Do The Parents of Celebrities Betray Them?

For Celebrities, Parental Betrayal Is Just a Sad Byproduct of Fame

In the last week, we learned that Katy Perry's mother is shopping around a book proposal about her famous daughter, and Rihanna opened up to Vogue magazine about her father's betrayal. Every person struggles with who to trust, but that dilemma is magnified tenfold when you are in the public eye and suddenly people can profit simply by knowing you.


"It is very detrimental for a parent of a celebrity to capitalize in any way on their child's fame," Dr. Charles Sophy, author of 'Side by Side: The Revolutionary Mother-Daughter Program for Conflict-Free Communications,' tells PopEater. "Especially if it is not discussed beforehand."

Rihanna told Vogue that her assault by Chris Brown was not the most difficult part of her life in the last few years. Rather it was discovering that her father had sold childhood photos to a tabloid.

"It really makes me question what I have become to my father," she said. "Like, what do I even mean to him? It's really strange. That's the only word I can think of to describe it, because you grow up with your father, you know him, you are part of him, for goodness' sakes! And then he does something so bizarre that I can't begin to wrap my mind around it. You hear the horror stories about people going behind people's backs and doing strange things, but you always think, not my family. My father would never do that to me."

This week's New York Post's Page Six reported that Perry's mother, Mary Hudson, who runs a Christian ministry with her husband Keith in California, is shopping a memoir that purports to tell "her story," and is also about how Perry's success has influenced her ministry in both "negative and positive ways."

Hudson has said before that she detests Perry's breakout song 'I Kissed a Girl' because it "clearly promotes homosexuality and its message is shameful and disgusting ... I can't even listen to that song."

"Whenever anyone experiences betrayal from a parent or trusted caregiver it cuts deep and can scar for many years," Sophy says. "Add to that the layers of trust issues that accompany celebrity and then you have an even deeper wound with a longer lasting scar."

Unfortunately, Perry and Rihanna are not the only celebs to have a parent try to piggyback on their fame.

Recently, Billy Ray Cyrus admitted in an interview that he was very bothered by daughter Miley Cyrus' latest antics. "I'm scared for her," he said. "I know she's 18, but I still feel like as her daddy I'd like to try to help."

Miley was reportedly furious at her father for speaking to the press about his concerns and allegedly forced him to cancel an appearance on 'The View,' where he surely would have been asked about his comments.

Drew Barrymore, who was drinking by age 9, doing coke by 12 and already had two stints in rehab by the time she was 14 years old, sued her mother, Jaid Barrymore, for emancipation when she was 15. She went to court and argued that her mother was a bad influence and won.

Later, Jaid sold her famous daughter's baby clothes on eBay.

Jennifer Aniston did not speak to her mother for nearly a decade after the two had a falling out over an interview that Nancy Aniston gave to a TV show. The rift was compounded when Nancy penned a book about her famous daughter, 'From Mother to Daughter to Friends.' She said she wrote it in part to help those in the "dark hole of child/parent estrangement." It was only when Aniston split from her husband Brad Pitt that the two began speaking again.

"The wound is riddled with hurt, anger and embarrassment, felt as betrayal and often forever damages the parent-child bond," Sophy says of the hurt felt by celebs betrayed by parents attempting to capitalize on their fame. Whether Rihanna or Perry will smooth things over with their parents the way Aniston did with her mother remains to be seen, but this type of betrayal is a sad reminder that some people value a little money and 15 minutes of fame over the kind of loving relationship a parent can have with their children.