The Road Ahead for Bobbi Kristina

Feb. 14, 2012— -- Despite her rich musical lineage, the path ahead for Bobbi Kristina Brown won't be easy.

For better or worse, the 18-year-old with musical aspirations of her own will undoubtedly be compared to her mother, the incomparable Whitney Houston.

"There is no way people are not going to compare her to her mother -- not to Rihanna, to her mother -- and if she doesn't sound on par with her mother or better, people are going to say horrible things," Billy Johnson Jr., a senior editor at Yahoo! Music, told ABCNews.com. "The public scrutiny is so great."

The only child of Houston and singer Bobby Brown had been in Los Angeles with her mother to attend pre-Grammy festivities and was staying at the Beverly Hilton Hotel when Houston was found dead Saturday night in the bathtub of her hotel room.

Whitney Houston's brother-in law, Billy Watson, told ABCNews.com that Bobbi Kristina was "doing OK" after she "broke down" over the weekend and had to be taken to the hospital twice for stress and anxiety.

Bobbi Kristina was thought to be in New Jersey with her mother's family, but the Bobby Brown camp now says she is still in California with her father and other siblings.

Bobby Brown, who canceled his tour to be with his daughter, has five other children from other relationships.

"My daughter Bobbi-Kristina is doing much better," Bobby Brown said this evening in a written statement. "We continue to provide love and support to Bobbi-Kristina. She is dealing with the tragedy of her mother's death and would prefer to do it outside of the public eye. I ask again that our privacy be respected."

Reports of tension between Bobby Brown and his ex-wife's family about attending the Houston funeral, scheduled for Saturday, were not accurate, a source close to Bobby Brown told ABC News. TMZ reported that Brown was being frozen out of going to the service by some of Whitney Houston's family members, but the source told ABC News that Brown has been contacted about going.

On the family's reality-TV show, "Being Bobby Brown," it was Bobbi Kristina Brown who often acted more like the parent in the often-erratic relationship between her mother and father. Sources close to the family say that Houston's well-known battles with addiction were also a heavy burden for her daughter to bear.

"It's very common, when a parent has an addiction, for the child to be parentalized," Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of HLN's "Dr. Drew," told ABC News. "It's almost a survival mode to try and control and maintain that addictive parent safely, the child takes on the role of parent or parents."

When stories surfaced last year that Bobbi Kristina Brown might have started using drugs herself, it was her father who came to her defense with a strong denial, telling media outlets, "She doesn't do that."

Drew says Brown should be careful about how she handles the inevitable fallout from her mother's death.

"When people are stressed, when they turn to substances, is when they can turn the switch on for addiction," he said. "That is my greatest fear for Bobbi Kristina."

Mother and daughter had begun working together on songs in the recording studio, according to Us Weekly.

With Houston's death Saturday, the world is eager to see -- and hear -- more from Bobbi-Kris, as she is known to her family.

"She idolized Whitney," a source told US Weekly, and "wanted to be just like her mother."

Brown comes from a musical family. Her father is a former member of New Edition, her grandmother is gospel legend Cissy Houston and her cousin is 1960s pop icon Dionne Warwick.

"People want to know if she has the gift," Yahoo! Music's Johnson said.

Brown posted a video in September of her singing a capella Adele's "Someone Like You" on her Twitter page.

Watch: Bobbie Kristina Sing's "Someone Like You"

Johnson thought the aspiring singer had shown some improvement since the last time he heard her, performing alongside her mother on "Good Morning America" in 2009.

But Us Weekly's senior editor Ian Drew wasn't sure Brown had grown enough.

"She's not her mother, but she's not the worst singer either," he told ABCNews.com. "With the right songs and auto tuning anyone can be big.

"I would encourage her to take her time," Johnson said. "People said the same thing about Michael Jackson's children. She needs to sort out things in life a little bit more before rushing into this adult world.

"I think she's already dealing with a lot," he said, "and I hate to see her end up in a similar type of situation as her mother."