(upbeat music)
- Britney Spears is in the news right now,
she's asking a judge to end her father's conservatorship
over her estate so that she can have control
over her own life.
This brought the whole idea of a conservatorship
to a lot of our attention.
I didn't even know what this was
until the story started making headlines.
For those of you who still aren't in the know,
a conservatorship is when an adult has their rights
legally stripped from them and given to another adult.
In other words, you are deemed unfit
to manage your own life and your own affairs,
and they are put in the hands of another person.
Now if you asked me,
this situation is ripe with opportunity for exploitation,
and for advantage taking and for
it just being shady as heck.
So let's talk about the history of Britney,
but then we'll talk about how this applies to us,
whether we have conservatorships in our lives or not.
At what age do we as parents step back
and let our children make mistakes?
How involved....
I mean make even big mistakes.
Obviously they're gonna make mistakes their whole life
and make even big mistakes.
How much say should parents have
in the lives of their kids
even as adults?
Let's talk about that.
So Britney Spears,
I was in high school when Britney Spears became a big deal,
and I was a high school guy so yep.
Britney Spears' whole image was
very sexualized and sensualized,
and this was done deliberately
to sell records or albums. Right?
Not records, sell albums.
I'm dating myself,
but they weren't even called records
when I was a teenager.
To sell albums, to sell CDs.
And music, videos and fame and tours and money.
And her dad was completely on board with this.
I know I'm a bit more old fashioned
where I would be saying to my teenage daughter,
you're going out dressed how?
Much less in front of the entire world,
much less willingly having her objectified.
Now she's an adult,
and she chooses to put herself out there like that,
and that's how she wants to pursue her career,
and that's how she wants to present herself,
that's her right.
But the fact is her dad was intimately,
he was neck deep in managing her life.
And I don't believe personally
that at the age she was at in fact,
Christina Aguilera has talked about this recently,
that both she and Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson
were managed to be hyper-sexualized,
hyper-eroticized in order to sell.
And that they were pit against each other
by their producers, by the media,
to have it be a competition,
to have it be who's on top, who's the queen,
to fight each other, to criticize each other,
to have their fans go against each other.
It's all drama, and drama is good for business,
and that is immoral.
So to have someone who's barely out of her teens
touring around the world,
needing to stay in like,
I mean, we all saw the shape Britney was in early 2000's.
She's in impressive shape now,
but to stay in that type of shape like that's so intense.
And was that really her choice?
Maybe, but I don't think it was.
Not entirely, not entirely her choice,
especially because we see in the mid 2000's
that Britney starts to melt down
from the pressure of it all.
From the pressure of the gossip
and not having privacy,
to getting married twice in one year,
there's drugs, there's partying,
she gets pregnant, she has kids,
she goes into rehab, she shaves her head,
people are saying Brittany's losing it.
And now she is more grist for the tabloid fodder,
the tabloids in some way,
we as a society had a hand in creating that.
And then instead of owning that,
we just pointed fingers of scorn and derision to her,
not you per se, dear viewer, just as a whole people.
So she loses the rights to her kids, right?
They're given to her ex husband,
Kevin Federline, or K-Fed.
And then her father is put in charge of her estate.
The same man who's like,
"Yeah Slave for You, good choice, honey.
Daddy supports you. Daddy supports you."
♪ I'm a slave for you ♪
- So he has control of her estate now,
that was when she was in her mid twenties.
She's now in her late thirties.
And she's saying for the past 15 years-ish,
12 years, 13 years whatever it's been,
her dad's controlled her money,
recently the conservatorship was split
between him and the manager,
but she's painting a picture
of men taking advantage of her fame
of her residency in Las Vegas,
making her dance and sing
even when she's got a fever,
even when she's sick,
denying her choice over her own body,
she wants to marry her boyfriend she says,
and have babies, have more babies
and they're denying according to her,
her right to remove her IUD.
Now there's two sides to every story.
Maybe her dad and her manager are great people.
Maybe they've got her best interests at heart,
maybe behind the scenes,
she's unhinged and unable to take care of things herself,
but it does raise the question.
My mom used to say, once you're 18,
or once you've left the house,
I did the best I could.
She wasn't saying I'm abandoning you,
my mom was always there for me until the day she died.
But what she was saying is,
you now have ownership over your own choices.
You now have the means and the ability
to make choices, to make mistakes, to learn from them,
to grow from them,
and I don't see this here in a conservatorship.
I don't see how that could possibly benefit anyone to grow,
to learn from mistakes, to make changes.
They're just told what to do.
It's a straight jacket.
I don't see a situation where that's beneficial.
Are there times that people should lose their,
the custody of their children,
because they're endangering the children? Yeah.
Is there a circumstance where someone
should not be allowed to manage their own money,
to manage their own life,
to have that forcibly taken away from them? No.
One instance is protecting children.
The other instance is, well,
you are going to either learn the lesson the hard way,
or you're not, but you are an adult
and you can make this decision for yourself.
What role do parents have in their adult children's lives?
How much control, how much say,
I would say once your child is an adult,
if they're living in your house,
then they abide by the rules of the house.
If they're living in the house for rent,
then they abide by the rules
that you would have renters abide by.
If they're living on their own,
and especially if they're financially independent,
you don't have a say, you have an opinion.
And if they're financially dependent,
it's a sticky situation.
Do you help them and support them,
conditional on them, living the way you want them to?
That's not good for you,
and it's not good for them.
There's no growth there, it's just control.
You may want what's best for your children,
but what's best isn't that
they don't have the ability to grow and make decisions.
What's best isn't that you
straight jacket them into doing things your way.
My wife likes this movie,
Remember the Titans, so do I,
and a line from that movie,
"From one coach to another."
- [Boone] You ain't doin' these kids a favor
by patronizing them. You're crippling them.
You're crippling them for life.
- If your kids are adults, by all means,
support, give counsel,
give guidance, be a presence,
but respect, even if you don't respect the actual choices,
respect the right to make them.
So this is Therapist Reacts to Britney Spears,
conservatorship situation.
What do you think about this whole situation?
Let me know in the comments below,
what role do you think parents
should have in their adult children's lives.
If you have questions on this subject or something related,
let us know in the comments below.
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and I'd like to invite you to check out this other video,
which is responding to NBA star cheats on his wife,
and then apologizes.
How good was that apology? I'll let you know,
and I'll let you know what needs to happen
for a couple to bounce back from an affair,
but that's all below.
Thank you for joining me.
I'm Jonathan Decker with Mended Light signing off.
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