Britney Spears And Her Fight To Free Herself
Chris Farina/Corbis/Getty ImagesBritney Spears with her father Jamie in 2006.
Like her peers Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears began her career on Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club variety show for kids. She later became a multi-platinum record-winning pop star with a slew of tabloid escapades to match.
When Spears was placed on a psychiatric hold in early 2008 following a very public breakdown, her father and celebrity parent Jamie Spears talked the Los Angeles County Supreme Court into giving him emergency conservatorship over her and her estate.
While the order was meant to be temporary, it has remained in place for 13 years. The singer addressed her situation for the first time in 2016, claiming, “I’ve been under this conservatorship for three years and I felt like a lot of decisions were made for me.”
It wasn’t long before conspiracy theories about Spears’ relationship with her celebrity parents began to emerge.
Wikimedia Commons#FreeBritney protestors in Washington, D.C. in July 2021.
Rampant speculation on social media saw fans theorize that Spears had become a mere workhorse for her father’s benefit. With a nightly residency in Las Vegas earning her estate $350,000 per concert, it certainly appeared so. When the #FreeBritney movement gained traction, Spears herself confirmed as much.
In June 2021, Spears detailed her struggles with her mental health, the loss of agency over her life, and how her father forced her to work during a live-streamed court proceeding on her conservatorship. She reportedly spent $1.1 million in legal and conservator fees in 2018 alone.
While not a stage mother or celebrity parent, Jamie Spears has ranked highly on the list of conniving relatives who domineered over the lives of their famous children. Though the singer’s brother Bryan claimed his father has “done the best he could,” Jamie announced in March 2021 that he wanted to end the conservatorship, too.
The Oscar-Winner And Notorious Stage Mother Joan Crawford
Wikimedia CommonsJoan Crawford purportedly beat her adopted daughter for years and lied about the child’s biological mother.
Best known for her 1978 memoir about her traumatizing childhood, Mommy Dearest, Christina Crawford claimed to see a side of old Hollywood staple Joan Crawford that nobody in Tinsel Town knew existed.
Joan Crawford was an esteemed studio player with a rags to riches tale, starred in classic films with Clark Gable, and won the Best Actress Oscar for Mildred Pierce. At home, however, she was a vicious stage mother.
According to Christina, her celebrity parent would suddenly erupt into alcoholic furies at a moment’s notice and dole out sadistic punishments for the smallest perceived slights. Christina Crawford recalled how her mother dragged her out of her bed one night when she was nine years old in order to beat her with a can.
When she was 13, Crawford said her mother grabbed her by the throat, punched her in the face, and slammed her against the wall. “You never forget that,” said Crawford. “It was up close and personal. She came this far from my face, and you could see it in her eyes, you can see if someone is trying to kill you.”
Gene Lester/Getty ImagesChristina (left) and domineering stage mother Joan Crawford.
“It was the hypocrisy of it that was so difficult,” she continued. “People fantasized about who or what I was; that I had this privileged, wealthy, film-star family life. I didn’t have any of that … What my mother wanted was fans and puppies, not human beings. She was as close to being a totally manufactured human as I’ve ever met.”
After a string of romantic encounters in her youth with both men and women, Joan Crawford found herself unable to have children. A divorcé with four ex-husbands, she decided to adopt children, instead. Which is how she found her daughter, Christina.
Crawford alleged that her celebrity parent did reveal that she was adopted at a young age but added that her biological mother was dead — which she wasn’t. But by the time Christina Crawford discovered the truth in the 1990s, both of her real parents were dead.
Ultimately, however, Crawford has found some semblance of peace.
“I think she wasn’t a healthy person,” she said. “The most gratifying part of getting well is that I’m not afraid. If she walked in the door now I’d tell her she’s not welcome and could she please leave. Because that’s what I couldn’t do as a child.”
