Since she initially gained notoriety as a young pop artist, Britney Spears has spent the most of her life in the spotlight.
The harsh light of the camera has seen marriages, motherhood, mental health issues, family breakup, and heated legal fights.
Along with other people, she has shared the spotlight with Kevin Federline, a former background dancer.
Kevin spent two years as Britney’s husband and the father of her two children, Sean Preston, 16, and Jayden, 15, after a brief relationship that started in 2004.
Since then, he worked hard to keep their boys out of the press while his ex-wife continued with public family fights and demeaning comments on social media.
He eventually broke his nearly ten-year quiet in a long, moving TV interview, where he talked about the realities of life as the former “Mr. Spears,” as well as his ongoing battle to keep his boys as far away from the chaos surrounding his ex-wife as possible.
Although his ex-wife, who married American-Iranian model Sam Asghari, 28, in June, bought a £10 million mansion near the Federline family home in Los Angeles, Kevin and his family reveal in a series of exclusive interviews that Preston and Jayden have not seen their mother for many months – at their own insistence.
The lads have decided they won’t be seeing her right now, according to Kevin. She hasn’t been seen by them in a while. They made the choice not to go to her wedding.
Additionally, he claims that he believes the difficult 13-year conservatorship of her father Jamie “saved” her.
Britney was ultimately released from the contract, which put significant limitations on her personal and financial life, in November of last year.
The potential that his wife’s well publicized troubles would have an impact on their teenage sons, though, is what drives Kevin to keep protecting them.
This entire experience has been difficult to witness, difficult to live through, and difficult to watch my boys go through, he claims. “It’s been difficult. It’s the most difficult task I’ve ever had to complete.
Additionally, there have been other parenting challenges during the continuing Britney scandal.
Since being released from her conservatorship last year, the 40-year-old celebrity has continued to garner attention and has started sharing nude pictures on social media.
Kevin adds that he felt forced to apologize to the boys at the time for any negative reactions they might have faced as a result.
He continues, stressing that the boys respect their mother, “Look, maybe that’s just another way she tries to express herself,” while I attempt to explain it to them.
It still hurts them, though, so it doesn’t improve the situation. It’s challenging. He goes on to say, “I can’t even begin to grasp how it feels to be a teenager having to go to high school.
While he and the boys express nothing but sympathy to Britney, Kevin states that he is coming out about his estranged former wife in order to highlight a previously unknown aspect of this entertainment story.
The 44-year-old father’s romance with a lady who went from a Disney child star to a worldwide celebrity was surrounded by a wild turmoil that has long ago gone in the father’s life.
With his boys and Victoria, his wife of nine years and a successful former volleyball player, he manages to keep a peaceful home.
Clearly inherited from their parents’ creative proclivities, Preston and Jayden are two kind-hearted, talented lads.
Jayden is an accomplished pianist, while Preston has already started to create music and wants to take guitar classes. The freedom of expression has been emphasized for all of Kevin and Victoria’s children.
Additionally included in Kevin and Victoria’s mixed family are Jordan, 11, and Peyton, 8. Kori, 20, and Kaleb, 18. Kevin’s elder children from a previous relationship with the actress Shar Jackson, also regularly visit.
All six of the siblings get along nicely. Kevin makes fun of them for being similar to the Brady Bunch, a well-known American sitcom family, as cameras are recording them eating cake in the garden to celebrate Kaleb and Kori’s birthdays and the boys swimming in and out of the pool.
This never-ending drama and controversy that Britney always appears to be in the heart of isn’t exactly what Kevin and Victoria desire.
Victoria tells me, “This is a typical home, a family… full of love.” “This house has nothing to do with whatever is going on outside.”
They believe, however, that allowing the cameras inside their house now would help Kevin’s ex-wife understand the difficulties brought on by growing up in the spotlight.
If there was any way, Kevin adds, “I could say anything to just open [Britney’s] eyes,” but thus far, he hasn’t discovered it. I imagine that if I discovered it, I would be attempting to call her and tell her.
Kevin is the first to say that he has firsthand experience with scandal. He was born and raised in Fresno, California.
He had experience dancing when he first saw Britney in a Hollywood club in the beginning of 2004.
Kevin was expecting his second kid with his then-girlfriend Shar at the time, and Britney, then 26 years old, had recently terminated a 55-hour marriage to her childhood friend Jason Alexander in Las Vegas, so the timing was not ideal.
Kevin was quickly the target of gossip due to the less than ideal circumstances.
The relationship between the two people, which included a brief engagement and wedding in October 2004, began under intense public attention but did not last very long.
Two months after Jayden was born, in November 2006, Spears filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences and asking for custody of their two kids.
At the time, Kevin was on a promotional tour in Canada and he remembers being “caught by surprise” by the news as he took part in a live radio interview.
He explains, “I called my attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan and we sat down and I told him all I care about is having 50% custody.”
There was nothing else crucial. Nothing. I’m not the sort of person who would put her family above her financial security.
He said that Kaplan had promised to get it for him because of his trust in him.
Kevin and Britney received the appropriate joint custody order after a long court struggle.
Britney unexpectedly shaved off her hair and was sent to the hospital for drug use in the months that followed. She also had a very public breakdown.
In January 2008, Federline was granted exclusive custody of their boys, both physically and legally.
The next month, she received the divisive legal conservatorship.
Kevin claims that he believes everyone made an attempt despite the commotion and disarray. “So many different things were happening all at once.”
I don’t think anyone knew what to do when everything suddenly came to a head. How could anybody possibly prepare you, he asks.
A documentary from 2021 framed Britney Spears’ increased media coverage of that conservatorship, which in turn inspired the emergence of a worldwide campaign to end the conservatorship. This effort was mostly done online and used the hashtag “FreeBritney.”
Four months after the documentary aired, Britney finally spoke out in court, asking the judge to end the conservatorship and declaring, “I just want my life back.” It’s enough and it makes no sense at all, she said. I’m done.
Six months later, in November 2021, when the conservatorship was legally terminated by a judge, her request was granted.
Although Kevin acknowledges that he has his own questions about why the arrangement existed for so long, he believes that Britney’s father always had the best intentions.
The speaker asserts that he saw a father who truly cared about his family and wanted everything to go well. “Everything was in order until Jamie took over.” He had saved her.
He acknowledges that the conservatorship was a part of his boys’ upbringing, but that it has gotten more difficult to explain why.
He acknowledges, “They’ve questioned a lot about that.” I made an effort to explain to them that their mother required assistance and that efforts were being made to improve the situation, but I’m not sure if I can fully answer all of their questions.
This hasn’t avoided the ups and downs in his own relationship with Jamie: in November 2019, Kevin secured a restraining order against his ex father-in-law after claims that he got into a fight with one of his sons.
However, because the restraining order is about to expire, any hostility is now a thing of the past.
I would definitely welcome Jamie Spears back in the boys’ lives, Kevin says, especially if the boys wanted it.
Jamie Spears is not accountable for anything in my eyes. People make mistakes. I feel bad for him. I think he’s been put through the wringer.
That same love is present in Britney’s relationship with her mother Lynne, who her grandkids refer to as “memaw,” who lives close by in Los Angeles
They are all familiar with Victoria, the sons, and Kevin.
Since they are my sons’ or my children’s closest relatives, Kevin says, they should be treated as such since family is intended to stay together. They are proud of their maw. My first objective has always been to put the children’s needs first.
The importance of this extended family structure is made even more emotional when Kevin reveals that Sean Preston and Jayden had been postponing visiting their mother for a few months.
The boys explained how tough their decision had been to me and my producer Erbil Gunasti. They still adore her despite this.
Following the first conservatorship period, there was a time of relative better stability, and Kevin recalled having a good time co-parenting with his ex-wife. Mother-son interactions, however, have been worse recently.
Kevin admits that he became increasingly uncomfortable with what his then-younger adolescent children admitted they were witnessing during their visits in recent years, but he chose to be evasive since he plainly doesn’t want to embarrass his ex-wife.
He simply states, “There were many things going on that I didn’t feel comfortable with.”
He says that his boys have come to their own choice in recent months as a result of Britney’s increasingly erratic Instagram postings—in addition to regularly revealing photographs of her nude body, she has also publicly assaulted him and other members of her family.
He continues, “I can see that sometimes it aches to be in that circumstance, even if they made an attempt to see the better in her.”
I made sure that all of my kids could talk to me about anything at any time as a result. The boys know they can talk to my wife and I about anything, just like the rest of my kids do.
They are teens right now, he says. We discuss sex, drugs, and all the other things that teenagers deal with, you know. In order for me to protect my kids from errors, I want them to make as many mistakes as they can at home.
It is one of the reasons, according to Kevin, why his boys were unable to attend Britney’s most recent wedding to Asghari.
The wedding in California, which was attended by several A-list celebrities, was held without her children. Despite their happiness for her, he claims that “[the boys] decided not to attend her wedding because they aren’t currently seeing her.
Overall, Kevin still has balanced and polite feelings for his ex-wife.
The boys are encouraged to talk lovingly about their mother and to understand the struggles that have impacted her life over the years.
Victoria tells me that “whatever is happening within this home has nothing to do with what is going on outside.”
Kevin had a similar opinion. More than everything, he hopes that the drama would end one day for his boys as well as the entire Spears family.
“I want them to forgive, to discover inner peace, and then peace with one another,” he says.