Brooklyn Beckham Doesn’t Owe Us an Explanation

Save for a childhood obsession with The Spice Girls and a questionable fascination with ’90s-era his-and-hers dressing, I’ve never been especially interested in the Beckhams. But over the past few months, they’ve become impossible to ignore, joining that small category of families I seem to know far too much about despite making no effort to learn this information. It brings to mind a phrase so often used about the Kardashian–Jenners: everything I know about this family is against my will.

Despite not engaging with any Beckham content, I’ve been repeatedly served their posts, and—more strikingly—the commentary beneath them. What I’ve seen isn’t gossip so much as a noisy confidence among strangers: a sense that they are entitled to instruct Brooklyn Beckham on how to conduct his relationship with his own family.

I have seen grown women—and men, but often it is women—leave warnings gussied up as advice under the elder Beckham’s posts. Ominous but clichéd sayings like “blood is thicker than water” and “no one will ever love you as much as your mum.” If we are to believe Brooklyn’s atomic statement last night, similar warnings were issued by his own family on the eve of his wedding.

I won’t retread the already well-worn ground of Brooklyn Beckham’s statements. They are, for want of a better word, juicy, and they’ve been treated accordingly—parsed, projected onto, and elevated to the status of cultural spectacle. All this, and at a time when families the world over are desperately trying to cling to one another, even as forces greater than themselves threaten to tear them from their roots.

Perhaps that is precisely why this story has proved so compelling: it offers a form of light relief, a drama at a safe remove, and one that we can comfortably take the moral high ground on. Well, I would never dream of cutting my family out, we might think.

And herein lies the problem. Because we all come from families—regardless of how harmonious or fractured they may be—everyone feels qualified to dole out advice. Much of it is no doubt well-meaning, but it undermines the very real pain caused by family estrangement.

I’ve spent a great deal of time occupying this space, both professionally and personally. I’ve interviewed countless people estranged from mothers, fathers, siblings—the whole shebang—and, as I’ve alluded to in those stories, I have my own experience with family estrangement. Does that qualify me to offer advice? No, of course not. My situation is entirely different from Brooklyn’s, and more than that, I know nothing of his.

Both parties have, in various guises, shared their versions of events. But it’s worth remembering that even in families where everyone lives under one roof, each person has their own experience. Siblings I’ve spoken to often report feeling as though they were raised by entirely different parents. And yet many of the most prominent—or at least most vocal—armchair psychologists have pointed to the seeming tightness of the Beckham unit sans Brooklyn. This tells us nothing.

Right now, questions are being volleyed across office floors, around family tables, in innumerable group chats. Should he have spoken out? What really happened? Where can we find a video of that wedding dance?

The implication here is that Brooklyn Beckham owes us clarity. That clarity would make us comfortable. We could soothe ourselves in the knowledge that this could never happen to our family. But families aren’t plays with a third-act reveal. They resemble something closer to weather systems, and as such, they change—often in ways totally unexpected even to the people within their orbit. What they don’t do is exist to be understandable and palatable to strangers, even well-meaning ones.

What’s striking about the fixation on Brooklyn’s relationship with his parents isn’t just the entitlement; it’s the moralising. Estrangement, in this instance, is being treated like a failure of gratitude, but being raised with privilege doesn’t protect anyone from the possibility of pain.

Collectively, we seem to have written a cultural script for families—especially glossy, famous ones like the Beckhams. When that image is challenged, it unsettles us. So we look for someone to blame. Often, it’s the child who steps away.

Brooklyn has been branded “spoilt,” “ungrateful,” a “loser.” Column inches have been dedicated to the fact that “he’d be nothing without his famous parents.” Commenters on social media have cruelly pointed out that he’d never have “bagged” his wife without his surname, and he should therefore be eternally grateful to have been born into the brand Beckham. I’ve seen this play out with estranged children without a famous pedigree, too. Something about estrangement—especially parental estrangement, and even more so when it involves the mother—deeply rattles people.

Much has been written about the way culture collapses nuance into spectacle, how the internet flattens people into archetypes that can be debated and discarded. Brooklyn Beckham is currently being flattened into “estranged son,” a role that demands context but denies any complexity. We want the mess, but only if it’s narratively satisfying.

It’s also worth asking why we assume reconciliation is the only acceptable outcome. Some relationships change shape. Some need distance to survive. And yes, some end. Social media is stuffed with chatter about boundaries, mental health, and “protecting our peace.” And yet, when someone actually enacts them—especially someone famous—we recoil. We demand to know what happened and, damn it, we want a reason good enough to satisfy us.

Maybe there is one. Maybe there isn’t. No one knows what happens inside a family except the people in it. Even then, everyone’s version is different.

Brooklyn Beckham doesn’t owe us anything. Not the gory details, nor the reassurance that our own families are somehow safer by comparison. The discomfort this story stirs up belongs to us, not to him.