#it's the same sort of correlation (and inseparable from the socioeconomic angle)

[quantummindclassicalheart]

True in academia as well-- a study from the University of Colorado, Boulder argued that tenure track faculty are 25 times more likely to have a parent with a PhD than the general population. Over half of the 7,204 faculty surveyed had at least one parent with a master's or PhD, whereas "among adults in the U.S. aligned to when faculty were born, on average, less than 1% held a PhD, and just 7.4% held a graduate degree of any kind."

When people talk about "nepotism babies" I feel like the conversation always gets centered around a really obvious and direct kind of privilege,

people tend to get really focused on the idea of the famous parent calling people on their child's behalf or just the last name opening doors and getting the child booked regardless of talent

and then the child of those people deny that ever happened for them, and round and round we go

but you know what, I don't actually think that happens as much as we think (though I definitely think it happens more than those kids want to admit)

I think the reality is much subtler than that, and is the bigger leg up:

if you grow up with famous parents, you get to witness what being successful in the industry looks like first hand, and you already have a guidepost for navigating that in ways it takes non-famous kids years or even decades into the industry to learn

in the same way that if you grow up with parents with white collar jobs, you have a massive leg up in understanding office norms and behavior over kids who don't have that experience

we all learn so much about the world through our families, and when your family is deeply involved in an industry you get so much foundational knowledge that someone starting the industry at 20 still has to learn

Imagine you want to be an actor, and your mom is an actor already. Here are examples of things I imagine you could pick up, merely by being her child: her process, how she hones her craft, acting techniques she likes and doesn't like, running lines with her, seeing her audition, how she negotiates, what an agent does and how your mom deals with hers, different positions/jobs on set or elsewhere in the industry, comfort with being on a set, knowledge about appropriate set behavior, what publicity tours require from her, her ups and her downs and what she does when parts aren't turning up for her, etc etc. Not even getting into just the straight up wealth privilege that comes with that level of success, nor to mention that if your mom is a wealthy actress you're much more likely to be attending a school with an actual functioning arts program...

Imagine how much more time you'd have to devote to your craft when you already are familiar and comfortable with the industry, when you have financial security, when your family "gets" and supports the idea of making a living through the arts, when you already know what an agent is and how to find one and what kind of deal with one is fair vs. predatory, and more. People sometimes will talk about nepotism babies being actually good like they're shocked but to me I'm like, "Well duh, I think if you took most kids and gave them that kind of comfort, safety, and support + their own drive to succeed, yeah you get a lot of kids who have the time and space and expertise to become good at their art, yes"

anyways, I just think if we want to actually talk about nepotism it's hurting us to keep it at the "well did your mom buy you that audition?" level because that's the easiest thing to deny and brush off. and we gotta stop being surprised when nepotism babies are good, because if that's surprising us we're missing seeing clearly exactly what's been handed to them.