Britney’s back, but is it all happening too fast? Friends of the Spears family think so, and they are speaking out on what they perceive as Jive Records’ hast to shoo the multiplatinum-selling pop singer back into the studio before she’s had time to recover from a year of custody disputes, tabloid headlines, and emotional breakdowns.

“Britney has been going to the studio ever since she got out of the hospital, but it was more a therapeutic exercise than anything,” says a source close to the Spears family tell MSNBC. “The people who really care about her knew that even though she wants to be the pop star she used to be, it won’t be good for her. Even her label, Jive, understood that. It’s a little unsettling to us that they’d want her to get back to recording so fast.”

Britney Spears will release her fifth studio album, Circus, on December 2, which is also her 27th birthday.