Why are the Brat-ults who cancel their parents nearly always the ones who have enjoyed the cushiest lives? ELIZABETH MCKANE explains the psychology behind grown-ups who behave like spoilt children

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Brooklyn Beckham's petulant Instagram post last week – which condemned his parents and captivated the world – has highlighted a growing and troubling phenomenon. 

Adult children are, in ever greater numbers, cutting off contact with their families, often publicly and at a huge emotional cost to both sides.

As well as Brooklyn, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, Meghan Markle, Home Alone actor Macaulay Culkin and swimmer Adam Peaty have all disowned one or both of the people who raised them. And, as I have seen, countless others, neither famous nor celebrated, have opted to do the same thing.

Having spent 30 years working as a psychotherapist, I have noted that these schisms are nearly always begun by comfortably off young adults who have enjoyed every privilege in life.

Their moods were respected, their failures gently explained, their requests taken seriously. They were endlessly assured of their brilliance, their lovableness and their inevitable success in any endeavour.

So why, after such an upbringing, would they reject the well-meaning people who raised them – who invariably tried to do the right thing?

The answer is that these clients usually had parents who were consumed by guilt – either because they worked long hours, were divorced, or because they were failing some other test of parental 'perfection'.

Because of the guilt these parents felt, they often lacked the moral authority to set boundaries or to criticise their children's behaviour. They felt at some deep level that their own flawed lives were damaging their children, and the children deserved relentless affirmation in compensation.

Consequently, they raised 'bratults' – grown-ups who behave like spoilt kids.

Brooklyn Beckham said he did not wish to reconcile with his family in his six-page statement on Monday

Adam Peaty has disowned his parents and did not invite them to his wedding last month

In adulthood, these individuals suffered a series of rude awakenings: relationships require compromise; the workplace requires patience and focus; feuds and tantrums in grown-ups are not forgiven or excused. These pampered young adults were suddenly thrust into a world that did not find their petulance charming – and they hunted for someone to blame.

As Brooklyn himself put it: 'I have been controlled by my parents for most of my life. I grew up with overwhelming anxiety.'

Of course, in the private lives of Brooklyn, Meghan Markle – who has a tricky relationship with her father, who is dogged by illness – or Adam Peaty, who disinvited his own mother to his wedding, there may be more going on than we know about. 

But, typically speaking, children lucky enough to be coddled and nurtured by their parents are surprisingly and tragically likely to reframe this later as stifling or controlling behaviour.

A few cases from my own practice bear this out. One of my clients, a 16-year-old girl from a well-off family, first came to me after she had tried to kill herself. She told me that in her private school, the girls 'competed to outdo each other in victimhood'. If one girl had bulimia, another would self-harm.

Her suicide attempt, she told me, was designed to bring her both attention and sympathy – and to get her teachers off her back. Her poor mother, typically, was distraught, believing wrongly that she herself had somehow brought about her daughter's attempt to end her life.

Contrast that with the working-class girl I saw, whose 'presenting problem' was that she was about to be married, and she wanted a big, white church wedding. This was upsetting her family, who were Jewish. In the course of her therapy, however, she revealed that her stepfather had been sexually abusing her for years and that her mother knew about it. When, at 14, she actually became pregnant by her step-father, her mother took her to get an abortion, rather than going to the police.

I expected my client to show rage or hostility at the mother who had clearly let her down – but there was none. She felt neither resentment nor reproach. 

Brooklyn accused his parents Victoria, 51, and David, 50, of trying to ruin his relationship with wife Nicola Peltz, 30

The oldest Beckham sibling, 26, said his mother performed an 'inappropriate' dance at his wedding

She loved her mother and understood that her stepfather might have sought revenge if the authorities had been informed. We gradually realised she wanted a big church wedding as a symbol of a chaste, new beginning.

Imagine what a real grievance like this – one's own rape, with one's mother complicit in it – would be like for the spoilt princelings of social media going 'non-speakers' with Mum and Dad!

Of course some parents are abusive. Of course some children suffer neglect, poverty, humiliation and terror. They need and deserve professional help.

But for the whinging young adults who forget everything good about their childhood to focus on petty grievances, there will seldom be a resolution.

In another case I recall, a middle-class woman, the daughter of a father who was often hospitalised with mental illness, had started to see her mother as neglectful.

This despite the fact her mother had spent all the hours she could spare with her, picking her up from school, cooking for her, putting her to bed each day, paying constant attention to her moods. Her mother went out to work because she had no financial support from her husband – but my client twisted that into proof of her mother's distance and self-interest.

She became more and more convinced that her mother was a remote and selfish person. Once, she had loved her mother and thought of her, she told me, as 'heroic'. But all her middle-class friends had spent hours discussing their parents' alleged faults and foibles – and so she, too, had looked for darkness and spun herself a tale of emotional abuse. This resulted in sympathy from her friends and a feeling of being included in their grievance circle.

In time, she began offering me more and more examples of her mother's supposed conceit and vanity, and how it had all supposedly impacted on her own life in a negative way. She got to the point where she could barely look at her mother, and she convinced herself the only way to secure her own emotional stability was to stop contact. She saw her mother's unbearable shock and grief at being so rejected as yet another example of her lack of empathy.

Little I said otherwise, despite all my best efforts, could change her opinion.

Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, is estranged from her father Thomas Markle

Or take my final example: an affluent family of five, with two loving parents and three daughters. One of the daughters had suffered serious brain damage at birth, but all three children were given a great deal of support, financially, emotionally and psychologically.

The two healthy sisters believed that their parents had spent too much time, energy and money on their brain-damaged sibling.

When their father became ill, and was heavily medicated in hospital, they tried to get him to change his will, which would have left their mother in a precarious financial situation. When he refused to do it, they cut off all contact.

A deluded sense of entitlement, the collusion of the mental health profession, the effects of social media and the misunderstanding of the true nature of the human condition are combining to destroy the most precious bonds of all – those between parents and their children.

Brooklyn Beckham, born into privilege, will not be the last to turn so viciously on the mum and dad who raised him, offered him the world – and, I'm sure, only ever wanted the best for him.