Jennifer Gates Compares Growing Up When ‘Social Media Wasn’t a Thing’ to Raising Her 2 Daughters Now (Exclusive)

A lot has changed since Jennifer Gates was a child — and now, the 29-year-old is reflecting on what it’s like to raise two daughters in the digital media age.

Deciding what to share about her life, and her kids, “is an ongoing conversation,”  Jennifer, who shares daughters Leila and Mia with husband Nayel Nassar, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview.

“But ultimately I think allowing your children to get to a place where they can make more of a decision for themselves is where we’ve landed,” adds the pediatric resident, who graduated last May from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “I want them to be able to go out in the world and feel like they can have their own identity and craft who they want to be.” 

That’s something mom Melinda French Gates chose to do as well, she says. 

“When she had us, social media wasn’t a thing, so our names weren’t out there, our faces weren’t out there, and that really gave us the privacy to go to elementary school and have some semblance of anonymity and whatever semblance of normalcy we were able to have in the unique circumstances we did,” adds Jennifer, who grew up alongside her siblings, brother Rory, 25, and sister Phoebe, 22. (Their dad is Bill Gates.)

Jennifer became a mom for the first time in March 2023, when she and Nassar, 34, welcomed their first child Leila, 2. The couple, who wed in October 2021, became parents again when Jennifer gave birth to daughter Mia in October 2024.

Reflecting on the jump from being a parent of one to two, Jennifer says, “I have so much respect for parents who have two under two.”

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“I have to mention that my experience of becoming a mom of two under two is steeped in privilege,” she continues. “I’m so privileged to be able to take time off from work to have both, to have paid child care and to have family help, between my in-laws and both of my parents.”

Adds Jennifer: “And even so, it is incredibly challenging to have two babies in diapers and one you’re breastfeeding and one that’s working on her appetite and doing her meals.”

Looking at both of her daughters, Jennifer tells PEOPLE they are unique in their own ways.

“My oldest, Leila, has a very determined personality,” the mom of two says. “She is extremely verbal and she’s funny. … Other two-year-old parents will know this, they say the most hilarious things.”

“And my younger one, Mia, she’s only [seven] months right now, but she is very mellow and chill,” she continues.

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Jennifer says she thinks her children’s differing personalities “reflect my experience as a mom too, the first time going through it.”

“But that is what I can say so far about the two girls. They’re wonderful,” she adds.