Jennette McCrudy: The Long-lasting Effects Parent-To-Child Abuse Can Have On You

Women’s issues is the type of thing that will probably never fade. Women have been fighting for their rights since the end of time. It’s only fairly recently that we’re allowed to vote. It’s only in recent years that we’re seeing more and more women in the workforce, either working 9-5 jobs or owning their own business. Some even do both. Some even juggle both work and family life. And now we see more and more women decide to live child-free lives to fully dedicate their lives to their work.

No matter what women do and what they choose to do for themselves in their own lives, we still get judged. There’s always a certain expectation for women. In my previous post, Vanessa Hudgens was the subject matter. She’s a very talented singer and actress. But her talent and work ethic has been overshadowed by the public’s expectations of her as a woman. Her work ethic is immeasurable. She’s a true professional, and it was so evident in her work; especially when she performed on ‘Grease Live!’ on the day that her father passed away. Her performance in ‘Gimmie Shelter’, which co-starred Brandon Fraiser and Rosario Dawson, was absolutely phenomenal.

We don’t talk about that though when we talk about Vanessa Hudgens. Instead, we’d been concentrating more on her looks and wondering if she’s pregnant every time she makes a new post showing herself. This was the case up until the very moment she announced her pregnancy back in March 2024. I heavily discussed this matter in the previous post. As a woman, talent comes secondary. It’s almost non-existent when it comes to a woman’s worth in her work. Scarlett Johansson went through the same thing when she played Wonder Woman. Anne Hathaway did too when she played Catwoman in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. Instead of being asked about their work like the men were, they were asked about their looks, physique, and their diet.

As I was in the midst of writing my previous post, I was immediately reminded of ‘Quiet On Set’, a documentary showing the depths of what it was like working for Dan Schneider, the man behind Nickelodeon’s most well-known shows like ‘Zoey 101’, ‘iCarly’, and ‘Victorious’. In recent years, ‘Zoey 101’ and iCarly’ made their comebacks with their respective reboots, but Schneider wasn’t involved in making them happen, and for a good reason.

Working for Dan Schneider was toxic. Whenever I think of Nickelodeon, Schneider, or both, I immediately think of Jennette McCurdy. She starred on ‘iCarly’as Sam Puckett between 2007 and 2012. She then starred in a spinoff series, ‘Sam & Cat’, as the same character along with Ariana Grande, who starred as Cat, a character originated by ‘Victorious’, which aired between 2010 and 2013.

McCrudy has since quit acting, and has turned to writing and podcasting instead. When ‘iCarly’ was revived in 2020, she declined to revive her role as Sam Puckett. In 2022, McCrudy released her autobiographical memoir, ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died.’ The book chronicles McCrudy’s complicated, toxic relationship with her mother before she died following a 17 year battle with cancer in 2013. McCrudy never wanted to be an actor. She wanted to be a writer instead. She was forced into acting by her mother, and she ended up being the breadwinner of the family. ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’ details her mother’s toxic and abusive behaviour towards her. McCrudy wrote, ‘She turned to me when I was 6 and said that she wanted me to be an actress because her parents would never let her be one. I mean it quite literally. I am glad that she died.’When promoting the book, McCrudy told Teen Vogue in 2022, ‘I feel like it’s an uncomfortable thing to say, ‘I’m glad my mom died,’ but I think it’s an important one. I feel strongly that anybody who has experienced abuse from a parental figure will know what I’m talking about.’

McCrudy’s career as an actress was heavily controlled by her mother, Debra. Everything had to be perfect. Everything had to be done her way. Her daughter had to be the best of the best; the actress that Debra wanted to be herself. She did such things as take McCrudy to auditions even if she was under the weather; she insisted on giving her showers until she was 16; and she even had vaginal and breast exams performed on her daughter to check on cancerous lumps. McCrudy called it an invasive, out-of-body experience. Most notably, in her book, McCrudy recalled the day her mother began restricting her calories and encouraged her to become anorexic so that McCrudy could appear younger and land more jobs. After her mother died in 2013, McCrudy began struggling with bulimia and binge-eating. She also became addicted to alcohol.

Earlier, I included a quote by McCrudy where she said that people who’d gone through parental abuse would understand what she’d gone through. One person that definitely understands where McCrudy is coming from is Elle King, Rob Schneider’s daughter and the woman behind ‘Ex’s & Oh’s’. She recently appeared on Bunnie XO’s ‘Dumb Blonde’ podcast where she opened up about her relationship with her famous father, including her opinions of his outspoken views on drag and the LGBT community. King said, ‘I go for like four or five years without talking to my dad. I disagree with a lot of the things that he says. You’re talking out of your a** and you’re talking shit about drag and, you know, anti-gay rights. And it’s like, get f*cked.’

Of her relationship with her father in her younger years, King said, ‘I was like a really, really heavy child. My dad sent me to fat camp… and then I got in trouble one year because I sprained my ankle and didn’t lose any weight. I had already started getting tattooed and it was like 108 degrees. So I had to wear sweaters because my dad was very anti-tattoos or any form of self-expression.’

Now, as a 30-something year old adult woman who’s a mother herself to her son, Lucky, King said she had no interest in mending her relationship with her father and doesn’t want to be associated with him in any way. She told Bunnie XO, ‘He’s just not nice. You can want someone to change so much. You can’t control anyone else’s actions and you can’t control people’s feelings. All you can control is how you react and what you do with your feelings.’

Schneider, in turn, almost immediately responded to his daughter’s claims of his bad parenting in an interview with Tucker Carlson, and asked his daughter’s forgiveness. He said, ‘I just want to tell my daughter: Elle, I love you, and I wish I was the father in my 20s that you needed, and clearly I wasn’t. I hope you can forgive me for my shortcomings. I love you completely. I love you entirely, and I just want you to be well and happy with you and your beautiful baby, Lucky. I wish you the best. I feel terrible, and I just want you to know that I don’t take anything you say personally. My heart is your home, and a home is a place [that] when you go there, they have to let you in. I love you, and I’m sorry that you’re having to deal with this, but this is a great opportunity because we could talk about families — I mean, show me a perfect family out there and I’ll be shocked.’ He continued, ‘All I want for her is to be happy and to heal from this,” he continued. “I apologize completely for and accept responsibility for not being the parent that I am now with my new kids. She didn’t get that, and I missed a lot.’

King previously opened up to People Magazine about making an effort to rebuild a relationship with her father for the sake of her younger sisters, as she wanted to be close to them. She said, ‘We both have grown up a lot. And you realize what’s important. Him having children — I wanted my sisters to have good memories of me from their childhood when they grew. Family really is so important. So through that, me just kind of showing up and trying to be good for them, really made it easy because there were no bad motives. When it’s about the kids, the bulls— kind of goes away. I love him. Like, every other day I’ll get texts in all caps of like, ‘Your record’s gonna change the world! I can’t wait for your fans to hear what you’ve made! I love you! I’m so proud of you!’ And that’s a beautiful, wonderful thing.’

This is a big jump as to what she said of her relationship with her father just recently. And you might be scratching your heads out of confusion, but it’s actually not that difficult to comprehend. It’s not weird or out of the blue that King had a close relationship with her father, or tried to have a close relationship with him at least, and now she wants nothing to do with him. I relate to it. I’ve seen it myself; not in my own family, but my husband’s.

My husband had a similar relationship with his father that King had with Schneider. His father wasn’t a nice person; still isn’t. With that said, my husband didn’t have an ideal childhood. It was lonely, hostile, volatile, and he practically had to raise himself. He once told me that he didn’t know what the true meaning of family was until he became a part of mine. And just like King, my husband has two young half sisters. We’d maintained a somewhat distant relationship with his father for the sake of the girls over the years. We desperately wanted to be a part of the girls’ lives. My husband was still hoping his father would change his ways for the better, even after our son was born. But then, something happened between him and his father that made my husband cut ties with him completely. The best way I could describe is King’s testament on wanting someone to change but not being able to control them or their feelings. My husband finally put his foot down and controlled his own.

It’s true what they say; the family you create is more important than the family you come from. More than anything, my husband wants to be a good father to our son. My sisters-in-law are old enough now for us to have a separate relationship that has nothing to do with their parents. I’d previously written an entire article on how it’s not a right, but a privilege for a parent to be in their adult child’s life, and that’s what it all comes down to. My father-in-law doesn’t have the privilege to be in his adult son’s life, nor in our son’s life. In my husband’s own words, our son needs to be shown love and nurturing; something that my father-in-law isn’t capable of giving by any means. Lucky for him, he’s a father to two daughters, so he still has a chance to be a different father to them than he was to my husband. He has a second and third chance with them, and that’s a beautiful thing.

From what I gather, Rob Schneider and my father-in-law are very similar people; I’d say they’re almost the same. There’s one major difference, however, which is that Schneider took full accountability for his shortcomings as a father to his eldest daughter. Now I don’t know if going public about it was the right thing to do, as something like this should always be handled privately, but it’s definitely a start. Then again, who am I to even say anything? I’m writing about my own sh*t.

If we go back to Jennette McCrudy’s story of parental abuse, we understand that she’d endured a different outcome than the one Elle King did or the one my husband did. Unlike King and my husband, McCrudy didn’t understand that her mom’s doing was toxic or abusive. She just thought it was normal parental behaviour and a normal mother-daughter relationship. Years after her mother’s death, McCrudy started going to therapy to understand the extent of her mother’s abuse. She opened up to Teen Vogue, ‘My first therapist had suggested that my mom was abusive, and that actual day I quit [going to that therapist]. I couldn’t face the idea that my mom wasn’t this beautiful angel that I had made her out to be, and that I think I needed her to be, frankly, as a coping mechanism.’

The abuse she’d endured at the hands of her mother impacted McCrudy’s romantic relationships as an adult. She said, ‘The idea of attachment theory is that whatever your relationship with your primary caregiver was like as a child, you’ll find partners that kind of reflect that same dynamic. So I needed to be watchful for narcissistic types and just anybody that was in the realm of what my mother was like.’

This aspect of life can look different on different people, and it’s not to say that McCrudy is wrong. My husband, on the other hand, was affected in adulthood in not only his romantic relationships with me, but his relationships with others. My husband lacked love and nurturing at home, so he looked for it in other places. It affected his relationships with others immensely. He loved and cared too much; to the point where I’d seen people use and abuse his kindness. He doesn’t give up on people easily. In hindsight, that’s the main reason why our relationship has lasted. And The toxicity and abuse that my husband endured as a child didn’t end at childhood. It continued on into adulthood.

Clips of Elle King speaking of her relationship with her father emerged online. One comment in particular read, ‘I bet she wasn’t complaining when he gave her money.’ Please believe me when I say, people who come from such a toxic home environment would much rather not be showered with money, but with love instead. It’s better to be rich in love than rich in wealth – always. That’s something that people who hadn’t gone through such trauma or don’t know anyone closely who’d gone through such trauma would ever understand.

My husband and I are new parents. We have a 21 month old boy. As parents, we’re here to break the cycle. It’s especially the case for my husband. My husband doesn’t want our son to know what it’s like to endure the toxicity that he witnessed at home. He doesn’t want our son to feel unloved; like he’s a burden; like nothing he’ll ever do is good enough. Instead, my husband wants our son to have the experiences he didn’t get to have. He wants him to have a present father. He wants him to know that his father loves him and will always be there for him. My husband’s main priority now is our son, and I love it for both of them.

If you’re someone that’s experienced toxicity and abuse from a parent or a parental figure, my heart is with you. I understand you. I empathize with you. Just know that you don’t have to stay angry. Instead, do better. Be better. Be Bold. Be Brave. Be the best version of yourself. Live your life to the fullest, for it’s a waste to try to live YOUR life based on others’ vision for you, even if it’s your parent.