[Drew68]

His children may have merited their roles but surely their name got them through the door to be considered at all.

Personally, I think nepotism gets a bad rap.

If your father was a cabinet maker, and you spent your entire childhood watching him build cabinets, you'd probably be pretty well equipped to get into the cabinet making business yourself.

Kids growing up watching their parents in the entertainment industry aren't really much different.

[heartwood]

I think you’d have to be more hands on than an observer to be good at building cabinets or running the business.

[Political Junkie Too]

I think nepotism gets a bad rap... If your father was a cabinet maker... you'd probably be pretty well equipped to get into the cabinet making business yourself.

Western civilization was founded on nepotism. Actually, during medieval times it was more of a caste system that people were born into.

• If you were the town carpenter, your son would become the town carpenter.
• If you were the town smith, your son would become a the town smith.
• If you were the town baker, your son would become the town baker.
• If you were the town cooper, your son would become the town cooper.
• If you were the town cook, butcher, fletcher, hunter, fisher, gardener...

Towns were small and isolated, and often only needed one of each trade to sustain the village. To keep the balance of trade in a village, the occupations were handed down from father to son; the son of the smith became the next smith, and so on and on.

That's why a lot of English surnames come from trades. It wasn't nepotism back then, it was survival. As the population grew, a second son would learn the father's trade and then move to a neighboring village that needed a smith, for example.

Today, nepotism isn't just about a child being handed a job due to privilege; nepotism gets its bad rap from the child being unqualified for the job he was given. For example, the daughter of an armorer becomes an armorer.

-PJ