The Beckham family feud is every mother’s worst nightmare

“Making the decision to have a child is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” As a mother, that quote about parenthood by the writer and teacher Elizabeth Stone gets me right in the guts – because it’s just so accurate. Having a baby – particularly your firstborn – changes you forever. Now, how do you think Victoria Beckham feels?

The A-list mum-of-four has built an entire career not only on being a former member of the Spice Girls and a celebrated fashion designer, but – crucially – as a matriarch, for whom “Brand Beckham” is sold as one thing: family. Whatever the truth on the inside, to the outside world, they forge a united front: it is key to their entire trademark to be united. Until now.

In a bombshell attack, Brooklyn Peltz Beckham – who, at 26, is the eldest son in the family – has posted a six-page update to Instagram accusing his parents of “controlling” him for most of his life, which led to him growing up with what he describes as “overwhelming anxiety”. “My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else,” he wrote. “Brand Beckham comes first.” And the worst part? He was utterly scathing about his mother.

Brooklyn, who married model and heiress Nicola Peltz, 31, in April 2022 (and now alleges that his parents have been trying “endlessly to ruin my relationship since before my wedding, and it hasn’t stopped”) claimed Victoria cancelled making Nicola’s dress “in the eleventh hour despite how excited she was to wear her design, forcing her to urgently find a new dress”. “My mum has repeatedly invited women from my past into our lives in ways that were clearly intended to make us both uncomfortable,” he added.

And in a final, killer blow, he even said Victoria “hijacked” the first dance at their wedding, saying: “In front of our 500 wedding guests, Marc Anthony called me to the stage where in the schedule was planned to be my romantic dance with my wife but instead my mum was waiting to dance with me. She danced very inappropriately on me in front of everybody. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or humiliated in my entire life.”

It is an eviscerating move, eerily reminiscent of Prince Harry accusing his family of “cruelty” towards his wife, Meghan Markle, and it is sure to have just as much of a devastating fall-out. Family rifts are uniquely thorny precisely because they’re so full of emotion and pain – it can be virtually impossible to nail down an objective “truth”. There’s a clear sense of hurt and betrayal on both sides. There’s also nothing quite as fascinating as when a mother-son relationship goes badly wrong.

But much as I sympathise with the way Brooklyn says he is feeling – (and I sympathised with Prince Harry, too, particularly at the Coronation) – I still feeling a bit sympathetic towards Victoria. There is, truly, nothing worse than being branded an “embarrassing” or (in Brooklyn’s words) “inappropriate” mother. Nothing. Just look at what Madonna said about her custody battle with Guy Ritchie over their son, Rocco: “There were moments in my life I wanted to cut my arms off.”

I once held court at drinks after work, explaining passionately that David Beckham was the poster boy for romance; the ultimate “wife guy”. My evidence? The way he posted mooning photos of the two of them on Instagram, hugging or kissing or dancing; gushing openly on their anniversary to say, “Happy Anniversary and thank you for giving me our beautiful children and building the life that we have together. I love you Lady Beckham”. And he’s a “family guy”, too. He said as much just a few weeks ago, after receiving his knighthood, thanking his whole family (including, presumably, Brooklyn) on Instagram, saying: “I'm so grateful to my incredible wife , my amazing children , my friends and team I work with every single day nothing would have been possible without you all.”

I may have been wrong. It leaves in its wake nothing more than a bitter family feud, the type echoed by families the world over, ones with far less money and celebrity than the Beckhams. Once the dust settles, it will all just seem... well, a bit sad.

One part of Brooklyn’s post sticks with me – the “Prince Harry” part, in which he lambasts “performative social media posts, family events and inauthentic relationships”, saying they have been a “fixture” of the life he was born into (Harry said last year that his father, King Charles, “won’t speak to him” and compared life at the palace as being like Downton Abbey – but said that the show had “less drama”). Much like Harry, then, Brooklyn laid into this alleged “performance”, writing: “Recently, I have seen with my own eyes the lengths that they'll go through to place countless lies in the media, mostly at the expense of innocent people, to preserve their own facade. But I believe the truth always come out.”

What I’d like to say to Brooklyn is that the “truth”, when it comes to family estrangement, isn’t always quite so simple or straightforward. But what I can say is one unalterable fact: Victoria is a mother – and this is going to really, really hurt.