The Diary of a CEO" podcast, biographer Walter Isaacson detailed an incident where Elon Musk was severely beaten up at school and spent four days in hospital (it's not clear if this was the same incident Elon's father described in his own podcast interview). Isaacson claimed that Errol Musk had no empathy for his son after he was discharged and instead reprimanded him. "He gets home and his father makes him stand in front of him for two hours while the father tells him he's a loser and that it was his fault and takes the side of the kid who beat up Elon," Isaacson alleged. Given the things Errol has said about his son in interviews, this allegation isn't too hard to believe. 

While appearing on the "Wide Awake Podcast," in February 2025, Errol flat-out stated that his son is a bad father whose kids spent more time with their nannies than with their father growing up. Elsewhere, during a 2022 interview with KIIS FM, Errol argued that pride isn't an emotion he personally feels when thinking about his tech billionaire son and, moreover, he isn't the only successful Musk. "You know, we are a family that have been doing a lot of things for a long time, it's not as if we suddenly started doing something," Errol proclaimed before gushing about Elon's brother, Kimbal Musk, calling him, "[my] pride and joy," (via the New York Post). Kimbal is a successful chef and restaurateur in the U.S.

In his biography of the tech billionaire, entitled simply "Elon Musk," author Walter Isaacson posited that he still bears the scars of his childhood trauma. "As a kid growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk knew pain and learned how to survive it," he penned, explaining how Elon's parents sent him to a "wilderness survival camp known as veldskool" when he was a kid. There, the future Tesla CEO endured even more extensive bullying and harrowing circumstances. According to the biographer, "The kids were each given small rations of food and water, and they were allowed — indeed encouraged — to fight over them." 

Elon's former girlfriend, and the mother of three of his kids, Grimes, spoke to Isaacson and confirmed that he still exhibits signs of childhood trauma. While this naturally shapes the controversial businessman's unquenchable thirst for success, sadly it also prevents Elon from fully enjoying any of his accomplishments. "I just don't think he knows how to savor success and smell the flowers," Grimes opined. Notably, the SpaceX founder himself, who provided Isaacson with some quotes of his own for the biography, didn't argue with this assessment, reasoning, "Adversity shaped me. My pain threshold became very high."