The Beckham Family Feud™ has evolved, like a tabloid-fuelled Pokémon, from a tale of alleged battling brothers to another ancient paradigm: the warring mother and daughter-in-law.
Sources close to Nicola Peltz-Beckham recently briefed TMZ that she thinks her mother-in-law Victoria Beckham is “toxic” and "narcissistic" — TikTok pop psychology terms du jour — whose crimes allegedly include trying to steal her first dance with Brooklyn Beckham at their wedding and refusing to share a post about her dog sanctuary on Instagram.
In return, sources claiming to be close to the senior Beckham’s briefed the Mail that “Victoria thinks Nicola is a narcissist” who has “love-bombed” Brooklyn and “cut him off” from his family — and rudely didn’t wear a dress from her mother-in-law’s fashion line at said wedding.
These are some very strong terms poached from psychology’s understanding of abusive relationships and personality disorders that really shouldn’t be bandied around willy-nilly, but I digress. According to reports, Victoria and Nicola have fallen into a well-established archetype: women who don’t get along with their female relations by marriage.
I don’t have a mother-in-law, but I do know a lot about the bad ones because I like to lurk in one of the most lurid corners of the internet: r/JUSTNOMIL (spelt out, this is: Just No, Mother-in-Law).
This is the Reddit forum for women who have discovered, often too late, that they have married a man whose mother is on a mission to cause some truly deranged family drama. The “just no” is what you might mutter as you witness your mother-in-law try to wear white to your wedding, or burst into the delivery suite to see her grandchild crowning.
There’s some extreme familial dysfunction on display on that subreddit, but at nearly two million members you can see how many people across many different cultures struggle to mediate family relationships when the younger generation adds a new life partner to the mix. If things were already screwy, it can really bring those problems to the surface.
If there’s an issue to settle with his parents, it should be up to Brooklyn to solve it
While this celebrity family fall-out seems to be happening on a grand scale (the Beckhams are a brand, as well as a family) and in full view of the press, the complaints that mothers have about their son’s wives and vice versa are, literally, tales as old as time.
History and literature is littered with women beefing with their in-laws. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite did not take kindly to Psyche for a) marrying her son Eros and b) threatening her famed beauty, so set her a series of impossible tasks. And Charles Perrault's 17th-century fairy tales had Sleeping Beauty survive the curse, only for her new mother-in-law attempt to have her children cooked up sauce for dinner.
So is Posh an enmeshed and overbearing mother who can’t bear to let her adult son make his own life with a woman his own age? Or is Nicola a conniving usurper (and an American to boot!) trying to steal her husband away from his loving family? Who is the true goddess of beauty and who wants to engage in eating babies?
When you boil it down, these stories take flight because of sexism, with a little bit of ageism thrown in for good measure. Blaming everything on the women in the situation seems a bit rich given there are fathers- and brothers-in-law too.
The beautiful pop princess of a bygone era, apparently challenged by the 20-years-younger glamorous heiress. An older woman whose marriage has survived affair allegations versus a younger one who refuses to spend a night apart from her husband. If we believe the tales, two women at different stages of life fighting over some guy because they birthed him/married him.
If there’s an issue to settle with his parents, it should be up to Brooklyn to solve it, rather than everyone blaming his wife or his mother.
Sure, there’s a generational gap to bridge between the Beckham parents and Nicola and Brooklyn. Change is always tricky for families to adjust to, even if you’re in the highest tax bracket. Maybe the tit-for-tat narcissist accusations could be dialled down, for starters.
India Block is a London Standard columnist
