They’re both authors now.
Photo: Michael Caulfield/WireImage for Sony BMG Music Entertainment

Britney Spears doesn’t appreciate her ex-husband Kevin Federline making it sound like she was a “Toxic” parent. In his upcoming memoir, You Thought You Knew, out October 21, Federline alleges that Spears sometimes used to watch their sons sleep “with a knife in her hand.” “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,” a representative for Spears said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. “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.” Spears stopped paying child support to Federline last November, the same month that Jayden turned 18 and reportedly reunited with her; Federline has denied to Entertainment Tonight that money “is at the root of” his book.

Federline and Spears were married from 2004 to 2007. Following Spears’s 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 2008, which Federline describes in his book as “one of the hardest nights of my life,” he was granted sole custody of Sean and Jayden. Federline suggests in the book that the children had reason to be afraid of staying with Spears, who was placed under a conservatorship after the psychiatric hold. “They would awaken sometimes at night to find her standing silently in the doorway, watching them sleep — ‘Oh, you’re awake?’ — with a knife in her hand,” he alleges, per the New York Times. “Then she’d turn around and pad off without explanation.”

In the second-to-last chapter of You Thought You Knew, Federline says the #FreeBritney movement “started from a good place,” but argues that Spears’s long-term well-being is now at risk because professionals may fear being vilified if they try to help her. “All those people who put so much effort into that should now put the same energy into the ‘Save Britney’ movement,” he reportedly urges in his writing. “Because this is no longer about freedom. It’s about survival.” According to Federline’s book, he feels like “the clock is ticking” before something bad happens to Spears. Noting that he’s worried about his sons having to deal with the fallout, he called for fans to stand by Spears, Sean, and Jayden. “Now, more than ever, they need your support,” he writes. “I’ve been their buffer for years, but now it’s bigger than me. It’s time to sound the alarm.”