The devastating truth is that broken, bedraggled Britney is her own worst ... trends now

Who would ever let their child be a star?

Britney Spears may be the ultimate example of such exploitation, but she is hardly alone.

We're in a moment of cultural reckoning with childhood fame and its monstrous costs: From the shocking docuseries 'Quiet on the Set' to Jennette McCurdy's runaway bestselling memoir 'I'm Glad My Mom Died' to Justin Bieber's breakdown this week — and his naming as part of the ongoing Diddy scandal — and Drew Barrymore's desperate on-air search for the mother she never had (calling Kamala Harris 'Momala' this week), we have no shortage of human carnage on display.

Who among Drew's generation can ever forget those infamous photos of her as a small child at Studio 54, lighting Stephen King's cigarette or sitting disconsolate at a table full of cocktails, head in her hand?

It's understandable that Drew's such a close talker when she's interviewing someone. Less so, perhaps, that she often looks like she'd like to cut a slit in any given subject's skin and crawl inside them for warmth and comfort, but hey — she's intact, a survivor, and that's no small thing.

Britney Spears, though. This latest crisis, dragged out of the Chateau Marmont nearly naked and barefoot, bedraggled and teary, is hardly the post-conservatorship victory we all rooted for.

It is abundantly clear that those who argued to #FreeBritney, myself included, were very wrong. But after her trial became an international cause celébre, after her tearful testimony about her father controlling every aspect of her life down to her birth control — well, what judge would ever sign off on reinstating a conservatorship for Britney now?

Her public disintegration seems precipitated, perhaps, by two major life events: Reportedly paying her estranged father's $2 million in legal costs last week — this after he paid himself $6 million as head of her conservatorship — and the finalization on Thursday, the night of her breakdown, of her divorce from Sam Asghari.

Asghari was supposed to be Britney's happy ending, the man she walked off into the proverbial sunset with, per her New York Times bestselling memoir.

As for that memoir, wishfully titled 'The Woman in Me': It is a strange book, the rantings of a rage-filled author who does not know or understand herself, who discusses — to an extent — her heavy drug use and losing custody of her sons, but who takes zero responsibility for her life or the wreck it has become.

Like Drew Barrymore, she was raised by a mother who treated her like a friend, who took a 13-year-old Britney to bars where they would drink daiquiris and smoke cigarettes.

When she was signed to a record deal at 15 years old, Britney was packaged as a hypersexualized Catholic schoolgirl in her first video (for a hit called, with the subtlety of an anvil, '. . . Baby One More Time') and photographed at 17 years old for the cover of Rolling Stone in her own bedroom, clutching a Teletubby while reclining in a bra and underwear.