Not everyone is equipped to handle the intense workload that comes with being a parent. There’s no denying it’s hard work, and let’s face it — kids don’t come with an instruction manual. Although it may not always be fun, the responsibility of ensuring a child’s well being should always be a parent’s number one priority. Unfortunately, some celebs simply neglect this general rule — as easily as they do most other ones — and as a result, their children suffer. Here are fifteen celebrities who have been caught in the spotlight while being awful parents.
Shauna Sand – “Actress”, Playboy Bunny
Shauna Sand is an American model and 1996 ‘Playmate of the Month’ who appeared in a few random movies of the late 90s and early 00s, forging a ‘legitimate’ acting career with roles creepily reflective of her actual personality. Names of the characters she’s played include: Thumper, Dominique, Mercedes, Nurse, Sienna, Stripper #1, Unknown, and Jacuzzi Woman. That’s eight out of a total thirteen roles, which don’t make Sand sound like a great role model right off the bat. But her real claim to fame was her promotion and release of her own personal sex tape in 2009, at which time her three daughters were thirteen, eleven, and nine. It was the same year Sand’s initiation into the nip-slip club occurred as her 11 year old, Victoria, sat next to her, looking like she felt pretty awkward. Sand’s other two daughters were 10 and 9 at the time, and the Year of the Filthy Plastic Woman had just begun.
Sand was filmed walking down the street with her daughters, chatting to the paps about her Playboy heyday, when she decided to ask her nine year old, Isabella, if she’d like to be in Playboy as well. The child’s impromptu response was astoundingly witty: “No, mom, I don’t. Yeah, a little girl on a magazine with stripper shoes and a bathing suit.” A ghoul with plastic tits, Sand never misses an opportunity to embarrass herself and her children by parading around in lingerie with them. Think about how awful the kids must feel — their pained expressions in every photograph speak volumes. If Heidi Montag was a middle-aged meth addict with VD, she would be Shauna Sand.
Michael Lohan – Lindsay Lohan’s Father
Michael Lohan is, hands down, the biggest tool on this list. His shameful antics don’t equate him to some of the other violent offenders in this group, but they certainly make him look like a lunatic — and a pretty terrible dad as well. Michael Lohan has never been tactful in his statements to the media. In fact, he constantly goes out of his way to garner media attention and uses any tension between himself and daughter Lindsay as leverage to get it. He voiced his unhappiness about Lindsay’s lesbian relationship with Samantha Ronson, saying he “didn’t want to hear about it” though it was “between [Lindsay] and God.” He’s once emailed celebrity gossip site Pop Tarts to claim that ‘SaMANtha’, as he very maturely called her throughout his rant, was a controlling woman who manipulated Lindsay into becoming confused about her sexuality, and had written Michael-bashing blog entries – even though they were signed by Lindsay. “Personally,” his harshly judgmental letter reads, “I think she is dark, hideous and a disgusting representation of humanity.” Michael Lohan, the human projector.
Michael’s most infamous claim to fame is his possession and tasteless publication of conversations he had recorded between himself and both Lindsay and ex-wife Dina Lohan. Of course, Michael has conveniently removed all of his speaking parts from the tapes. Lindsay later tweeted that the cut up version of their conversation was from years ago and no longer had relevance.
Regardless, Michael Lohan stooped to a new low by selling his daughter out for a few fleetingly interested audience members. He perpetuated his ability to be a total cretin by appearing on daytime television hit, The Maury Povich Show, to broadcast his concern for Lindsay. He twists his face into a pained expression and speaks directly into the camera about saving his daughter’s life from drug addiction, as well as the intense love he has for her inside of him. Despite the reality of Lindsay’s recent transformation from beautiful Hollywood starlet to parodied crack-hooker, his actions make his statements look like a bunch of facetious nonsense.
Lindsay has also used the media to make retaliating statements toward her father, but her words ring undeniably true:
“If you have something to say to me, say it to my face. That’s what I have believed my whole life. Don’t be a coward and say it to others first, let alone all the media in the world. I think we know where the rest of this blog is going…If you guessed it had to do with my father -– then you guessed right! It really hurts, because I have tried. [...] He has become a public embarrassment and a bully – to my family, my co-workers, my friends, and a girl that means the world to me. He has no idea what is going on in my life because I have chosen not to involve him in it. His recent attack on my life and my loved ones is simply for an addiction that he has : Fame.”
Kate Moss – Model
Kate Moss is a cokehead and former H&M model who allowed her baby daughter to be neglected by her famous musician and heroin addict boyfriend, Pete Doherty. Then she forgot her kid’s third birthday.
Britney Spears – Pop Star
Britney Spears’ lack of parenting skills could be easily represented using nothing more than a picture slideshow. Spears’ parenting increased in blatant cringe-worthiness until she actually lost custody of her two children in 2007. Two year old Sean and one year old Jayden were handed over to Kevin Federline, and Spears’ father was granted conservator-ship over the pop princess about a year later. That means he was her legal guardian, deemed a parent with the same rights he would retain over any underage child. Just imagine the level of idiocy and/or mental illness necessary to be deemed incapable of caring for yourself at the age of 25.
It started with Britney making some poor judgment calls in 2006 – she seemed completely unprepared for parenthood. Spears was photographed driving with her first son, one year old Sean Preston, on her lap instead of in a car seat. Months later, she was questioned by Family Services when Sean fell out of his high chair at home. She quickly had another child and divorced husband Kevin Federline. After filing the divorce papers, she ran off to Paris, where she was photographed with legs spread, getting out of a limousine in a skimpy outfit without underwear. The pictures leave nothing to the imagination. It was a sad and sloppy omen.
The next year she continued the rampant partying, and sprinkled in some weird mental breakdowns. She checked into rehab a total of four times, shaved her head between stays and attacked a pap’s car with an umbrella. The remainder of 2007 saw Britney as a disheveled, poorly dressed mess who made a scene at almost every video/photo shoot she attended. The producers attempting to work with her at one of her own music video shoot reported erratic and bratty behavior, saying the night ended in a hysterical Britney who was impossible to work with. Her decisions were dangerous, like continuing to drive with her children in the car even after her license was revoked — and then hitting a parked vehicle before speeding away.
As a result of her irresponsible antics, Britney Spears lost custody of her children in late 2007. Ex-bodyguard Tony Barretto admitted a written statement to court documenting Britney’s neglect, constant nudity and drug use around her children. He claimed to find her overdosed on what he thought to be ecstasy and methamphetamine in a trashed hotel room with Howie Day, a junkie musician with whom Britney allegedly had a brief drug-fueled stint. “She was in a terrible state, just sweating and shaking,” Tony said. “Her pupils were huge—we thought she was dying.” Barretto goes on to talk about Britney’s neglect, stating “[Britney] kept Jayden James and Sean Preston up late so they would sleep through the mornings and not wake her. If they woke early, a member of staff dealt with them. [...] Often she would scream and cry uncontrollably. Imagine what that is like for young children.” Finally, he speaks out about her constant nudity:
“I must have seen her naked dozens of times and each time I’ve been extremely embarrassed. She strips off anywhere — at home, recording studios and clubs. Even at the dance rehearsals, she took all her clothes off in front of me and then bent over, not even to pick anything up. I felt my ears burning and turned my head to the wall.”
When Britney was granted supervised visitation rights as a result, it still didn’t motivate her to act like a good mom. The parenting coach present during visitations observed, “It seems that [Britney's] choices are dependent more upon what she wants to do at any given time rather than what would be more enjoyable for the children.” Her psychiatrist finally called for an intervention after Spears stayed up for three days straight without eating anything. Air traffic was cleared and she was flown to UCLA Medical Center for a psychiatric evaluation. Her father retains conservatorship to this day and seems to have given the pop star no choice but to clean up her act.
Courtney Love – Musician, Drug Addict
If there were a yearly convention for general shit heads, Courtney Love would run the panel. Not only did she practice a vigorous regimen of wasted sluttiness all throughout her daughter’s adolescence, but later became hell-bent on perpetuating it in recent years with a bunch of mean and juvenile twitter updates directed at the 17 year old Francis Bean. Love lost custody of Bean in 2009 due to drug charges, allegations of child abuse, and possible misapplication of funds [read: stealing from your own kid]. She proceeded to complain about it on the Internet like a preteen misfit:
“I hate to sound cold but any kid of mine who pulls this shit has lost her position. She was deceptive, she lied and she’s lying to herself. My daughter is not always honest. She is clearly deluded if she thinks she can buy her grandmother a small house in L.A. I’d love to see how that works. She thinks she has all this money. The point is, I have all the money she has.”
A tragically sad, disillusioned and aging drug addict struggling for power and control in all the wrong places, broadcasting incoherent slander about her own child. Disturbing is the fact that Bean is forced to endure the brunt of her mother’s mental issues, even if they aren’t living under the same roof.
Dog The Bounty Hunter – Dog The Bounty Hunter
Duane Chapman, better known as ‘Dog’ from reality television show Dog The Bounty Hunter, is famous for hunting and capturing Hawaiian criminals, as well as marrying a coconut with blonde hair. Dog’s appalling parenting skills — and lack of tact, tastefulness and intelligence — can be summed up in a single sentence: Dog The Bounty Hunter called his son’s girlfriend a nigger during a recorded phone call in 2008. His son, Tucker, was angered by Dog’s insistent racism, especially because his remarks were directed at Tucker’s black girlfriend. A transcript of the call Tucker recorded reads:
“I’m not taking a chance on some motherf-bleep- I don’t care if she’s a Mexican, a whore, whatever, it’s not cause she’s black it’s because we use the word nigger sometimes here. I’m not going to take a chance ever in life losing everything I worked for for 30 years cause some f-bleep- nigger heard us say nigger and turned us in to the Enquirer magazine. Our career is over. If Lise was dating a nigger we would all say f-bleep- you and you know that. If Lisa brought a black guy home yeah (unintelligible) and it’s not that they’re black it’s none of that, it’s that we use the word nigger we don’t mean you f-bleep-ing scum nigger without a soul, we don’t mean that shit, but America would think we mean that.”
Dog basically says he can’t be around blacks for fear they may hear him say the word nigger, which he is apparently unable to stop saying. This is, of course, all a guise he has constructed to prevent admitting that he is actually incredibly racist. Not only does his hate-rambling make Dog a bad parent, but a pretty crappy person as well. His show was temporarily canceled after Tucker sold the tape recording to tabloids for a sweet fifteen grand, but was quickly back on the air after A&E realized it was their highest rated series.
Jon Gosselin – Reality TV Star
John Gosselin is the famous douchebag husband from the infinitely annoying John & Kate Plus Eight, a 2009 reality show on TLC in which basically nothing happens. A camera crew documents the day to day trials and tribulations of former couple John & Kate and their eight children. First of all, why does any couple really need eight children unless they are literally producing superheroes? They don’t. No one needs or should have that many kids. How would two people even be capable of dedicating adequate time to each of that many children in order for each one to be happy and healthy? And besides, don’t you think some of the money used to indulge one’s sick impulses to overpopulate could be useful going toward charity? There are millions of sick and starving people, including children, in this world. John and Kate cared not. They wanted babies, and by golly, babies did they have. Way too many of them.
So having eight children doesn’t necessarily make them bad parents. However, having an incredibly drawn out, publicized divorce embellished with exclusive interviews and lots of trash-talking does. First of all, Jon was caught by paparazzi with another woman in a bar near his neighborhood, panicked, and sped off with her in his car. Then came the divorce, during which Jon was photographed with a couple of trashy new girlfriends, partying and drinking with significantly younger woman. He even participated in televised interviews, and found it appropriate to trash-talk Kate on Good Morning America in September of 2009:
“She’ll call me like, almost like a lame fish. Like I wasn’t going anywhere. Well, excuse me, I’m taking care of the kids. She’s on book tours, she’s doing all these things. You know, she’s gone a week. You know, comes back. Packs up and leaves again,” Gosselin said. “I’m standing there like, ‘Oh, OK. Your mom’s gone again.’”
Gosselin’s new-found fame was short-lived. Less than a month later, Jon removed over $30,000 from the couple’s joint account, but was court ordered to return all of it. Michael Lohan released a recording of Gosselin mocking TLC for his sly media appearances which violated his contractual agreement with the network. And then they sued him. Although Kate is no angel herself, she’s definitely the lesser of two evils.
David Hasselhoff – Actor
David Hasselhoff is a household name. He was a star in Knight Rider, Baywatch, Dodgeball, and as a judge on America’s Got Talent. He also made a career for himself as a musician, releasing surrealistically cheesy hits like ‘Hooked On A Feeling.’ But his image in the spotlight has grown darker in recent years. Hasselhoff’s decline into alcoholism put him on a path to self destruction, and his teenage daughters were forced to deal the nightmare of his addiction.
A judge temporarily suspended visitation rights between Hasselhoff and his teenage daughters in early 2007, after seventeen year old Taylor Ann rolled tape on one of his drunken escapades. Shirtless, drooling and hunched over in their bathroom, the Hoff sloppily fails at consuming a burger. The food falls apart in his hands, and he eats each piece individually like a disoriented animal while his daughter pleads with him to get help and stop drinking. His only coherent responses are “I’m fine” and “Fuck you.”
The notorious video of Hasselhoff’s drunken-cheeseburger-shitshow alone landed him in on this list, but it wasn’t enough of an eye opener to stop the Hoff’s binge drinking — in early 2009, his youngest daughter Hayley, who was sixteen at the time, called an ambulance after finding an unresponsive and inebriated Hoff passed out in the family’s home. He blew a .39 in the ER – a blood alcohol level that teeters precariously on the edge of deadly. It sounds like his children have stepped up where he has failed, looking after him like a giant baby man.
John Phillips – The Mamas And The Poppas
Mamas and the Papas frontman John Phillips made a name for himself as an American singer/songwriter nicknamed Papa John. Phillips had four daughters, one of which is soap opera starlet Mackenzie Phillips. Mackenzie released a tell-all autobiography in 2009 detailing the debaucherous relationship that has existed between her and her father since an extremely young age. She claims to have begun smoking weed with her dad at 11, and goes on to state that John even shot her up with cocaine during adolescence. What followed, she said, were long years of intense drug abuse.
Mackenzie also says she blacked out after a drug binge on the night before her first wedding, and later woke up to discover herself engaged in intercourse with her father. From then on, she claims, the relationship became consensual, but went on to suggest the role of Stockholm Syndrome in what would become a twisted ten year affair. At the end of their courtship, Mackenzie became pregnant – and couldn’t figure out who the father was. She had an abortion and apparently never had sex with her dad again.
Richard and Mayumi Heene – Balloon Boy’s Parents
Here is a couple famous for literally nothing other than voluntarily humiliating themselves on national television by staging an ‘accident’ in which they claimed their six year old son had climbed into and flown away in a home-made weather balloon. As the balloon floated across the sky and out of control, America watched and worried about six-year-old Falcon Heene. But Falcon turned out to be hiding in the family’s garage the whole time, and not trapped in the little silver pod at all. His parents’ scam was uncovered and they were promptly convicted of a felony, sentenced to jail time, and forced to pay fines over $40,000.
Richard Mayumi also forced his son to participate in television interviews that obviously made the child extremely nervous and uncomfortable. He is seen literally vomiting in this interview with The Today Show, and suffered the same incident on an episode of Good Morning America. The father can be seen looking frustrated and apathetic, coldly regarding his son’s sudden illness as an embarrassment. The icing on the cake is the couple’s belief that an alien reptilian race is slowly taking over earth, which was their motive for creating the publicity stunt in the first place. Richard and Mayumi hoped to appear interesting enough to land a spot on reality television so they could broadcast their lizard-fearing message to the masses and save us all.
Jaid Barrymore – Actress, Drew Barrymore’s Mother
America’s sweetheart Drew Barrymore has performed in a number of heartwarming films over the duration of almost her entire life. Her mother, Jaid, was also an actress, and always in the spotlight. Drew admits that Jaid began taking her to swanky Hollywood parties at the age of nine, which is also approximately the time she began drinking and using drugs. Ten-year-old children are typically in fifth grade, meaning Drew’s drug abuse began when she was in elementary school. She spent three months in rehab at the age of thirteen because of marijuana, alcohol and cocaine abuse. She returned to rehab shortly thereafter as the result of a suicide attempt. At sixteen, she requested emancipation from her enabling and drug addicted mother and has lived on her own ever since.
Jaid continued her blatantly inappropriate behavior when she appeared in an issue of Playboy only eight months after Drew’s spread in a bestselling issue in 1995. It was a creepy and baffling move. She looked jealous, pathetic, and greasy — just look at her picture with Ja Rule from the same year. The entire photo retouching team at Playboy must have been rewarded bonuses after they were done with her pictures. And don’t worry, this article is long enough for you to scroll down and keep reading without being forced to look at her.
Alec Baldwin – Actor
Probably the mildest bad parent on this list is Alec Baldwin, an American actor famous for countless movie blockbusters (Pearl Harbor, Cat In The Hat, The Royal Tenenbaums, Along Came Polly, etc.) as well as his role on comedy series 30 Rock. Even though his display of bad parenting pales in comparison to the other miscreants on this list, he’s still not excused for leaving a crazed and overtly insulting rant on his eleven-year-old daughter’s voicemail. Although it’s normal for any parent to occasionally become temperamental with a growing child, Baldwin took it a little too far. Annoyed when she failed to answer a phone call he had previously scheduled with her, Baldwin chastises his daughter for ignoring his call in a way that makes him sound more like a crazed ex-boyfriend than a father:
“I’m tired of playing this game with you. I’m leaving this message with you to tell you you have insulted me for the last time. You have insulted me. You don’t have the brains or the decency as a human being. I don’t give a damn that you’re 12 years old, or 11 years old, or that you’re a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn’t care about what you do as far as I’m concerned. You have humiliated me for the last time with this phone. [...] I am going to get on a plane and I am going to come out there for the day and I am going to straighten your ass out when I see you. Do you understand me? I’m going to really make sure you get it. Then I’m going to get on a plane and I’m going to turn around and come home. So you’d better be ready Friday the 20th to meet with me. So I’m going to let you know just how I feel about what a rude little pig you really are. You are a rude, thoughtless little pig, OK?”
After the tapes hit the tabloids, Alec Baldwin apologized profusely to the public and his daughter. In his autobiography, Baldwin even claimed to be suicidal over his depression, resulting from both the publicity of the message and his years-long custody battle with ex-wife Kim Basinger. Don’t patronize us, Alec.
Michael Jackson – Pop Star
The King of Pop was fond of having mysterious children, whose origins remain questionable, to call his own. To show off the third child he claimed to have fathered — the one nicknamed ‘Blanket’ — he hung the baby off a balcony with a towel over his face. At least Blanket was too young to remember any of it. Despite this extremely reckless behavior and general weirdness, the child was not removed from Jackson’s care.
Joe Jackson – Michael Jackson’s Father and Manager of Jackson 5
Michael Jackson’s estranged father is an awful parent and general idiot as well. Michael accused his father, who also played the role of managing the Jackson 5, of frequent beating with belts and other objects. Michael was forced to endure long practices that consumed the lives of himself and his siblings, which Joe enforced with whippings that would “tear you up, really get you,” said Michael. Although Michael Jackson recognized the monumental role Joe and his harsh parenting had played in his success, he also remembers weeping out of loneliness and fearing his father so much that he would sometimes vomit upon seeing him.
After Michael Jackson’s death, Joe Jackson was acting pretty shady when he filed court papers requesting that he be awarded part of Michael’s estate to cover his living costs of $26,000 a month. This took a lot of audacity, especially since Michael purposely excluded Joe from the will, instead leaving everything to his mother, children, and charities. It’s amazing that he was able to show such a lack of character even after his son’s tragic and untimely death.
Macaulay Culkin’s Parents
After little Culkin scored the role in Home Alone that made him a Hollywood star, his father, Kit, became power hungry and fame crazed, living vicariously through his son. Kit forced Macauley into countless movie and television acting roles without ever stopping to consider his son’s opinion on the matter, leading to an older Culkin feeling as if he never had a normal childhood. Macauley found solace at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, where he befriended the pop star and enjoyed a refuge away from the public eye. When Jackson was accused of child molestation, Kit stopped his son from speaking out in Jackson’s defense.
Macaulay Culkin’s parents engaged in a bitter divorce and custody battle when he was fourteen, during which they wasted almost fifty million dollars on attorney fees so they could prolong the fight over their children and possessions. The worst part of their monumental squandering was that the money didn’t belong to either of them — it was Macaulay’s profits from starring in Home Alone, hosting Saturday Night Live, his role in My Girl, and other movie & television appearances. Culkin later spoke out about his father’s alleged physical abuse and had his parents legally barred from touching his funds.
