Mama June Shannon Vows to Raise Anna’s Daughter Kaitlyn Like a ‘A-B Student’ and Break Family’s Teen Mom ‘Curse’
While trying her best to do right by Anna and Kaitlyn, Mama June butted heads with her husband Justin Stroud about the best way to go about parenting
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Mama June Shannon is putting her foot down when it comes to raising her late daughter Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell’s child Kaitlyn.
On the Friday, June 5 episode of Mama June: Family Crisis, the Shannon family felt the tragedy of Anna’s death. After paying tribute to Anna at a memorial service, Mama June confessed to feeling grief like she’d never felt before and that the pain of losing her daughter didn’t “f—ing compare.”
In an effort to honor Anna’s wishes regarding the custody of Kaitlyn, Mama June got ready to speak with an attorney to fight for guardianship after realizing that the paperwork was never signed. After hearing rumors that the father of Anna’s other daughter Kylee was planning on suing for custody of both girls, the Shannon family matriarch told cameras she was prepared for battle.
“Anna wanted Kaitlyn to stay with her biological family,” she explained. “And I’m going to fight to my last breath till I don’t have any more fight in me to make sure that is how it works.”
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Eventually, Mama June was able to get an emergency custody order and enrolled Kaitlyn in school. She and her husband Justin Stroud took her back-to-school shopping for her first day of class. While picking out what was suitable attire for an 11-year-old girl, the couple began to butt heads after Justin allowed her to try on a piece of clothing Mama June didn’t approve of.
“I’m trying to raise maybe an A-B student, sometimes Cs, and not a teen mom,” she told cameras. “I did that with myself, and I did that with Pumpkin, and I did that with Anna. So I want to break that curse.”
Back home, things between Mama June and Justin reached a boiling point when he attempted to compromise with Kaitlyn about her bedtime. After Mama June instructed her to take a bath and go straight to bed, Kaitlyn asked if she could watch “a little bit of TV and get a little ice cream” after she cleaned herself up and got ready for bed.
When Justin agreed, Mama June shouted, “Well don’t listen to him! I’ve done told you to go to bed.”
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Kaitlyn soon after hurried to her room and Justin didn’t take kindly to Mama June’s outburst. He confronted her about how those statements could hurt Kaitlyn’s respect for him while Mama June claimed he let her get away with whatever she wanted.
“I was able to make her take a bath, clean her room, if she had homework I could have got her to do her homework just by being able to empathize with her a little bit,” he said, adding that Mama June’s parenting style was too harsh.
Eventually, Justin dumped a basket of dirty laundry by her feet and claimed she could do her own chores because he couldn’t “have an opinion around here.”
Mama June and Justin’s back and forth on Kaitlyn’s parenting didn’t stop there. The next day, Justin asked Mama June to have some “sympathy” for Kaitlyn after losing her mother when she confronted him about buying her ice cream. He then hit back at her claims that she wanted to provide Kaitlyn with a sense of “normalcy.”
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“Your normalcy is ‘I run this s—. Y’all are on my time, and y’all do what I say,’ and nobody else has a say so,” he said. “You sit there, you want me to raise a child, but you want to tell the child to her face that I don’t have any say so.”
In a conversation with cameras, Justin opened up about how it’s been “hard enough for me to swallow” that Mama June opted to leave his name off of Kaitlyn’s custody papers.
“I don’t have a say so in this house. Like, do you want to raise Kaitlyn all by yourself?” he asked rhetorically. “I do all of these things that it requires of a parent to do for a child. I’m not just your driver, because that’s how I feel. I’m just here because it’s convenient.”
Justin told Mama June about the responsibilities he’s not only taken on around the house but also in her family members’ lives. Soon after, the argument evolved into the issues surrounding their marriage when Justin confessed he didn’t feel appreciated and his contributions weren’t taken seriously.
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After suggesting he leave her if he felt “unhappy,” Mama June brought up the idea of marriage counseling which infuriated him even more.
“F— you and counseling!” he yelled. “I’m not going to keep investing into somebody who thinks she’s above everybody else.”
