Britney Spears: Star’s relationship with father and teenage children reflects challenges experienced by all of us
Specialist in Essential Parenting points the way to re-signify challenges in parent-child relationships
On the last day (10/09) Britney Spears appeared to her audience in an outburst about her relationship with her teenage children (Jayden James Federline, 16 years old and Sean Federline, 14 years old and her ex-husband Kevin Federline, father of the boys, with whom they live) and her own relationship as a daughter with her father (Jamie Spears, who had her guardianship for 13 years).
For Camila Capel, a specialist in human development and creator of the Essential Parenting model, in the singer’s speech it is noticeable how much mother and daughter roles are mixed. “It is possible to see a girl hurt by past sensations and how much the place of a daughter is still the protagonist of this story. Exactly because of this, it becomes very difficult to appropriate your role as a mother to these boys”, she says.
The specialist analyzes that what Britney opens up in the media is the exposure of a common dynamic in parents stuck to their childhood experiences and who, despite having grown up, carry an emotional liability that prevents them from appropriating their children’s education as figures of reference.
From the point of view of Essential Parenting on human development, in the third seven years, from fourteen to twenty-one years old, the age at which the singer’s children are, the young person lives a moment where he seeks the truth of the world. At this stage, it is not enough for the caregiver to speak, the young people need to perceive the authenticity of what is said by the parents. If this does not happen with these figures, teenagers will certainly look for other people to meet this need. Hence, it is common to hear reports of breakups and teenagers who turn to uncles, grandparents, idols, religions and figures that represent this coherence between what they say and what they do.
Camila explains that, from the point of view of broader development, this is a moment where the “I”, individuality, is asserting itself and, as a consequence, moving away from parents may become necessary for self-identification. Capel emphasizes that this distance will be more or less intense according to the bonding that was made in the two previous seven years, throughout childhood.
Still on adolescence, the specialist recalls that testing limits is another keynote of this phase. “The tendency to want to expand limits, to emancipate oneself, is part of the hormonal storm that teenagers go through. Therefore, contestation and confrontation with parents is an expected behavior at this stage. If the young person does not have the very defined limits of authority figures, and has the opportunity to live freely, the path is doubly risky: their physical health is at risk, in the pursuit of pleasure, reward, combined with the need for acceptance and belonging to a group. The teenager can put himself in situations with which he is not yet mature enough to manage or risk his own life”.
From the point of view of adolescent development, Camila Capel explains that the process that Britney reports as “cancellation” of the children in relation to her, is something expected from a young person. The expert points out that what makes the situation dramatic is the lack of contour and limits on how far they can actually go.
“There seems to be a lack of a basis for parents (and not only for the mother) to deal with the natural process of building their children’s identity. Which shows that both, father and mother, also did not count on these limits in their own education. Britney criticized her father for all the history that surrounds his story and, despite all the questions and feelings that surround the topic. Almost never finding a culprit ends such complex family matters,” she says.
Essential Parenting points out that it is necessary to go beyond the obvious and the place of judgment and finding blame, because this dual look – right or wrong – does not allow us to observe the deeper layers of relationships and how we can learn from the tangle of the transgenerational process that it happens between parents and children, which doesn’t start with Britney’s children, nor does it end with her and her father. “We are what remains of the stories of our parents which, in turn, were traces of stories of their own parents, in a progressive line that reaches hundreds and thousands of many other experiences. Several lines of science prove that ancestral memories and even cellular memory act on our beliefs, whether we are aware of it or not.”
Britney Spears alternates in her speech the roles of girl and mother and seems to cry out to be seen, included, accepted, loved… The artist’s relationship with her father points to the paradox of necessary limits for young people and how their excess castrates their strength, not giving the young man the chance to emancipate himself, becoming an eternal son.
The expert concludes with an important reflection: “Britney’s story speaks, in a way, of a drama that we all live, to a greater or lesser extent. Our childhood needs will never have been fully met and it is in the relationship with our children that we will have the opportunity to revisit that. The challenges of parenting are a chance that life brings us to resignify stories, lacks and unmet needs. From this point of view, we are not victims and our parents are not to blame. We are parents reproducing the primordial parental relationship with our own children, but the difference is that we are no longer children and, through the awareness that we have developed, we have the chance to look at our biography, welcome what we still miss, have self-compassion for the child who has already we were and to appropriate, stronger, our role in the education of our current children.“, ends.
About Camila Capel
Camila Capel is the creator of the Essential Parenting model, a scientific-spiritual vision of the human being.
She has a multidisciplinary background in areas such as Parenting; Parenting Skills Training; Analytical ability; Emotional intelligence; Therapeutic Listening; Parent Education and Self-Education.
She is a Mindfulness and Compassion instructor, specializing in CBT – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Psych-k, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and transformative communication and mediation techniques.
Her systemic view of “being human” is the basis for her work as a writer, with the aim of sharing learning and experiences to inspire people to walk the path of self-knowledge, for a fuller life.
Access:
https://instagram.com/camila_capel
