Janet Jackson Pictures

The singer, songwriter, actress who goes by the name of Janet Jackson was born May 16, 1966, in Gary, Indiana. The youngest of nine children born to Joseph Walter Jackson and his wife, Katherine, Jackson grew up in the affluence of a show business family.

Janet Jackson's five brothers—Jackie, Tito, Marlon, Jermaine, and Michael—signed a contract with Motown Records in 1968 and would go on to rule the charts as The Jackson Five, with such hits as "I Want You Back," "Stop, the Love You Save," "ABC," and "Dancing Machine."

In late 1969, Jackson took her daughters Rebbie, LaToya, and Janet, and her youngest son, Randy, to join her husband in Los Angeles, where they had moved to further the band's career. (Tito's twin brother, Brandon, had died within 24 hours of the twins' premature birth in 1957.)

The Jackson children were raised in the Jehovah's Witness faith, as Katherine Jackson had been baptized as a Jehovah's Witness in 1963. LaToya Jackson famously chronicled their tumultuous childhood—including charges of physical and sexual abuse by Joseph Jackson—in her tell-all autobiography, but Janet and others of her siblings disputed LaToya's account. The tensions within the family certainly increased on account of Michael Jackson's emergence as a solo artist and a superstar beginning in the early 1970s.