The Beckham affair and the complexities of parenting

The kids were completely obsessed, like toddlers hearing "Baby Shark" for the first time. I, on the other hand, was painfully bored, because I had other passions; I had memorized every power stat of comic book superheroes, Spider Man, the X Men, you name it.

Looking back now, what I liked was probably even more useless because knowing superhero lore did not help me copy dance moves or practice social skills and the main purpose of youth, when you break it down, is learning how to coexist with other people, ideally without alarming them.

"Wanna Be My Lover." Recently, I heard that song again after it popped up in a random rooftop conversation, sitting surrounded by Brits. They made me feel like a snow farmer, me and a large Canadian man from my hometown named Gordy. Gordy had accidentally become my human shield against the British group’s polite, energetic, highly animated social force.

I felt stuck. Gordy and I were surrounded by "breaking news" about the Beckham family, their eldest son, and his young wife. To me, they were names I barely remembered. To everyone else, every headline felt vivid and alive, as if the soul of England itself were on the rooftop, sipping drinks and holding court.

A British woman with a booming laugh and overflowing energy, slightly larger than life yet refined enough not to be irritating. From her, a line of analysis unfolded with great confidence, even though I could not follow it at all. Brooklyn’s parents, she explained, had not had time to open their hearts. They were not gentle or generous enough to welcome a new daughter-in-law into the family.

The British possess an impressive ability, they can make any conversation sound intelligent. When I had only just tried to join in with a small, cautious voice, people had already begun to take sides, speaking with the assurance of those who sounded very clever and therefore saw no reason to hesitate.

Posh Spice is a controlling mother and she is slowly losing her son.
What about the dress? She canceled it. Very Machiavellian.
But there is evidence Nicola prepared her wedding dress a year in advance.
Brooklyn is the cause of everything. He put everything online like a delinquent kid.
His parents are insane. He needs to get out.

(From L) Brooklyn Beckham, his mother Victoria, his wife Nicola Peltz and his father David Beckham at an event to introduce his chili sauce brand in October 2024. Photo by Instagram/David Beckham

I felt like an exhausted police officer at the end of a shift, with Gordy stationed beside me like a bruiser, standing in the middle of a drunken brawl while I mentally filled out paperwork and everyone else continued prostrating, pointing fingers in all directions as truth and fiction marched side by side.

To understand the story, I turned every celebrity into a character in a television series, and that was when its appeal became obvious. Two families, both starting from nothing, the Beckhams rising through football and music, the Peltz family through a business empire, and then their children coming together, a love entangled with both fame and money, which is always a promising foundation.

When the conflict arrived, I suddenly felt it was too complicated to dig into the causes, like looking at a century egg, those black Vietnamese eggs in seafood soup that I do not eat, and wondering how anyone ever made it, only to discover the process is so complex that you decide it is best to stop asking questions and simply accept the result. With celebrities, surface level life always looks real until someone touches it, and ripples appear that reveal it was only an illusion.

I stopped interrogating myself and quietly sat next to Gordy, no longer trying to blend into the group conversation, but something kept stirring in my head, because as someone who is about to become a father, I could not help wondering what you have to do to avoid being exposed by your children on social media, and why some people find it so easy to talk to outsiders yet struggle so much when it comes to communicating with their own families.

There is one thing that seems small but is often overlooked, parents are often lenient about behaviors in their children that they themselves dislike. In Vietnam, this is easiest to see at family meals or when guests are over, when a child interrupts, fails to greet anyone, grabs food first, and the parents laugh it off, brushing it aside as childish behavior. Then one day, they suddenly feel irritated or even embarrassed by their child for those same "childish" habits, and they scold them, humiliate them, or simply begin to avoid them, hiding them from view and no longer bringing them along to save face. At that point, the issue is no longer about loving or not loving your child, but about having missed the moment when early teaching was necessary, leaving both the family and society to absorb the consequences quietly, and for years.

This is also what people miss when they look at wealthy children who do nothing but play games, watch television, avoid reading, and show no motivation to do anything with their lives, and decide to blame the children themselves, when in most cases this is the result of prolonged indulgence, delivered patiently and with excellent intentions. Many parents may admit, if pressed, that they feel annoyed or embarrassed by their children, and the sad part is that they often only arrive at this realization after they believe they are done raising them.

Raising your children in a way that makes sure you do not dislike them is difficult, because it means fixing yourself too, because they will be like you are. If you are a monster of some sort and act out of turn at a wedding, a child could act in the same manner, thinking that is the way of the world, dumping things online. Dragging your affairs publicly is a sure way for an entire dynasty built on imagination to come tumbling down, a many sided tragedy.

Even when you raise children well, family remains a space where everyone has to keep learning how to adjust themselves, because parents are only human and they make mistakes, and worse, they tend to make the same mistakes again and again in different forms, even in the smallest things. When one of these mistakes turns into a fracture, the most frightening part is sometimes not the anger that follows, but the familiar comfort of knowing that everyone involved believes they are right, and feels quietly satisfied about it.

When I was little, I often followed my father everywhere. He did not carry me. He walked ahead, occasionally turning back to check if I was still there, and those backward glances allowed me a certain freedom, to wander, chase dogs, pick leaves, without ever daring to stray beyond his line of sight.

One day, when it is my turn, I hope I will look back at my children in the same way, often enough to keep them steady, and rarely enough to let them move on their own.

Life just keeps going like that, regardless of whether you have understood any of it.