Brooklyn Beckham and the long arm of family names
His life seemed predestined. What happens when a spouse changes the story?
Hi! Heather here. Have you been enjoying our new mini-series beneath the essay? By popular demand, I’m bringing you a new one this week. It’s tasty, so keep reading…
As people, we contain multitudes. So does our wealth. You can have privilege, and you can have baggage. You may have never experienced a single financial burden, and you may feel subsumed by the weight of that fact alone. We don’t get to make the rules about who feels what. Your story is your story, and when it comes to navigating your closest relationships, your perception of your life is the narrative that wins.
Earlier this month, Brooklyn Peltz Beckham opened up about being estranged from his parents, David and Victoria Beckham, who need no introduction. He claims that over the past several years, particularly since his marriage to Nicola Peltz, his parents have tried to manipulate him, steer public opinion, and alienate the couple except for when cameras were rolling (and even then, some red-carpet clips suggest something might be off). He claims he faced pressure prior to his wedding to sign away the rights to utilize his last name, and that certain hijinks unfolded before and during the wedding itself. Brooklyn has made it publicly clear that he isn’t interested in reconciling at this time. He will choose his wife, again and again.
We will probably never learn enough to make sweeping conclusions about what’s transpired between Brooklyn and his parents. We won’t get every angle. No one is on trial here, so even if a tabloid entices a low-level employee in the Beckham orbit to break an iron-clad NDA and spill the tea, it’s likely a self-serving statement coated in bias. The public will be served an endless buffet of these “he said / she said” clickbait articles to feast on until we’re full and move on.
Powerful families pay for the privacy they have—for the ability to curate what’s truly known about them. That is, until someone who knows enough goes rogue and we get a glimpse of something real.
What’s most interesting about this feud has little to do with how Victoria Beckham danced with her son at his wedding, or whether she did or didn’t agree to design Nicola’s dress.
Even the finest-of-champagne problems show us something familiar: the way wealth can be used as a means of control, the challenges of growing up under the long shadow of a family, and the uncomfortable search for a way out. What kind of spouse does it take for love to disrupt these patterns?
We explore the concept of marrying into money in our book. When spouses come from different wealth backgrounds, their perceptions of risk and outlooks on life probably aren’t the same. Family money adds another layer of complexity when a couple expects to receive financial gifts or support. When the “married-in” sits in a position of far less power, we worry about their ability to negotiate a fair prenuptial agreement that can maintain their agency, protect their interests and those of future children, and still allows them to grow independent wealth.
This isn’t the case here. The Peltz family does just fine on their own. Nicola’s father, Nelson Peltz, is a businessman and investor estimated to be worth more than $1 billion. Both families have wealth, but they are not the same.
The Beckhams are famous with a capital F. They are a caricature of the modern power couple, where the whole is greater than the sum of its already impressive parts. David and Victoria are unreasonably successful in their own rights—like the Y2K version of Taylor and Travis—and their family brand has had decades to proof. For them, power stems more from fame than money. That kind of power needs to be fed.
David and Victoria never really pursued a private life for their children. From a young age, their kids were folded into the larger Beckham brand: photographed and curated as part of a managed public image. Togetherness was central to that image. In this way, the Beckhams’ approach preceded the present-day family YouTubers and momfluencers, who present a narrative of themselves as parents, alongside an edited version of their children they want the world to see.
But children grow up. And no matter how lovingly their story was told, it’s not their parents’ story to tell anymore. It probably never was.
So where does this leave an adult child raised inside the bubble? On one hand, Brooklyn Beckham has undeniably benefitted from his family name. He launched a hot sauce branded around his father’s famous “Number 23.” He produced an expensive online cooking series that was widely mocked. Opportunity is a privilege, and it’s clear that Brooklyn has moved through networks and capital in ways that wouldn’t be available to you or me. But even the privilege to try can come with invisible stakes and embarrassing lows. Maybe monetizing his likeness felt like the obvious move, because that’s what was modeled for him throughout his life. Failure, in this context, may not look like running out of money so much as being told by a family office that the project has gone on long enough.
I wonder how it feels to have the failures of your twenties on display. I made plenty of mistakes during mine, and even without the world watching, it felt like everyone was. The power of expectations weighs so heavy when you’re young, especially when success is a part of your legacy.
Rob Kardashian offers a useful parallel. He’s another famous son who, during the peak E! years, fumbled around ways to appear productive. The trappings of the Kardashian lifestyle created an entire new genre of envy, but you had to feel a twinge of sympathy for Rob. Imagine the pressure to achieve anything when everything was being measured against the attention ecosystem built by your sisters. We’ll never know the extent of how Rob’s problems were handled, suppressed, or dealt with, but it’s hard to believe there weren’t moments when his needs were diminished in service of the Greater Family Name, leaving him powerless in a way only a few could understand.
I know what you’re thinking. These are not our problems. Not the problems of ordinary people with paychecks and bills and decisions and financial consequences. But wrestling with identity, legacy, and privilege happens all along the wealth ladder (as our friend Nick Maggiulli calls it). Where you stand matters less than how you view your position in relation to the people who shaped your life. These feelings are personal and individually held. When you find someone to spend your life with, they don’t just disappear. You both bring them along. And the family comes, too.
If you are still baffled by the idea that the Beckhams wouldn’t just be happy their son married rich, consider that power has a currency all its own. Families like the Beckhams are used to being in control. They enter rooms knowing that they are the most influential or interesting people there. Unionizing a family that draws its power from public attention with one that built its wealth and influence quite differently could pose an existential threat to how the Beckhams operate. In the Peltz orbit, maybe the Beckhams aren’t the most powerful family in every room. Maybe the Beckhams would rather their children find partners who are not already members of the ultra-rich. Even if it means more mouths to feed, at least they’d be able to maintain that control.
Nicola Peltz Beckham entered this dynamic with financial autonomy. She carries her own existential safety net to support her own freedom to try, to fail, to discover her sense of self. I’d imagine, she has her own thoughts about wealth and family names.
Becoming truly intimate with another person means understanding their version of the world, and sometimes, you realize you prefer their lens to your own. Is that manipulative? To the parents of an adult child who has changed, it might feel that way. But it’s also a critical part of self-discovery, and one of the ways partners help each other access better versions of themselves.
At the level of Beckhams and Peltzes, though, love alone may not be enough to take a stand. Nicola’s wealth functions as a hedge for Brooklyn, which limits his downside risk. It insulates him from the fear of consequences that once kept him in line. And after several years of feeling disrespected, undermined, and at the very least, invalidated in his marriage, Brooklyn put it all on the line with his parents in the most salient way he could: online. In public. For everyone to see.
Technically, he could do it, because his financial downside is protected.
Emotionally, he could do it, because he loves her.
When money isn’t an issue, what’s left? You would hope, it’s the people. The principles. The time. The chance to make it count. In truth, we all have that opportunity—but people like Brooklyn and Nicola have the resources to seize it whenever they want. Given that privilege, I hope they find who they’re meant to be, now that some of the strings have loosened.
Have you ever loved someone in a way that changed how you saw your family, your money, or your future? We’d love to hear how that unfolded. Reach out.
Welcome to Sad Girl Lunch(TM)
Ask and ye shall receive! I’m officially bringing you Sad Girl Lunch™. For those who don’t know, this mini-series is my celebration of leftovers, pantry odds and ends, and meals that are deeply unphotogenic but extremely satisfying. Don’t expect recipes so much as anti-recipes: loose ideas meant to help you use what you already have, waste less food, and unlearn the idea that every meal needs to look like it came from the test kitchen.
I can think of no better way to kick off the Sad Girl Lunch™ mini-series than with chicken…and such. In theory, I am offering you a loose recipe for chicken soup, but the components can pull double and triple duty all week long. Not necessary, but if you have a large double boil pot, use that, because it’ll make it easier to separate the chicken, bones, and other ingredients from the broth in the end.
Start by loosely chopping your vegetables. The only ones I really give attention to for size are the carrots, because you don’t want them to disintegrate. Throw it all in the pot, make sure there’s enough liquid to cover the ingredients, and boil for a couple of hours. You’ll know when it’s done: the broth will be fatty and robust, and the chicken will fall off the bone.
I like to store the ingredients separately, because we use them in different ways. For one, I am gluten free, so when Doug and the kids add noodles, I sometimes add GF noodles, rice, or spinach to mine. We also repurpose the pulled chicken throughout the week. It’s great to make curry chicken salad, build a chicken quesadilla, or throw on top of greens. And when it’s winter’s literal bone outside, try ladling some broth into a coffee mug to warm yourself up. Mmm. -Heather
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That’s a really interesting assessment. I like how you framed the downside risk. I wonder if people born into wealth have a different relationship with it; it is theirs but also not theirs. In some ways maybe that allows them to see money more clearly. Maybe they know what enough and too much really look like. Many people who achieve money or fame struggle with losing either and will do anything to keep accruing.
Brilliat take on financial autonomy as a lever for family boundries. The comparison between Brooklyn's downside protection and someone accruing wealth is really smart, I've seen this in my own extended family where the spouse with independent means could actualy negotiate differently. It's kinda rare to see this dynamic laid out so clearly without moralizing either side.