Britney's lost her kids. Just google the words "Britney" and "custody" and see all the crap that comes up. Me, I couldn't care less, as I am apparently just too high brow to worry about what happens to ParisLindsayBritneyOlsenTwins, but the damn articles are everywhere and some of them have seemingly deliberately misleading headlines. So when I click on something which seems at first glance to be directing me to an article on parenting, I instead end up tea-bagged by the media with K-Fed's balls. Yeah, it's that icky.
What I find interesting is the tone of these articles, or at least of the first few lines of them. Britney got what she deserved and, K-Fed gets what he wanted. Why is it about them? It seems that only the most condescending articles ever mention what may be best for the kids. Yes, any child support the father is awarded is likely to be substantial, and yes, Britney's recent and well-publicized actions do seem to warrant some sort of intervention. But custody is not punitive, or a reward. It's not about the parents; it's about the kids.
A few years ago a friend of mine lost custody of her toddler daughter. The judge cited her lack of 'stability' as the main reason, but it couldn't have hurt that the child's father (and by father, I mean father's new wife's daddy) hired the best lawyer in the county to go against a single mother of three. And yes, stability was not this woman's strong suit, as I had pointed out to her from the beginning. But just because the father was married and had a better job history, the girl was moved out of the only family she'd ever known, away from her two sisters and her mother, to live with a man who had never really shown an interest in her prior to filing for custody and his wife, a woman desperate for a child. Now tell me, how is being ripped out of your home at the age of three supposed to enhance your sense of stability?
Yes, there is obviously more to the story than this. And yes, the judge probably did make the best decision in the long run, if you ignore the immediate trauma to the child. But my point boils down to this. How would your parenting change if you knew that someone could come in and take your kids away just because your life went through an upheaval? Everyone I've ever seen go through a divorce has had a few months of going a little wild. It's a self-defense mechanism; you either sit home and cry or you get drunk with "He aint gonna ruin my life, dammit" freedom. What if those few months could convince a judge to take your child from her home? What if you changed jobs and moved to another town, even if it was in an effort to provide better stability for your child, and a judge took him away for it?
Britney's nobody's pick for Mother Of The Year, and K-Fed's probably no prize either. But the judge knows all of this and more, and he's the one who made the decision that's being judged by the tabloids. So next time you overhear someone talking about how messed up Britney is and how she deserved to get her kids "taken away from her", remind yourself that the kids were put in the best place available, not taken away from someone as some form of punishment, and that maybe Britney's not that much more messed up than any of us have been at times. What would the pictures have shown if your worst moments had been caught by photographers? Your absolute worst, closing time at the bar first night out since the baby moments, on film and at a custody hearing.
And don't even get me started on this being fat! After two kids in the past 3 years!
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