Nepo Babies and the Myth of Meritocracy


Jordan Foster, University of Toronto; Michelle Maroto, University of Alberta

In December 2022, Nate Jones, a senior writer for New York Magazine presided over “the year of the Nepo Baby.” The story set the internet alight with debate surrounding Hollywood’s rich history of nepotism—born of benefits handed down through favour, friends, and family–and brought unflattering attention to a cast of new stars and “the salience of their dynastic ties” (Jones, 2022). This story comes on the heels of increasing income and wealth inequality in the United States and around the world, with the greatest share of riches now concentrated in the hands of a small number of elites (Freeland 2012; Mijs 2019; Zucman 2019; Kuusela 2020). Among them, celebrity children and their concomitant privilege are highly visible, raising some alarm about the avenues through which their wealth and privilege are legitimated and maintained. These stories of nepotism and the intergenerational transmission of wealth are alarming, in part, because they violate equal opportunity norms and undermine America’s persistent faith in meritocracy (Solon 1992). Meritocracy, or the idea that individuals succeed and earn rewards based on their own efforts and abilities within a system defined by equal opportunity for all, tends to dominate political discussions and policy in the United States (Bell 1972; Young 1958; McNamee and Miller 2009; Mijs and Savage 2020; Lamont 2023). The premise that anyone can get ahead if they work hard enough is a central component of the American dream for a “better, richer, and happier life” and one that is endorsed by most Americans (Adams 1931; McNamee and Miller 2009; McCall 2013). Rooted in upward intergenerational mobility—another hallmark of American society—and success, meritocracy promises a fair trade to those who invest in hard work, training, and personal development (Hing et al. 2011; Hoschschild 2014). In practice, however, merit is rarely rewarded so straightforwardly (Erickson and Goldthorpe 2002). Social and economic resources distributed through inheritance and good fortune, as well as embodied social privileges along the lines of race and gender, shape merit-based outcomes in profound and uneven ways (McNamee and Miller, 2004; Hing et al., 2011). Despite the advantages that come with intergenerational wealth, the very wealthy tend to credit their privilege to merit and hard work. By appealing to widely shared cultural scripts surrounding entrepreneurialism, they legitimate their relative class positioning (Khan and Jerolmack 2013; Kuusela 2020). Others dress their wealth in a veil of “ordinariness,” suggesting that they are middle class or quite like everyone else (Sherman 2018; Friedman and Reeves 2020), and eschew moral criticisms targeted toward them. But, the children of Hollywood’s most famous names have no such veil to hide behind, raising important questions about their privileged positioning amid growing class-based inequalities. We use the case of Hollywood’s “nepo-babies” and their coverage in the mainstream media to better understand how wealth and privilege are communicated to the public. Specifically, we ask: How are the children of the very wealthy represented in the mainstream media? Do these representations support or refute an ideology of meritocracy? And, what do they indicate about contemporary patterns of economic and class-based inequality? Answering these questions is especially necessary now as distributions of wealth and income grow surreptitiously uneven (Zucman 2019), and as the very wealthy become better insulated from matters related to inequality (Mijs 2019; Kuusela 2022). Drawing from a sample of 331 press articles published both in-print and online from December 2022 through December 2023, we perform a frame analysis to highlight how members of the mainstream media make sense of and frame nepotism and its privileges. Although a significant share of news media coverage surrounding nepotism objected to the privilege that it confers, most news media articles framed the children of the very wealthy and their concomitant privilege as defensible . Still others sensationalized their wealth and privilege, eschewing criticism in favour of reports on the glamourous trappings that surround the children of nepotism and their enviable lives. A minority of articles in the mainstream press, meanwhile, vacillated between criticism and sense-making, as if to contextualize privilege and produce “order.” Taken together, these frames reinforce the American ideology of meritocracy, suggesting, by and large, that hard work, virtuousness, and talent explain the success of Hollywood’s sons and daughters. All the while, structural inequalities and the insidiousness of privilege are hidden from view. 

This paper will be presented at the following session: