Mariah Carey was born in Huntington

Mariah Carey was born in Huntington, New York, on March 27, 1970.[2] The singer's father, Alfred Roy, was of African American and Venezuelan (including Afro-Venezuelan) descent, while her mother, Patricia (née Hickey), is an Irish American. Patricia's father had died while she was young; however, she inherited his passion for music. She developed a career as an occasional opera singer and vocal coach, and met Alfred in 1960. As he began earning a living as an aeronautical engineer,

 the couple wed later that year, and moved into a small suburb in New York.[3] After the pair's elopement, Patricia's family disowned her, due to marrying a man of color. Carey later explained that growing up, she felt a notion of neglect from her maternal family, a mark that affected her greatly: "So later I was like, 'Well, where does this leave me? Am I a bad person?' You know. It's still not that common to be a multi-racial person, but I'm happy with the combination of things that I am."[3] During the interval of years in between Carey's older sister Allison and the singer's birth, the Carey family experienced personal struggles within the community due to their ethnicity.[3]

Carey's name was derived from the song "They Call the Wind Mariah", originally from the 1951 Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon.[4][5] When Carey was three years old, her parents divorced due to the increasingly strenuous nature of their marriage.[6] "It's been difficult for me, moving around so much, having to grow up by myself... my parents divorced. And I always felt kind of different from everybody else in my neighborhoods. I was a different person ethnically. And sometimes, that can be a problem. If you look a certain way, everybody goes 'White girl', and I'd go, 'No, that's not what I am'." —Carey, on the difficulty of her childhood[7] After their separation, Allison moved in with her father, while the other two children remained with their mother.[6] As the years passed, Carey would grow apart from her father, and would later stop seeing him altogether.[6][8] By the age of four, Carey recalled that she had begun to sneak the radio under her covers at night, and just sing from her heart, and try and find peace within the music.[8] During elementary school, she would excel in subjects that she enjoyed, such as literature, art and music, while not finding interest in other subjects.[9]

After several years of financial struggling, Patricia earned enough money to move her family into a stable and more affluent sector in New York.[9] Carey had begun writing poems and adding melodies to them, thus starting as a singer-songwriter while attending Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York.[10][10] Even from a young age, Carey excelled in her music, and demonstrated usage of the whistle register, though only beginning to master and control it through her training with her mother.[10] Though opening her daughter to the world of classical opera, Patricia never pressured Carey to pursue a career in that type of genre, as she never seemed interested in that world of music.[10] Carey recalled that she kept her singer-songwriter works a secret and noted that Patricia had "never been a pushy mom. She never said, 'Give it more of an operatic feel'. I respect opera like crazy, but it didn't influence me."[10][11] While a high school student, Carey developed a relationship with Gavin Christopher, with whom she shared musical aspirations. The song-writing duo needed an assistant who could play the keyboard: "We called someone and he couldn't come, so by accident we stumbled upon Ben [Margulies]. Ben came to the studio, and he really couldn't play the keyboards very well - he was really more of a drummer - but after that day, we kept in touch, and we sort of clicked as writers."[11] Carey and Christopher began writing and composing songs in his father's store basement during Carey's senior year. After composing their first song together, "Here We Go Round Again", which Carey described as having a Motown-vibe, they continued writing material for a full length demo.[12] Following her graduation from high school, Carey's mother remarried, which ultimately prompted her to move out from their apartment. She began living in a one bedroom studio in Manhattan, which she shared with four other female students.[13][14] During this time, Carey worked as a waitress for various restaurants, usually getting fired after two week intervals.[15] While requiring work to pay for her rent, Carey's mind and effort still remained with her musical ambitions, as she continued working late into the night with Margulies, in hopes of completing a demo take that could be passed on to record executives.[15] After completing her four song demo tape, Carey attempted to pass it to music labels, but was met with failure each time.[16] Shortly thereafter, she was introduced to rising pop singer Brenda K. Starr.[