‘Everything is moving in the right direction’: After years of separation, Britney Spears finally has ‘her baby back’

After years of estrangement, Britney Spears has finally been reunited with her son, Jayden, with sources claiming the 18-year-old has moved back to Los Angeles from Hawaii. 

The source said the pop star is “spending a lot of time” with her youngest child, after years of him living in the Aloha State with his father and Spears’ ex-husband, Kevin Federline. It’s not yet known whether Jayden is living with his mother in his Thousand Oaks home, but the singer is said to be “thrilled to have her baby back.” Jayden’s older brother, 19-year-old Preston, is thought to still be in Hawaii with his father, but the source said even one child’s return means “everything is moving in the right direction” for Spears. 

It certainly feels like a step forward for the pop star, whose last interaction with her kids was reported on Mother’s Day, when she was said to have called both her sons. Federline’s lawyer, Mark Vincent Kaplan, said at the time that the phone call was a “good sign” for the kids’ relationship with their mother, while admitting that “a reconciliation is somewhat complex and can be a process that takes some time.” According to Kaplan, Federline is supportive of the boys “having a relationship with their mother.” 

Preston and Jayden first moved to Hawaii last August, when Federline’s new wife, Victoria Prince, got a job as a volleyball coach at the University of Hawaii. Though Spears agreed to the relocation, she didn’t get the chance to see her kids before they departed, since they weren’t on speaking terms. The boys’ relationship with their mother has been fraught over the years, from public spats about Spears’ behavior on social media to reports that the sons had stopped answering her texts. 

While Jayden said amid the feud that Spears “post[s] something on Instagram to get some attention” and “struggled giving us both attention and showing us equal love,” he never closed the door on an eventual reunion. “I 100 percent think this can be fixed,” he told UK’s ITV in 2002, “it’s just going to take a lot of time and effort.” Despite their rocky relationship, Spears evidently loves her two children, having dedicated her 2023 memoir The Woman In Me to her boys and describing them as “the loves of my life.” 

The reunion feels especially heartwarming given the bad blood that once coursed through Spears’ relationship with her kids, with Jayden going as far as appearing on 60 Minutes Australia for an interview disparaging his mother. The eldest Spears child said the singer would need to “get better mentally” before he agreed to reunite, prompting a public response from Spears in which she said Jayden had “undermine[d] my behavior just like my whole family always has.” 

It comes as Spears faces renewed attention after years-old unaired footage of her discussing her conservatorship resurfaced online this week. Filmed in 2016 during an interview on the Jonathan Ross Show, the clip marked the first time Spears had publicly discussed her infamous legal embroilment with her father Jamie, though it didn’t see the light of day until this year. In other Spears news, the “Toxic” singer was recently Paris Hilton’s muse for Halloween, was involved in a fiery accident in her home, and shared her thoughts about Sabrina Carpenter’s performance at the MTV VMAs.