Britney Spears has condemned Ryan Seacrest for questioning her parenting capabilities during a 2007 interview.
In her highly-anticipated memoir, The Woman In Me, the 42-year-old pop star opened up about some tumultuous moments in her life, including her 2007 custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline over their two children: Sean, now 18, and Jayden, now 17. In October of the year, she also did an interview with Seacrest to discuss her album Blackout, which Spears wrote was the “only press” she did for that album.
As she recalled the interview in her memoir, she described some of the comments she was asked by Seacrest about being a mother amid the custody battle.
“In the interview which was supposed to be about the record, Ryan Seacrest asked me questions like, ‘How do you respond to those who criticise you as a mom?’ And, ‘Do you feel like you’re doing everything you can for your kids?’ And, ‘How often will you see them?’” the “Gimme More” singer wrote.
Spears detailed how the questions ultimately impacted her, as they came after she’d reached a big milestone in her career.
"It felt like that was the only thing people wanted to talk about: whether or not I was a fit mother,” she wrote. “Not about how I’d made such a strong album while holding two babies on my hips and being pursued by dozens of dangerous men all day every day.”
Despite the criticism she had towards Seacrest for his comments, she still went on to do multiple interviews with him after the 2007 conversation.
In The Woman In Me, Spears recounted some of the challenges she faced with her ex in 2007, after they were granted joint legal and physical custody over their two children in their initial divorce settlement. She claimed that, as part of Federline’s bid for full custody, he “tried to convince everyone that [she] was completely out of control”.
“He started to say I shouldn’t have my kids anymore – at all,” she wrote, “When he said that, I remember thinking in my head, ‘Surely this is a joke. This is just for the tabloids.’ When you read about celebrities fighting, you never really know what’s real.”
With that in mind, Spears claimed that she “kept waiting for [Federline] to bring the boys back to [her] after he took them”. However, according to the singer, her ex not only refused to bring her children back to her, but he “wouldn’t’ let [her] see them for weeks on end”.
She wrote that, by February 2007, she hadn’t seen her children for weeks and was struggling with her own grief, following the death of her aunt. She claimed that although she begged Federline to see her boys – who were five months and seven months old at the time – her ex wouldn’t let her.
“I Imagined their not knowing where their mother was, wondering why she didn’t want them to be with them,” she continued. “I wanted to get a battering ram to get them. I didn’t know what to do.”
Amid that difficult time with her ex, she confessed that she gave the paparazzi surrounding her “some material”. In 2007, the singer also gave herself a buzzcut in front of approximately 70 photographers after leaving rehab.
Spears went on to suffer a mental health episode in 2008 and was placed on a 5150 psychiatric hold, leaving Federline to retain sole custody of their boys. In February of that year, Spears entered into a conservatorship with her father Jamie Spears, who took complete control over her assets, until November 2021.
Although it appeared that the exes went on to amicably co-parent their sons in the 2000s, things took a turn in 2018 when Federline requested an increase of $20,000 a month more child support payments from Spears. After months of court discussions, Federline rejected Spears’s child support proposal and instead doubled his request to $40,000 a month. In September 2018, they reached a settlement with Spears increasing her child support payments to Federline from $20,000 to $35,000 a month.
In 2019, after Spears voluntarily checked herself into a mental treatment facility, Federline was granted 70 per cent custodial rights of Jayden and Preston and the “Toxic” singer was granted 30 per cent. This year, Federline sought permission from Spears to their sons to Hawaii, where he and his wife, Victoria Prince, would be moving.
