Michael Jackson was married twice and had three children – but he never had kids with his first wife, Lisa Marie Presley. But why didn’t they have children?

Michael Jackson was married to Lisa Marie Presley for a very short time. Their marriage lasted for just 18 months, ending with Lisa Marie filing for divorce after feeling the star “pushed her away.” She already had two children of her own – Benjamin and Riley – and Michael was keen to have kids, but why did the pair not have children together?

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Michael and Lisa Marie were together for only 18 months. During this time, however, they did not have children, despite Michael having two children with his second wife Debbie Rowe.

Michael always wanted to have kids, and speaking to Oprah Winfrey in 2010, Lisa Marie opened up about when this came up during their marriage.

Asked by Oprah whether there was a lot of pressure for her to have a baby, Lisa Marie said: “Yes, there was quite a bit. I did want to, but I just wanted to make sure.

“I was looking into the future and was thinking, ‘I never want to get into a custody battle with him, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to go head to head with him.’ So I needed to make sure everything all around was good. I had children and I knew bringing in children into certain circumstances, you have to make sure everything was safe and secure and OK.”

She added: “I wanted to make sure he and I were really, really united because we were going to be up against so much.”

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After their split in 1996, Michael married dermatology nurse Debbie with whom he had two children.

The first child Prince was born on February 13, 1997, after which Debbie gave birth to Paris on April 3, 1998.

Lisa Marie called this a “retaliatory act” against her, and she claimed he talked about having a baby with Debbie while they were married.

Lisa Marie continued: “Well, I knew it [having a baby with Debbie Rowe] was a bit of a retaliatory act on his part, because I didn’t have a baby. And I know she was there the whole time, telling him she would do it. He would tell me, he would come tell me, ‘If you’re not going to do it, Debbie said she’d do it,’ and I was like, ‘What is that? It’s not going to entice me.’”

“So we would get into it,” she added. “Arguments, cause that really wasn’t how to handle it. But he knew how to handle it – I didn’t want to say, like I said, he would say, ‘If you’re not going to do it, this person will.’”

Lisa Marie also suggested some of her concerns came from her decision to leave her first husband Danny Keough.

She added: “It’s hindsight, 20:20, I understand him so well now…

“But I was hurt and I did things that hurt him and did stupid things too.

“I was very torn because I broke up my family and I left my husband for Michael, and I was having a hard time trying to process that.”

There was a lot of complication around Lisa Marie and Michael’s relationship, but she did assert it was “real” love.