COMMENTARY | When Whitney Houston died last week, she left behind her only daughter, 18-year-old Bobbi Kristina Brown. When the news of the legendary singer’s passing reached Brown, she reportedly went into hysterics and had to be sedated.
Early Sunday morning, she was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and treated for stress and anxiety. Brown’s father, Houston’s ex-husband, Bobby Brown, told ET earlier this week, “My daughter Bobbi Kristina is doing much better. We continue to provide love and support to Bobbi Kristina. She is dealing with the tragedy of her mother’s death and would prefer to do it outside of the public eye.”
Strangely, Bobby Brown has not seen his daughter at all, and The Insider learned that she doesn’t want to see her father. Today may be especially difficult, as the wake for her mother took play and it will be the first time that she’ll see the body of her mother since she passed last weekend.
There are likely some deep issues that are haunting Bobbi Kristina if she doesn’t want to see the only biological parent she has left. Although she is legally an adult, 18 is far too young to lose your mother, and the pair were said to be extremely close.
Of course Brown is not the only Hollywood child to have issues with one or both parents. Some consider Courtney Love to be one of the worst famous mothers. MTV reported that Love bashed her own daughter, Frances Bean, on Facebook when she lost custody of her. Telling Bean that she was “clearly delude” for all the world to see.
Bean, now 19, eventually fought for and won legal emancipation when she was a teenager. In 2009, she requested and received a restraining order from Love. Recently released details reveal that Bean blames her mother for the death of one of her pets as well.
In another very sad case of strained parental relations, actress Mackenzie Phillips, the daughter of the late John Phillips, famed singer and songwriter of The Mamas & the Papas in the 1960s, wrote a tell-all book about her father. In it, she claimed that the elder Phillips snorted cocaine with her at age 11 and fed her drugs throughout her teenage years. The now 52-year-old even claims that they had an incestuous relationship that began when she was 19 and lasted for a decade.
The late Phillips denied the allegations until his death.
I hope that Houston’s daughter will be able to repair the relationship with her father before it’s too late. She needs all the support she can get at this tragic time.