Britney Spears' Relationship with Dad Jamie Spears: What She Has Said Over the Years

The singer has spoken about her strained relationship with her father following her conservatorship

Britney Spears is telling her story with her new memoir, The Woman in Me, and that includes opening up about her strained relationship with her father Jamie Spears.

In 2008, after experiencing a public breakdown, Britney was put under a court-ordered conservatorship, which placed Jamie and a lawyer in charge of her personal and financial affairs.

Following a legal battle, Jamie was eventually removed from his role as Britney’s estate conservator in September 2021 after the singer’s lawyer asked the court to suspend him, and the entire conservatorship was eventually terminated that November.

In December 2022, Jamie defended his role during his daughter's conservatorship. telling Daily Mail, "I love my daughter with all my heart and soul. Where would Britney be right now without that conservatorship? And I don’t know if she’d be alive. I don’t.”

In an excerpt from her memoir shared exclusively with PEOPLE, Britney offers new details about her relationship with her father and the conservatorship.

“Over the past 15 years or even at the start of my career, I sat back while people spoke about me and told my story for me,” Britney told PEOPLE in an interview done via email. “After getting out of my conservatorship, I was finally free to tell my story without consequences from the people in charge of my life.”

Here’s everything she has shared about their strained relationship over the years.

Related: Britney Spears Debuts a First Look at Her New Memoir with a Cover Story in PEOPLE

Britney Spears talks about her dad’s health issues

In November 2018, Jamie suffered a near-fatal colon rupture and underwent emergency surgery. At the time, Britney announced that she was going on an “indefinite work hiatus” amid her father’s health issues, including putting her Las Vegas residency on hold.

“I don’t even know where to start with this, because this is so tough for me to say,” Britney wrote on Twitter, alongside a photo of her at a young age with her parents. “I will not be performing my new show Domination. I’ve been looking forward to this show and seeing all of you this year, so doing this breaks my heart.”

She continued in a follow-up tweet, “However, it’s important to always put your family first… and that’s the decision I had to make. A couple of months ago, my father was hospitalized and almost died. We’re all so grateful that he came out of it alive, but he still has a long road ahead of him.”

Britney Spears speaks out about her conservatorship for the first time

On June 23, 2021, Britney spoke for the first time about her conservatorship as she challenged it in court. "I've lied and told the whole world I'm okay and I'm happy," she said. "I'm not happy. I can't sleep. I'm depressed. I cry every day."

During her testimony, she said she was put on lithium “out of nowhere” and that her family didn’t interfere.

“Not only did my family not do a goddamn thing, my dad was all for it,” she said. “Anything that happened to me had to be approved by my dad. And my dad acted like he didn't know that I was told I had to be tested over the Christmas holidays before they sent me away, when my kids went to home to Louisiana. He was the one who approved all of it. My whole family did nothing.”

She also claimed that her father forced her into rehab after she reportedly failed a psych test. “I cried on the phone for an hour, and he loved every minute of it,” she said. “The control he had over someone as powerful as me — he loved the control to hurt his own daughter 100,000%. He loved it.”

Britney Spears says she wants to press formal charges against Jamie for “conservatorship abuse”

In July 2021, Britney spoke out against her father again. During a court hearing, the singer told Judge Brenda Penny through the phone that would like to press formal charges against Jamie for what she called "conservatorship abuse," according to CNN.

"I want to press charges against my father today," she told the court. "I want an investigation into my dad."

At the hearing, Britney also called her conservatorship "f---ing cruelty," alleging that Jamie limited her personal choices so severely, she wasn't even able to drink coffee. "If this is not abuse, I don't know what is," she said, according to the outlet.

NBC News reported that Britney said she has been "extremely scared" of her father and that "this conservatorship has allowed my dad to ruin my life."

Britney Spears says her family hurt her “deeply” during conservatorship

A month after her conservatorship was terminated in November 2021, Britney shared a post about how she was looking forward to heading into the New Year with a fresh perspective.

"From every angle I was being hurt for no reason and my family was hurting me,” she said. “I went into a state of shock and the way I coped was being [in] fake denial. It was too much to really face."

"Honestly my family embarrassed me and hurt me deeply," Spears wrote, adding that "tooting my own horn and seeing my past accomplishments reflecting back at me actually helped" in overcoming her insecurities.

Related: Britney Spears Describes What It Was Like Living Under Conservatorship: I Became a 'Child-Robot' (Exclusive)

Britney Spears says her dad body-shamed her during conservatorship

In an excerpt from her memoir The Woman in Me, shared exclusively with PEOPLE, Britney writes that she lost what little autonomy she had over her own body during the conservatorship and alleges that Jamie made hurtful comments about her weight.

“I’d been eyeballed so much growing up, I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager. Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back,” she writes. “But under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over. I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take.”

Britney continues in the book: “If I thought getting criticized about my body in the press was bad, it hurt even more from my own father. He repeatedly told me I looked fat and that I was going to have to do something about it.”

Britney Spears says her dad tried to control her public image

In an excerpt from The Woman in Me, shared exclusively with PEOPLE, Britney says that amid her conservatorship, she quickly lost the creative spark she’d had for singing and dancing, and blames Jamie.

“I would do little bits of creative stuff here and there, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. As far as my passion for singing and dancing, it was almost a joke at that point,” she writes. “Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself."

Spears continues in the book, "I think back now on my father and his associates having control over my body and my money for that long and it makes me feel sick… Think of how many male artists gambled all their money away; how many had substance abuse or mental health issues. No one tried to take away their control over their bodies and money. I didn’t deserve what my family did to me.”

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.