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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced the birth of their second daughter on Monday.
The couple revealed the girl’s name — August — but didn’t disclose any other details about her, such as what day she was born.
Zuckerberg recently said that he would take two months of paternity leave after his second child’s birth — Facebook offers four months of maternity and paternity leave to all employees. He’ll take the first month immediately and then he’ll go on leave again for the entire month of December.
Zuckerberg and Chan’s first daughter, Max, was born in 2015. The couple unveiled their philanthropic fund, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, on the same day they announced Max’s birth. The fund, which is backed by Zuckerberg’s Facebook fortune, hopes to cure the world’s diseases by the end of this century.
Here’s the letter Zuckerberg and Chan wrote to August, which Zuckerberg shared Monday on his Facebook page:
Dear August,
Welcome to the world! Your mom and I are so excited to see who you will become.
When your sister was born, we wrote a letter about the world we hoped she and now you will grow up in — a world with better education, fewer diseases, stronger communities, and greater equality. We wrote that with all the advances in science and technology, your generation should live dramatically better lives than ours, and we have a responsibility to do our part to make that happen. Even though headlines often focus on what’s wrong, we still believe these positive trends will win out. We’re optimists about your generation and the future.
But rather than write about growing up, we want to talk about childhood. The world can be a serious place. That’s why it’s important to make time to go outside and play.
You will be busy when you’re older, so I hope you take time to smell all the flowers and put all the leaves you want in your bucket now. I hope you read your favorite Dr. Seuss books so many times you start inventing your own stories about the Vipper of Vipp. I hope you ride the carousel with Max until you’ve tamed every color horse. I hope you run as many laps around our living room and yard as you want. And then I hope you take a lot of naps. I hope you’re a great sleeper. And I hope even in your dreams you can feel how much we love you.
Childhood is magical. You only get to be a child once, so don’t spend it worrying too much about the future. You’ve got us for that, and we’ll do everything we possibly can to make sure the world is a better place for you and all children in your generation.
August, we love you so much and we’re so excited to go on this adventure with you. We wish you a life of joy, love and the same hope you give us.
Love,
Mom and Dad
