For years, Mariah Carey affectionately called her twins “Dem Babies.” Now, those babies are teenagers — and a new glimpse of daughter Monroe Cannon has left longtime fans wondering where the years went.
Monroe, the daughter Mariah shares with ex-husband Nick Cannon, turned 15 alongside her twin brother Moroccan on April 30, 2026. Recent family photographs have drawn particular attention because Monroe is no longer the tiny girl audiences remember walking red carpets beside her superstar mother. She has grown into a teenager with long curls, a confident personal style and features that have sparked endless comparisons with both of her famous parents. (People.com)
The comparisons intensified again this week after Mariah shared fresh photo-booth pictures with both twins. Fans flooded the comments with reactions to how grown-up the teenagers looked, with one joking, “Twins? I see triplets here.” (People.com)
For Monroe, however, looking like Mariah is only one small part of an increasingly interesting story. At 15, she is beginning to develop her own identity — while simultaneously discovering that growing up as Mariah Carey’s daughter means millions of people have been watching since the day she was born.
Monroe and Moroccan Arrived on a Very Special Day
Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon welcomed Monroe and Moroccan on April 30, 2011.
Even their birthday had a romantic connection to their parents: April 30 was also Mariah and Nick’s wedding anniversary. The couple had married three years earlier, in 2008.
Monroe’s name carried another piece of her mother’s personality. Mariah has long admired Marilyn Monroe and named her daughter in honor of the Hollywood icon. Moroccan’s name, meanwhile, was inspired by the Moroccan Room in Mariah’s New York apartment, where Cannon had proposed.
The twins were immediately famous.
Yet Mariah’s relationship with motherhood was far more personal than the headlines surrounding their arrival.
Years later, she would explain just how fundamentally the twins had changed her.
“They’re a lot, but they give me so much love in return,” she told PEOPLE. “I wouldn’t be the same person without them.” (People.com)
THEN — Monroe Growing Up Beside Mariah
She Grew Up With Two Extremely Famous Parents
Monroe’s childhood was unusual from the beginning.
Her mother is one of the best-selling recording artists in history, with a career stretching across decades. Her father is an actor, comedian and television host who became a major entertainment personality in his own right.
But Mariah and Nick’s marriage did not last.
The couple separated in 2014 and finalized their divorce in 2016. They nevertheless continued raising Monroe and Moroccan together, with Mariah repeatedly emphasizing the importance of maintaining a workable relationship for their children. (People.com)
“I think Nick and I have done pretty well in co-parenting, staying friends with each other so that we can talk,” Mariah previously told PEOPLE. (People.com)
For Monroe and Moroccan, that meant growing up between two parents whose relationship had changed while remaining deeply connected through them.
As the years passed, however, their wider family became considerably more complicated.
Nick Cannon eventually became the father of 12 children with multiple women.
Monroe and Moroccan remained Mariah’s only children.
Monroe Recently Made Headlines About Her Father’s Other Children
In November 2025, Monroe unexpectedly became the center of an online conversation after posting a clarification about her family.
She wrote that she had “ONE brother,” referring to Moroccan, while acknowledging that she also had younger half-siblings through her father.
The statement spread rapidly and was interpreted by some as Monroe publicly rejecting Cannon’s other children.
Nick later said that interpretation missed the context.
Speaking in May 2026, he explained that Monroe had apparently encountered teenagers online falsely claiming to be related to her and wanted to clarify who her sibling was. According to Cannon, she became upset when the post was interpreted as an attack on her actual half-siblings. (People.com)
Cannon said the experience became a lesson for his daughter about social media and the way a simple sentence can take on an entirely different meaning once millions of strangers begin discussing it.
For a 15-year-old, it was an unusually public lesson.
But public attention is something Monroe has experienced practically from birth.
Fans Have Watched Her Transform From a Tiny Girl Into a Teenager
One reason Monroe’s recent photographs generate so much attention is that there is an extensive visual record of her childhood.
She appeared beside Mariah at events when she was still tiny.
There are photographs of mother and daughter at Nick Cannon’s Family Day at the Santa Monica Pier in 2012, when Monroe was only one.
There are family photographs from the Kids’ Choice Awards in 2017 and 2018.
There are Christmas performances, vacations and birthday celebrations.
Getty Images alone maintains hundreds of editorial photographs documenting Monroe’s appearances with her parents across her childhood. (Getty Images)
That creates an unusual experience for longtime Mariah fans.
They did not simply hear that the singer’s daughter had grown up.
They watched it happen.
And the transformation between those early photographs and Monroe at 15 is striking.
Monroe Through the Years
Then Monroe Started Performing With Her Mom
The resemblance between mother and daughter became even more intriguing when Monroe began showing signs of musical ability.
One particularly memorable moment came during Mariah’s Christmas performances.
In December 2022, Monroe joined her mother onstage during Mariah’s Merry Christmas to All! show in Toronto and performed “Away in a Manger” with her.
She was only 11.
Mariah introduced her daughter to the audience before the two performed together, giving fans one of their first substantial opportunities to hear Monroe sing.
It immediately created an obvious question.
Would Mariah Carey’s daughter eventually become a singer too?
Monroe has continued appearing musically with her mother on occasion, but Mariah has not publicly presented her daughter as the next version of herself.
That distinction is important.
Being capable of singing and being expected to follow one of the most celebrated vocalists in popular music are very different things.
And Monroe is still only 15.
Mariah Has Tried to Keep Her Children Grounded
Having an enormously famous mother comes with privileges that Mariah herself did not experience as a child.
She knows that.
And she has spoken about wanting Monroe and Moroccan to understand that their circumstances are unusual.
In interviews, Mariah has described her children as kind-hearted while acknowledging that they are growing up with access to things she could never have imagined at their age. PEOPLE reported that she has tried to give them grounded values despite their extraordinary upbringing. (People.com)
That contrast is especially interesting because Mariah’s own childhood was complicated.
Her adult life eventually became almost unimaginably glamorous, but she did not grow up with anything resembling the world her children inherited.
Monroe and Moroccan were born into celebrity.
Private travel, famous friends, enormous homes and backstage access were normal parts of their childhood.
Mariah therefore faced a parenting problem unique to people who achieve extraordinary success: how do you teach children to appreciate what they have when they have never known life without it?
At 15, Monroe Is Starting to Look More Like Her Own Person
The newest photographs make that especially obvious.
On September 10, Mariah posted a four-frame photo-booth collage from the family’s visit to Arte Museum.
Mariah stood with Monroe and Moroccan as the three smiled, flashed peace signs and made playful faces.
Her caption consisted of one perfectly chosen word:
“Twinning.” (People.com)
Fans immediately picked up on the joke.
“Twins? I see triplets here,” one commenter wrote.
Another reacted to how quickly the children had grown, writing, “not babies anymore.” A third remembered when Mariah first gave birth to them. (Page Six)
The photographs also revealed something else: both teenagers are now nearly as tall as their mother. (Us)
For fans who still picture Monroe sitting on Mariah’s lap, the new images offered a genuine double take.
NOW — Monroe at 15
“OMG, She Looks Like Mariah”
The resemblance conversation is hardly new.
As Monroe has grown older, fans have repeatedly debated whether she looks more like Mariah or Nick.
Recent coverage has described her as almost a perfect mixture of the two. (Nicki Swift)
In some photographs, the resemblance to Mariah is particularly noticeable when Monroe wears her hair in long curls.
That has inspired comments comparing the teenager with younger photographs of her mother.
But resemblance is subjective.
There is no objective measurement that says Monroe is “Mariah’s twin,” and other viewers see significant traces of Nick Cannon in her features.
What is indisputable is that Monroe inherited a very recognizable family resemblance.
Put photographs of Mariah, Nick, Moroccan and Monroe together and it becomes almost impossible not to start comparing.
Moroccan is frequently described as resembling his father.
Monroe often receives the Mariah comparisons.
And when all three — Mariah, Monroe and Moroccan — appeared together in the September photo booth, fans jokingly decided they were looking at triplets. (People.com)
Her Curls Make the Comparison Even Stronger
Hair has always been an important part of Mariah’s public image.
Long before the ultra-glamorous straight styles and elaborate waves of later decades, young Mariah was famous for her naturally curly hair.
Look at photographs from the beginning of her career around 1990 and the curls are unmistakable.
They became part of the image associated with the young singer who suddenly seemed to appear from nowhere with a five-octave vocal range and a debut album that produced four No. 1 singles.
Now fans see Monroe wearing her own long curls and immediately make the connection.
The similarity is particularly striking because hairstyles can evoke eras.
Monroe does not literally look identical to her mother at 15, but seeing Mariah’s teenage daughter with curls naturally reminds longtime fans of the young Mariah they first encountered decades ago.
Mariah Then — and Monroe Today
But Mariah Has Been Careful About Letting Monroe Become Her Own Person
There is a potential burden hidden inside every “mini Mariah” comment.
Mariah Carey is not an ordinary musical parent to follow.
She is one of the most commercially successful singers in history.
Any daughter displaying even modest musical ability would inevitably be compared with her.
For Monroe, those comparisons began before she was old enough to decide whether she even wanted them.
Mariah’s approach has generally been to celebrate her children’s personalities rather than announce career plans for them.
The twins have appeared with her.
They have occasionally performed.
They participate in family social-media posts.
But they have not been packaged as a professional brother-and-sister entertainment act.
At 15, Monroe still has enormous space to decide what she actually wants.
She may pursue music.
She may choose something completely different.
The fact that she can sing with Mariah does not obligate her to become Mariah.
Nick Cannon Has a Different Problem: His Daughter Is Dating Age
As Monroe and Moroccan have entered adolescence, their father’s conversations about them have changed too.
In May 2026, Cannon acknowledged that the twins are now at the age when dating becomes part of the parenting equation.
And he admitted to treating his son and daughter differently.
Cannon said Moroccan was permitted to date while he was much more protective of Monroe. (Page Six)
It was a revealing reminder of something easily forgotten when looking at polished celebrity photographs.
Mariah and Nick are now parenting teenagers.
The children who once appeared in matching outfits and Christmas photographs have opinions, social-media accounts and increasing independence.
Monroe’s viral sibling post demonstrated that independence clearly.
So does the changing way she presents herself publicly.
Mariah Still Calls Them Her Babies Anyway
Parents rarely care how old their children become.
Mariah certainly seems unwilling to surrender the nickname.
Monroe and Moroccan remain “Dem Babies,” even at 15.
PEOPLE used the affectionate family nickname again when celebrating their birthday in April, tracing their lives through photographs from newborn infancy to adolescence. (People.com)
That retrospective makes the newest pictures especially poignant.
One image shows Mariah cuddling the newborn twins.
Another shows tiny Monroe at a public event.
Then she is walking beside her mother.
Then performing with her.
And suddenly she is 15, nearly Mariah’s height and being described by strangers as her mother’s lookalike.
For Mariah, that passage of time has apparently been emotional too.
She has repeatedly spoken about how much love the twins brought into her life and how deeply motherhood changed her. (People.com)
Monroe and Moroccan Had Two Celebrations for Their 15th Birthday
Their milestone birthday this year was appropriately elaborate.
On April 30, both Mariah and Nick celebrated the twins publicly.
Photos showed Monroe and Moroccan wearing customized Disney-inspired shirts reading “Rocky & Roe 15th Birthday.” Their celebrations included two parties, including a Six Flags outing. (AOL.com)
The photographs once again sparked comments about how much the teenagers resembled their parents.
But there was something almost ordinary underneath all the celebrity machinery.
Two siblings turned 15.
Their divorced parents celebrated them.
There were birthday shirts.
There was an amusement park.
There were photographs parents inevitably wanted to take.
The names involved simply happened to be Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon.
Moroccan Is Growing Into the Spotlight Too
Monroe is not the only twin beginning to establish an identity outside of being “Mariah’s child.”
Moroccan has developed his own social-media presence and has experimented with livestreaming.
In one funny 2026 incident, Mariah unexpectedly appeared during her son’s Twitch stream, much to Moroccan’s apparent teenage embarrassment. The moment quickly circulated because it transformed one of the world’s biggest singers into something much more familiar: a mother interrupting her son’s online hangout. (Page Six)
More recently, Moroccan shared another family photograph himself.
On September 9, he posted an image with his mother and sister and captioned it simply, “On a lark.” (E! Online)
The twins are no longer simply appearing because their parents bring them somewhere.
They are beginning to decide when and how they appear publicly themselves.
That is a significant shift.
Mariah’s Daughter Is Growing Up in Front of People Who Remember Mariah at the Same Age
Perhaps that is why Monroe’s appearance creates such fascination.
Mariah Carey has been famous for more than three decades.
There is an enormous photographic archive of her transformation from a young curly-haired singer into the glamorous global superstar audiences know today.
Now her daughter is approaching the age Mariah was before fame arrived.
Fans can place the images beside each other.
Mariah with curls.
Monroe with curls.
Mariah as a young woman.
Monroe entering her teenage years.
The comparison feels almost like watching time fold back on itself.
Yet their childhoods could hardly be more different.
Mariah grew up before anyone knew her name.
Monroe has never experienced a world in which her mother wasn’t famous.
The Little Girl in Mariah’s Arms Is 15 Now
The most striking part of the recent photographs isn’t really whether Monroe has Mariah’s eyes, Nick’s smile or her mother’s curls.
It is simply how much time has passed.
On April 30, 2011, Mariah Carey became a mother to two tiny babies.
Fifteen years later, those children stand almost shoulder-to-shoulder with her.
Monroe has sung beside her mother onstage, walked red carpets, traveled the world, experienced her parents’ divorce, navigated an enormous blended family and begun discovering firsthand how quickly something she posts online can become international entertainment news.
And she is still only 15.
The recent photographs give fans a glimpse of the young woman emerging from the little girl they remember.
Yes, the curls evoke Mariah.
Yes, some expressions make the family resemblance difficult to miss.
And yes, seeing mother and daughter together can produce a remarkable sense of déjà vu.
But Monroe Cannon’s story is only beginning.
For now, perhaps Mariah’s September caption says enough.
“Twinning.”
The resemblance may have everyone talking.
The more interesting question is who Monroe will become when she no longer needs to be compared with anyone at all.
For more fascinating glimpses into the lives of stars then and now, check out how “Knots Landing” star Joan Van Ark’s dramatic transformation has fueled decades of plastic-surgery talk, or see how ’80s heartthrob Kirk Cameron has embraced a different path as a gray-bearded grandfather. You might also enjoy seeing “Little House on the Prairie” star Alison Arngrim return to the screen in a completely different role!
