For a few hours this week, it felt like the world and all its horrors stopped with one subject taking over the internet: Brooklyn Peltz Beckham.
People feasted on every morsel after the eldest child of David and Victoria Beckham dropped six slides on his Instagram Stories accusing his famous parents of planting stories in the media about him, portraying “inauthentic relationships” on social media and trying to ruin his wedding to his wife, Nicola Peltz.
Peltz Beckham launched his broadside with a statement of purpose: “I do not want to reconcile with my family.”
With that, though he didn’t use the term himself, Peltz Beckham entered the fervent discourse shaking Gen Z and their Gen X and Boomer parents: going “no contact,” or dropping those family members deemed too toxic and incapable of change.
In private conversations and very publicly on TikTok, the idea of going “no contact” is debated from all sides. On the one hand are those who choose to drop relationships — often hailed by their peers for choosing themselves over whatever situation led to the fissure. On the other are the parents who have been banished by their children, some expressing confusion, and others finding their own influencer lane in telling their side of the story.
Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development at Cornell and author of the book “Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them,” told CNN that though there is a heightened awareness about adult children going no contact, thanks in part to social media, there is no actual hard data to show that there has been an increase.
Back in 2020, Pillemer told the Cornell Chronicle he “found that 27% of Americans 18 and older had cut off contact with a family member, most of whom reported that they were upset by such a rift.”
What he now sees at play is that younger people, including Gen Z, are receiving more support on social media when they decide to break with their families, even as their parents struggle to understand the language their kids are using to express why it’s happening, like “gaslighting” and “narcissistic parenting.”
“For one, there’s social media encouragement that has become more acceptable,” Pillemer said. “Two, there’s this kind of disconnect between what some young people seem to expect from the parent-child relationship that is very different from their parents’ understanding of what they were doing.”
No longer, he said, do adult children have to stay connected to their family because “blood is thicker than water”, as the younger generation has “less of a feeling that I will live with this relationship if it isn’t fulfilling no matter what.”
When it comes to the Beckhams, the educator said he was reminded of a conversation he had on an episode of the “Sibling Rivalry” podcast, hosted by celebrity siblings Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson, about negotiating family relationships via social media.
“I would say this is not a good way to handle estrangements,” he said “It draws an incredibly powerful line in the sand when you out the entire relationship. And it’s very difficult then, ‘cause those things live forever.”
A celebrity dynastyFrom the love-at-first-sight moment footballer David Beckham met then-Spice Girls singer Victoria Adams during a 1997 soccer game, the couple seemed to be living a fairytale.
Their firstborn was an integral part of their love story.
Named for the New York City borough where his parents discovered they were expecting him, he was the four-month-old ring bearer at their 1999 nuptials at Luttrellstown Castle in Dublin, Ireland.
As he grew older, Brooklyn Peltz Beckham seemed to work hard at finding his niche.
He’s been a barista, a model, a photographer and an aspiring chef complete with his own line of hot sauces. The celebrity progeny appeared to be seeking out his place in a world that had been aware of him since birth.
He touched on the subject in “What I See,” a book of his photographs published in 2017, when he was 18.
“I don’t think being in the public eye has affected me too much. I’m just used to it,” he reportedly said at the time. “Obviously I have to be more aware as a teenager that someone may be capturing shots of me unaware.”
His father also touched on it in a 2023 Netflix docuseries, “Beckham,” at one point getting emotional when talking about his four children.
“We’ve tried to give our children the most normal possible upbringing as possible,” the elder Beckham said. “But you’ve got a dad who was England captain, and you’ve got mum who was Posh Spice.”
The family also includes sons Romeo and Cruz and daughter Harper.
“And they could be little s**ts, and they’re not,” he added. “And that’s why I say I’m so proud of my children.”
That public perception shifted this week when Peltz Beckham took to Instagram, criticising his parents’ “performative social media posts” and saying the facade has “been a fixture of the life I was born into.”
CNN has reached out to representatives for the Beckhams for comment.
Bubble bursts
The Beckham family feud previously lived only in the pages of tabloids and on social media, where there were tales of tension between the Beckhams and their eldest progeny and his wife.
Another part of the draw to the Beckham scandal is the behind-the-scenes glance it gives into a powerhouse celebrity family.
Rumors began swirling shortly after Beckham, 26, married Peltz, 31, at a ceremony in Palm Beach in April 2022, to which the bride wore a Valentino Couture dress – not a gown designed by her soon-to-be mother-in-law, a fashion mogul.
There was so much gossip that the newest member of the Beckham family gave an interview to The Sunday Times in October 2022 denying that she was at odds with her in-laws.
“I don’t know why they say feud?,” she told the paper. “I mean, maybe they picked up on something? And now they’re labelling it feud? No family is perfect!”
Brooklyn Peltz Beckham revealed how far from perfect by posting this week with a slew of accusations against his family.
“I’m standing up for myself for the first time in my life,” Peltz Beckham wrote.
It was a direct move from a young man who many believe has had a soft life since the very beginning.
But it is just that perception of him having lived the “good life” that aided in captivating the interest of the public, who were given a stark reminder that even in the spotlight, a family split can still be devastating.
