“Our family motto was ‘live dangerously–carefully,’” said Maye Musk of growing up in South Africa in the 1950s. “My father [Joshua Haldeman] was never one to do what anyone else was doing. When my dad felt he wanted to do something, he did it,” she wrote in her autobiography, A Woman Makes a Plan.
Musk’s family traveled all over Africa in an airplane they owned, and every winter they would make a 3-week trip into the remote desert searching for the lost city of Kalahari. There was risk inherent in these trips. “But my father and mother planned our trips to the last detail,” said Musk, “Things broke. We didn’t panic. We fixed them and carried on… Everything we needed, we brought with us… My father didn’t seem scared; if he was, we didn’t know it. His attitude made us feel safe.”
Maye Musk Haldeman, is most well-known as Elon Musk’s mother. But, after divorcing Errol Musk, she supported her three young kids by working as a dietician–she has two masters degrees in nutrition–and through modeling. Musk was a finalist in the 1969 Miss South Africa beauty competition, and appeared on the covers of TIME Magazine, Women’s Day, and Vogue, and in many commercials. “I just wanted to be the best dietician in the world–but then modeling took over,” said Musk. “For fifty years, I was a part-time model, but basically, I’m a nutritionist, a teacher, a mother.”
When asked how she raised such successful kids, Musk says, “I did it by letting them follow their interests.” She added, “I brought my children up like my parents brought us up when we were young: to be independent, kind, honest, considerate, and polite, to work hard and do good things. I didn’t treat them like babies or scold them. I never told them what to study.”
In 2017, Musk became CoverGirl’s oldest spokesmodel at age 69, and the oldest Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue model at 74 in 2022. She has also developed a large following among mothers in China, appearing on billboards and magazine covers. Musk is seen as a role model by these moms due to her successful parenting. And she continues to be a doting and proud mom herself, saying: “I just think everything my kids do is fabulous.”
