Kate Hudson Family Wars: How Can This Be Repaired?
Even though Bill Hudson has declared his kids, Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson (above in an old family photo), “dead to me,” experts tell Yahoo Parenting the family can — and should — work things out. (Photo: Pacific Coast News)
Kate and Oliver Hudson’s family drama with their estranged father Bill Hudson has gone from sad to simply awful. First The Rules of Engagement alum, 38-year-old Oliver, posted a bitter “Happy abandonment day” message on Instagram on Father’s Day June 21. Then he rubbed salt in the wound, posting a sweet note to the man who raised him like a father — Kurt Russell, whom Oliver and Kate’s mom Goldie Hawn has been dating since two years after Goldie divorced Bill in 1981, when Oliver was 4.
Oliver Hudson and Kurt Russell (Photo: Instagram/theoliverhudson)
“Happy Father’ Day Pa…” the actor wrote addressing Russell. Ditto his little sister, 36, who captioned her intimate Instagram shout out to him, “Pa, just simply….. Thank you. Happy Fathers Day. I love you to the moon and back.”
Kate Hudson and Kurt Russell (Photo: Instagram/katehudson)
Now Bill is firing back. In a stunning interview with The Daily Mail on Sunday, he disowned Oliver and Kate.
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“Oliver’s Instagram post was a malicious, vicious, premeditated attack,” the father of five fumed over Oliver’s barb. (The musician, 65, has two children with his second ex wife, Cindy Williams, and another daughter with an ex-girlfriend). “He chose the photograph and posted it on Father’s Day, when he knew it would cause maximum pain…If what he wanted was me out of their lives, then he’s succeeded. I don’t want to see either of my eldest children ever again. It’s over.”
Bill blasts that Oliver is “dead to me now, as is Kate” and even asks that his eldest stop using his last name as their own: “They are no longer a part of my life…I now consider myself a father of three.”
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Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn, Oliver, and Kate Hudson (Photo: Getty Images/Kevin Winter).
The father calls his family’s painful saga “more messed up and sad than any Hollywood screenplay could ever be.” But, unfortunately, it’s not unique, according to family therapist and divorce mediator Ken Neumann.
“There’s actually a high incidence of families where members don’t speak to each other,” the director of the Center for Mediation & Training in New York City tells Yahoo Parenting. “It’s more common between siblings, but not uncommon between adult parents and their adult children.”
Be that as it may, Neumann and other family therapists tell Yahoo Parenting that if there’s any hope for reconciliation, Bill has to do his part to fix his damaged relationship with his kids. “When you become a parent your obligation to your child is forever,” he says.
“If the kids are minors, it’s a parent’s responsibility to reach out and try to maintain a healthy relationship, even when things aren’t going well,” adds Amy Morin, a psychotherapist and author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do. “But once children become adults, parents have a lot less control over the type of contact they’re able to maintain. Adult children still should take some responsibility in maintaining the parental relationship, though. Relationships are a two-way street.”
What does it take to move forward in painful instances like this? “Both parties have to acknowledge their mistakes,” says Morin. “Trust can be built over time, but it requires everyone to be willing to face the possibility of further hurt and rejection because there are no guarantees that the relationship will be successfully be repaired.”
And a little acceptance goes a long way, says family therapist Paul Hokemeyer. “There comes a point in all families where parents and children need to get to a place of acceptance of who the other is and act in mature and responsible ways towards them,” he explains. “This involves managing expectations. If your father is 65, has never been who you wanted him to be and evidences no interest or ability to change, then adult children need to accept that and take responsibly for their own lives.”
The fact that there’s clearly still so much hurt between at least Oliver and his father may ironically be a good thing, as it shows that his feelings for dad run deep. “That suggests there’s a possibility of working it out,” says Neumann. “If Oliver really didn’t care about his dad, he wouldn’t bother calling Bill out.” Neumann acknowledges that repairing this degree of drama would require a lot of work, individually and together with a professional therapist, but he says it’s worth it — for the sake of the next generation.
“It’s always better to try to work things out because stuff lingers with you and affects other relationships,” he explains. “Wherever I’ve seen estrangement in a family, there’s often been a history of family members not speaking to each other. If you don’t talk to your father, for example, it makes the possibility of your kids not talking to you much more of a likelihood because they’ve seen, this is how families handle problems. And that, more than anything else, is why it’s important to work things out, now.”
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