Brandi Glanville & Company Give Co-Parenting Families A Bad Name
Very rarely, unless there is some form of proven child abuse, do I come right out and call people that I don’t know personally “bad parents.” Will I call Madonna an embarrassing mom? Sure. Will I call some reality television stars exploitative moms? You bet. But saying that someone is a bad parent is a really intense statement, and I don’t think it should be made lightly. With that in mind, I’d like to say that I think Brandi Glanville, LeAnn Rimes & Eddie Cibrian are bad parents. Really bad parents.
I am so exhausted with hearing interview after interview, tweet after tweet, comment after comment about how much this co-parenting trio dislikes one another. Brandi insults LeAnn. LeAnn offends Brandi. Eddie sits back and lets the two women fight over him, as if he’s blameless in the whole mess. It is the very worst that co-parenting has to offer.
The latest installment came on this morning’s Today Show, where Glanville admitted that she doesn’t even speak with her ex anymore, even though they have two young children. She was repeatedly asked about the affect that her very public feud with her ex and his new wife will have on her children. She bizarrely attempted to assert that she was “always thinking about her kids,” and “only cared about them,” even as she continued to make their lives more difficult by trash-talking Eddie and LeAnn. For his part, Eddie provided the show with a statement about his concern for his kids because of Brandi’s actions, which only furthers the fight and extends his kids’ suffering.
The fact that all of this bickering and bitterness is being done in the name of these two young boys is truly despicable. Anyone with an iota of emotional intelligence would be able to tell you that this only serves to make life harder for these boys, caught in the middle of an adult melodrama.
My daughter’s father and I were never married. We broke up shortly after our little girl’s birth. No, it’s not the same as a cheating spouse, but there were plenty of hurt feelings to go around. But you know what we did? We grew up and we realized that we needed to get along for the sake of our daughter. We treat each other respectfully. We communicate. We do everything in our power to avoid arguments, because we both care about our daughter more than we care about our own pride or ego.
Criticizing your ex or your child’s step-parent in public isn’t just tasteless and rude. It hurts your kids. It puts them in the middle of a tense relationship, struggling to make both sides happy. It makes the lives of your children more difficult. It is the very definition of bad parenting.
Just like most people understand that celebrity marriages rarely mirror the real-life institution that they claim to resemble, I hope that the public knows that co-parenting families don’t have to be like this. I hope enough of us understand that blended families and separated parents do not have to behave like middle schoolers in a cafeteria, forcing people to take sides and airing everyone’s dirty laundry out of spite. That is not how the majority of co-parenting families behave.
Brandi, LeAnn and Eddie are bad parents. But if they would like to get better, they can start by shutting up in the press and concentrating on their kids, instead of their PR campaigns.
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