No Parent Can Ever Be Perfect: Psychotherapist's Take on Britney Spears Video Yelling at Her Kids

Britney Spears Kevin Federline Jennifer Lopez parenting co-parenting

By Jo Anne Hubert , Parent Herald Aug 16, 11:09 pm

It all started when Kevin Federline, former husband of Britney Spears, leaked a video of the pop star yelling at their sons.

Federline posted a 4-year-old video on his Instagram account of Spears yelling at their sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James, who were then 11 and 12 years old, respectively. In the caption, he said he cannot just sit back and allow his sons to be accused of wrong things after all that they have been through. He also said that posting the video was a family decision; though it hurts, they need to do it as the lies have to stop. Federline also declared that what was seen on the video was not even the worst of it.

He eventually deleted the controversial video after Spears' lawyer called him out for cyberbullying, violation of privacy and dignity of his ex-wife and the mother of his children, and undermining his own children, whose privacy he should have been protecting, as reported by Republic World.

But it was not only the lawyer that called him out. While Federline's goal was to show the world how bad a mother the famous performer is, many took the side of Spears.

'No parent can ever be perfect'

F. Diane Barth, psychotherapist, shared her views on the controversial bout between ex-husband and wife but still parents of two teenagers. She said that even if Federline claimed that his ex-wife is worse than who she is in the video, that was not what the public saw.

"What the public did see and hear point to another part of the parenting conundrum: Abuse is not as easily identified as it might seem, in part, at least, because a single moment in time is not necessarily a good indication of what really goes on in any family or any situation," she wrote in her article with NBC News.

She explained that an occasional moment of bad parenting is a normal part of life and every parenting journey. Normal and even more significant as both parents and children can learn from these "moments of imperfection." Children can learn that their parents are human beings, born with flaws and who grew up with wounds, that they can get angry and that they can get hurt. This is a crucial part of every child's developmental process.

British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott coined the phrase "good enough mother," and many child developmental specialists follow this teaching to express that "parenting fails" actually have benefits for children. Parents' ability to acknowledge and honestly take responsibility for their mistakes is far more significant than trying, but constantly failing, to live a life without committing a mistake because this is impossible.

She further stated that what Federline did and the video captured was a "conundrum of contemporary parenting - we live in a world where being imperfect (that is, human) is viewed as a failure."

Federline wanted to prove that Spears was the worst kind of mother, yet what he proved was that no parent is perfect, and that was what the public saw and heard in that video. It was where the sympathy for the pop star and mother of two came from. No parent is perfect, and many were able to empathize, knowing that they, too, are far from perfect.

The psychotherapist stressed the truth that becoming a parent is a miraculous, wonderful blessing of life but know that parenting is also confusing, painful, and filled with conflicting emotions. There are very few parents who have not experienced a meltdown at some point in their parenting journey.

Spears gets support from a co-superstar in the industry

Barth also emphasized that a basic fact of life today is that parenting is already a public activity. With mobile phones and social media, a parent getting angry at their kid on the street or in a grocery store can be recorded, and the video can be posted on the internet for every stranger to see, without knowing the entire story.

She also declared that the additional burden of knowing that others are watching and criticizing could create more emotional stress and problems for parents who are already fearful and anxious about their performance. And, for Spears, as a public figure who constantly deals with having her life shown to the world as if a movie and her imperfections zoomed in and magnified, it becomes so much worst for her.

Thus, in the chaotic public battle between Federline and the pop star, it was a breath of fresh air to see another superstar and also a mother of two support Spears.

Jennifer Lopez, who is also constantly in the eyes and ears of the media and who has also experienced criticisms of her relationships and parenting, took to her Instagram story last Friday and shared Spears' now-deleted post with the message, "Stay Strong," using the muscled arms emoji, as reported by Entertainment Tonight.

To date, Spears has not released any statement or explanation as to why she deleted the post, but it was a photo of the two of them together with a caption that quoted Lopez's line from her Netflix documentary "Halftime," "You look right down that camera and tell every little girl in the world to get loud and never ever back down to giving light to injustice," and a declaration from her that said, "I am here to say that freedom is a state of mind."