The Beckhams and the ‘no contact’ phenomenon: Choosing estrangement over a perceived slight is madness

Eyebrows were raised when Brooklyn Beckham, son of football legend Sir David Beckham and his couturier wife Victoria, posted a six-page statement on social media detailing why he’s walked away from his family. For good.

Among his reasons for the estrangement were that he’d been controlled by his parents all his life through performative social media posts, family events and inauthentic relationships, which had been a fixture of his life. Team Beckham, it seems, is really all about Brand Beckham.

I bring up Brooklyn only because he is one of the most recent public figures to announce their decision to go “no contact” with their family.

The rise of this burgeoning phenomenon, mostly being played out on social media platforms, has ­shaken my equilibrium and made me question the good old-fashioned values that family once stood for.

Growing up, I heard over and over again that a ­family that prays together stays together. My dad’s version was that a family that eats together stays together. He insisted that we all sat down to dinner every night so we could talk about our day, could know each other, share opinions and ideas. The dinner table was also a place to iron out or talk about grievances we had with each other.

Did it always work? No. Still, I believe that it is worth trying to resolve family spats or feuds – or am I hopelessly out of touch with the current zeitgeist, where dinners are presided over by phones, or eaten in front of the television?

Do parents annoy and disappoint their children and vice versa? Of course.

A case in point. When I was oh, 12 or 13, I was leaning truculently against a wood-topped counter in the haberdashery section of Amods, the general dealer store in my hometown, Ladysmith, while my mum shopped for red ric-rac trim.

It was midweek after school on a hot summer afternoon in early November and I was listless: bored, hungry and impatient. I muttered “hurry up” louder than I intended; my mother shot me a poisonous look, reminding me that the trim was for my birthday dress.

She was having a hard time matching the trim colour to a swatch of fabric. My clueless mother was on an errand for Cedric, our dressmaker, a short, neat man with bouffant hair, a penchant for peacock waistcoats and small fingers that performed embroidery miracles.

He made our clothes – Crimplene dresses for me and my sister, and plain and dowdy worsted wool suits (the British queen was my mother’s style icon) for mum.

I kicked the counter with my black school-regulation Mary Janes; mummy gave me another warning look.

And then I saw it, nestled in a blue velvet nest on the mahogany shelf of a curved-glass vitrine: a small-faced marcasite watch, glinting as its pyrite-faceted stones mimicked diamonds – “fool’s gold”; Art Deco magnificence.

My heart leapt in my chest. It was love. I’d never wanted anything so much.

I had a birthday coming up. “That’s what I want,” I told my mother. I did not get the watch for my birthday. It was too grown-up, my parents said. I was heartbroken. Instead, I got an ugly “age-appropriate” watch with a large round face that I hated.

There were lots of ways in which my parents disappointed me. All three of my siblings were sent to a “cool” private boarding school. I endured having my dad as my headmaster and my mum as my English teacher.

They admitted to the adult me that they couldn’t afford the fees at the time. Did I chalk it up to parental cruelty? To favouritism of my siblings over me? Did I walk away from my parents calling them narcissistic with borderline personalities? I did not.

And so, I’m confused with this new (to me) “no contact” concept where children entirely break off all communication with their families: parents, siblings, or both.

A tabloid newspaper reported that one woman cut ties with her mother because she refused to pay for her second wedding. Imagine withholding the love of a grandmother from her children for that.

Even more inexplicable is when parents deliberately end contact with their adult children. (I’m not referring to the “tough love” recommended for those children who are addicted to substances.) I am gobsmacked by the high numbers of people subscribed to #ToxicFamily or #NoContact on social media, many citing spurious reasons for shunning their family: disapproval of a bad-boy boyfriend, parents refusing to lend them money, saying no to regularly babysitting…

Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy’s memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, tells how her mother hit her, humiliated her, kicked her out of the house, ordered her out of the car, making her wait hours to be collected. Understandably, she walked away from her mother for seven years, after which she resumed contact.

It’s a no-brainer that severe dysfunction, which includes emotional, physical and sexual abuse as well as neglect, addiction and personality disorders, deserve distancing.

In those instances, constantly violating boundaries is a lack of respect and a betrayal of the familial bond that brings into question issues of safety. But issues like unresolved conflict, financial disputes… surely, they can be negotiated?

Whatever happened to the biblical tenet of honour thy father and thy mother? And to parents: nurture, instruct and protect children?

What about forgiveness, and support?

On an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show discussing the growing “no contact” trend, a psychologist admitted that therapists had become “detachment brokers”, helping clients not to feel guilty about not feeling responsible for their parents.

Therapists, he said, highlight co-dependence, green-light estrangement by telling those in therapy: “Your mom’s a narcissist. Your dad’s a sociopath and they’re gaslighting you.”

Of course, social media exacerbates the problem. Post something about a difficult mother and you will have hundreds of likes, reinforcing the notion that choosing the #NoContact route is the preferred way to go – instead of talking to resolve conflict, of choosing to see the nice bits of your mother rather than demonising her, by finding ways to protect yourself rather than absent yourself.

We live in such a me, me, me world, one so different from the one I grew up in. Everything is about ourselves, our feelings, our needs. There is little sense of duty, of forgiveness, of just getting on with things.

Dysfunctional families have always existed. Abuse and toxicity are not new and they have been abhorrent through the ages.

Now, of course, our mental health is at the top of the list of reasons for walking away. Often, that means being told “no” by a parent.

Yes, you have to walk away from dysfunctional, toxic relationships to be able to develop healthy ones. Yes, you need to break the cycles of being broken and hurt.

I just think it sad that we can only achieve this by abandoning the people who form our tribe – those who have a deep knowledge and understanding of who we are, of where we are from. I think it’s sad, too, that we make other broken, dysfunctional people – mostly from online sites, or hashtag communities – our new tribe.

I have troubled relationships with members of my family, it is true. I do not wish to see them all the time because of it.

But would I walk away, forever, without trying to make it right before I die?

Not likely. DM

Charmain Naidoo is a journalist and media strategist.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.