What Is a Nepo Baby? Navigating Local Privilege

It was 8:15 AM on a Saturday, pouring rain, and I was standing on the sidelines of Maya’s under-8 soccer tryouts in my embarrassingly pill-y 2018 black Target leggings. You know, the ones that have a weird bleach stain shaped like a state I can't quite identify. I was clutching a lukewarm travel mug of what used to be a very expensive dark roast coffee, freezing my ass off, when another mom leaned over. She lowered her voice to that specific, gossipy pitch that always means trouble, and whispered, "Well, we all know Chloe is making the travel team. She’s a total nepo baby."

I literally almost spit my lukewarm coffee right into the mud.

Chloe is seven. Her dad owns a local chain of tire shops and pays for the team's practice jerseys. That’s when it hit me like an absolute ton of bricks—the biggest myth we've all swallowed about this whole cultural conversation is that nepotism only happens on red carpets or in Hollywood boardroom meetings. When people desperately type what's a nepo baby into their phones at 2 AM, they’re usually looking for lists of celebrity kids or trying to figure out who Maya Hawke's parents are, but honestly, the call is coming from inside the house.

Hollywood is just a massive distraction from our actual lives

I could rant about this for hours. Like, literally hours. My husband Mark thinks I'm absolutely insane for caring so much about local politics. He's always like, "Sarah, it's just networking," and I'm like, "MARK, THEY ARE SEVEN YEARS OLD." It drives me up the wall.

We're all so obsessed with pointing fingers at supermodels whose moms were supermodels, totally ignoring the fact that the exact same dynamic is playing out at your local YMCA. It’s the dance teacher's daughter who miraculously gets the solo in the spring recital every single year, even though she trips over her own feet during the dress rehearsal. It’s the preschool board member's kid who somehow jumps a two-year waitlist for the "good" Montessori program while the rest of us are refreshing our emails like maniacs. It's EVERYWHERE.

And oh god, it's exhausting. You spend all this time trying to teach your kids that hard work matters, that practice pays off, that being a good person is the ultimate goal. And then they watch a peer just... walk through a door that was magically held open for them. It makes you feel like you're losing your damn mind.

I remember when Leo was born, I was terrified of him becoming this entitled little monster. I wanted him to earn his tiny victories from day one. Which is exactly why I became obsessed with independent play. I remember buying the Rainbow Wooden Baby Gym when he was like three months old. Honestly, it's one of the few things I bought that I still genuinely love and haven't given away to my sister.

Instead of hovering over him and handing him toys so he wouldn't fuss, I’d lay him under this beautiful natural wood A-frame and just... let him struggle. He would swing his little chubby fists at that hanging elephant toy, completely missing it, getting frustrated, and trying again. The colors are so gentle and earthy, not that obnoxious plastic neon that gives me a migraine before I've even had my morning coffee. Anyway, the point is, when he finally grasped that wooden ring all by himself, he earned that crap. He built that motor skill. No one handed it to him. He did the work.

The mental gymnastics of equal access

If you own a company, don't hire your unqualified cousin, it's basically illegal and makes everyone hate you.

Anyway. Back to the kids.

I read this article once—or maybe my doctor mentioned it while looking at Leo's ears for his fifth infection of the year?—that there's this huge scientific difference between getting equality of access and equality of execution. It’s a fancy way of saying that even if a parent makes a phone call to get their kid an audition or a spot on the bench, the kid still has to actually perform. If they suck, they suck.

But the problem is, at the local level, we don't really care about execution. We just care that the coach's kid gets more playing time. It creates this toxic environment where kids as young as kindergarten realize that the game is rigged. And once they think the game is rigged, why the hell would they try?

The weirdly sad reality for the kids on the pedestal

Here's the part where I've to force myself to be empathetic, even though my knee-jerk reaction is to be super annoyed. Being the kid who gets everything handed to them actually kind of sucks in the long run.

My kid's therapist—because yes, my seven-year-old has a therapist, welcome to modern parenting—was talking to me about anxious kids the other day. She said something that totally blew my mind. She said the kids who never have to fight for a spot, who just get placed on the team or in the honors class because of who their parents are, they almost always know they didn't earn it. They develop this massive, crushing imposter syndrome.

They know the other kids resent them. And honestly, kids are brutally mean. If Maya sees someone skipping the line at the park slide, she will loudly announce it to the entire playground and demand justice. So imagine being the kid who skipped the line of life. You're constantly terrified of being found out. It's this quiet, heavy anxiety that just eats away at them.

Speaking of anxiety and things eating away at you—teething. Sorry, total tangent, but teething gives me more anxiety than local nepotism. When Leo was cutting his molars and waking up screaming every forty-five minutes, I panic-bought the Squirrel Silicone Teether at like 3 AM while hiding in the bathroom. It’s... fine. I mean, it’s a perfectly good teether. The food-grade silicone is totally safe and the mint green color is cute. But for whatever reason, Maya took one look at it, declared it was a "scary rat," and threw it behind the heavy oak radiator where it lived for six months covered in dust bunnies.

Leo chewed on it maybe twice before deciding he preferred gnawing directly on the leg of our antique coffee table like a beaver. So, you know. If your kid isn't weirdly hostile toward woodland creatures, it's a solid, safe choice for their gums. But it wasn't a miracle worker for us.

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Navigating the totally muddy waters of unfairness

So what the hell do we do? How do we raise kids who aren't bitter, but also aren't entitled?

You basically just have to let your kids fail at things while openly admitting to them that life isn't a level playing field, and yes, we might have a bigger house than Jimmy's family which isn't fair, but you still have to try out for the school play just like Jimmy and if you don't get the part, we'll go get ice cream and cry about it together in the car.

You can't just fix it for them. You can't call the coach. You can't pull strings. I know how badly you want to! Oh god, when Maya didn't get invited to a specific birthday party last year, I briefly considered texting the mom to guilt her into it. I had my thumb hovering over the send button. I was sweating. But I stopped. Because if I engineer her social life now, she’s never going to learn how to handle rejection when she's twenty.

We have to completely separate our own egos from their achievements. Just because I'm a writer doesn't mean Maya needs to be top of her reading class. Just because Mark played college lacrosse doesn't mean Leo needs to hold a stick before he can walk. They're their own weird, wonderful little people who need to figure out what they actually like doing.

Sometimes, at the end of a really long day of trying to explain all these massive, unfair concepts to a second-grader, you just need to retreat. When Maya was a baby, and the world felt too loud and the parenting pressure felt too heavy, I'd wrap her up in the Colorful Leaves Bamboo Baby Blanket. I'm genuinely a little obsessed with this blanket.

It's a blend of organic bamboo and cotton, and it's stupidly soft. Like, I actively wish they made adult sizes because I'd live in it on the couch while drinking wine. It breathes beautifully so she wouldn't wake up sweaty and screaming, and the watercolor leaf pattern just feels so calm. It was our safe space. Whenever things got overwhelming, we’d just snuggle under those colorful leaves, smell that sweet baby laundry detergent smell, and shut the ridiculous world out for a little while.

We're all just doing our best out here. We're trying to raise good kids in a world that often rewards the wrong things. Just keep making them do their own homework, keep letting them struggle a little bit when they try to reach for the toy, and drink your coffee while it's hot. Or lukewarm. Whatever. It's fine.

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Unfiltered FAQs about privilege and parenting

What exactly does this whole concept mean for normal people?

Honestly? It means dealing with the PTA president's kid getting the lead in the school play even though they forgot all their lines. It’s the everyday nepotism that happens in our local communities. It's frustrating as hell, but it's also a great chance to teach your kids that life isn't fair, but their own hard work still matters for their own self-worth.

How do I explain unfair advantages to my seven-year-old?

Keep it super simple and a little bit blunt. I literally just told Maya, "Some people get a head start because of who their parents are, but that doesn't mean you can't run a great race." And then she asked for a snack and totally ignored me. So just keep repeating it. Eventually, it sinks in. Probably.

Should I use my own connections to help my kid?

Look, I'm not going to pretend I wouldn't call a friend to help Maya get a summer job bagging groceries when she's sixteen. We all want to help our kids. But there's a huge line between making an introduction and demanding they get a spot they didn't earn. Open a door if you can, but make them walk through it themselves. If they trip, let them fall.

Does buying nice toys make my baby privileged?

Oh god, please don't let mom-guilt ruin shopping for you. Buying a nice organic wooden play gym doesn't make your kid an entitled monster. How you parent them makes them who they're. Give them beautiful, safe things to play with, but let them play independently. Let them get frustrated. That's how they learn.

Is it okay to be mad at the coach's kid?

Be mad at the coach. Never be mad at the kid. The kid is seven. They're just trying to play soccer and probably eating a handful of dirt in the outfield when no one is looking. It's the adults who ruin everything. Always blame the adults.