Britney Spears Allegedly Told Son Preston She Wished He and Brother Jayden Were ‘Dead’

Britney Spears had some harsh words for her young son on a heated phone call, her ex-husband Kevin Federline claims in his new memoir.

Federline, 47, was married to Spears, 43, from 2004 to 2007, and the two endured a messy custody battle over their sons Sean Preston, 20, and Jayden James, 19.

In Federline’s memoir You Thought You Knew, he writes that after the pop star’s conservatorship ended in 2021, her social media posts became more “erratic,” and her sons stopped using social media in order to avoid negativity aimed at them by some of her supporters.

The boys’ fraught relationship with their mother reached what Federline describes as a “breaking point” shortly after he moved his family to Hawaii in 2023. The former dancer and DJ writes that Preston was on vacation in Europe with his girlfriend’s family when Spears called and things got heated as she blamed Federline, her dad Jamie and more family members for her “problems.”

“Preston, to his credit, confronted her. He called out her lies and refused to accept her narrative. Her response was chilling: she told him she wished he, his brother, and me were all dead,” Federline writes. “Hearing Preston recount that conversation devastated me… Trauma like that left scars, ones I fear they’ll carry for the rest of their lives.”

A rep for Spears did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The “Gimme More” singer’s relationship with her sons has frayed over the years, though she shared a photo with Jayden to Instagram in June, and told PEOPLE in 2023 that becoming a mom was a “dream come true.”

Jayden spoke to The Daily Mail in 2022 about their troubles, saying he “100 percent think[s]” things between them can be “fixed.”

“It’s just going to take a lot of time and effort. I just want her to get better mentally,” he said at the time. “When she gets better I really want to see her again.”

Jayden also said that Preston had asked Spears “not to post his photos [to social media], and she did it anyway. So it didn’t go well.”

A representative for Spears spoke out in a statement ahead of the release of Federline’s memoir.

“With news from Kevin’s book breaking, once again he and others are profiting off her and sadly it comes after child support has ended with Kevin,” the statement reads. “All she cares about are her kids, Sean Preston and Jayden James and their well-being during this sensationalism. She detailed her journey in her memoir [The Woman in Me].”

Spears has also issued two statements to social media herself in response. In the first, on Wednesday, Oct. 15, she wrote that she’s “had enough” of Federline “constantly gaslighting her. “Relationships with teenage boys is complex … Sadly, they have always witnessed the lack of respect shown by [their] own father for me. They need to take responsibility for themselves.” In an additional statement on Thursday, Oct. 16, Spears said, “If you really love someone then you don’t help them by humiliating them …  They secretly love to cast me out and make me feel completely isolated.”

In her 2023 memoir, Spears praises her children, calling Preston “a genius at school,” and highlighting Jayden’s “incredible gift with the piano.”