Britney Spears recalls the moment she learned about sister Jamie Lynn Spears’ teen pregnancy in her The Woman in Me memoir.
Britney, 41, reveals in the book that it was “right around the holidays” in 2007 that she “found out” that her then-16-year-old sibling was having a baby, a source confirms to Us Weekly.
Britney claims that Jamie Lynn’s pregnancy came to her attention via “an exclusive in the tabloids,” not from Jamie Lynn, now 32. (Jamie Lynn welcomed her first child, daughter Maddie, in June 2008 with now ex-fiancé Casey Aldridge. She also shares daughter Ivey, 5, with husband Jamie Watson, whom she wed in 2014.)
“The family had kept it from me,” Britney alleges in her memoir, explaining, “This was around the time that Jamie Lynn almost filed for emancipation from our parents.”
Britney remembers her younger sister allegedly accusing their parents, Jamie Spears and Lynne Spears, of “taking away her cell phone” during the emancipation drama. The “Toxic” singer claims Jamie Lynn “wound up having to talk to the outside world through burner phones she kept secret.”
Jamie Lynn, for her part, confirmed in her 2022 memoir, Things I Should Have Said, that she did hide her first pregnancy from Britney — at the advice of her advisors. At the time, Britney was going through a messy split from ex-husband Kevin Federline, which influenced Jamie Lynn to keep her out of the loop.
“My team believed everyone outside of the inner circle was a potential threat,” Jamie Lynn claimed in her book. “They went so far as hiding my pregnancy from my sister, claiming, ‘It’s too risky to tell Britney about the baby.’ I needed her more than ever, and she wasn’t able to help me in my most vulnerable time.”
The Sweet Magnolias actress confessed that she is still haunted by the fact that Britney discovered the truth from a magazine. “To this day, the hurt of not being able to tell my sister myself lingers,” Jamie Lynn wrote.
Jamie Lynn also alleged in her book that after she gave birth to Maddie, now 15, her parents shut down her dream of raising the child with her then-fiancé outside their family home.
“My family denied my attempts to be independent and left me with no other choice than to threaten to file for emancipation with the courts,” she wrote. “I spent days agonizing with my pending decision. But I followed my gut and instructed my new lawyer to go ahead and draw up the petition.”
Jamie Lynn served her mom and dad with the papers that next week, but ultimately decided not to go through with the legal separation as their family continued to deal with Britney’s public drama.
“Simultaneously, my sister was experiencing her own breakdown, and media speculation about her wellness and our family already had the paparazzi swarming,” Jamie Lynn wrote of the tumultuous time. “Everyone involved with my saga reluctantly agreed that we needed to do what was best to avoid any more negative media attention.”
The time in question was Britney’s public battle with Federline, 45, for custody of their two sons, Sean Preston, 18, and Jayden, 17. Britney addresses the heartbreak in her upcoming memoir, detailing the sadness she felt in early January 2008 when her boys were being shuttled back and forth between their parents.
“I felt like no one had my back. Even my family seemed not to care,” she writes in the book, referring to the period in which her visitation was cut back.
The Woman in Me hits shelves on Tuesday, October 24.
