I Hate the Mom That Covid Has Made Me

In her personal essay “I Hate the Mom That Covid Has Made Me,” Kristen Howerton, a marriage and family psychotherapist and mother to two teenage boys, expresses concern not only with her sons’ emotional health but with her own her parenting style during COVID. From encouraging freedom pre-Covid-19, she confesses to having become a mom who spies on her children to make sure they’re sticking to pandemic protocols. The Covid-19 personal essay becomes the battleground for parental guilt and self-questions about proper mothering. She worries over how in “a time that is supposed to be punctuated by detaching, redefining themselves and spending time with peers, a whole generation of teens are stuck at home with their parents” (Howerton 19). Although she is uncertain as to the consequences of these issues, Howerton tries to make up for a loss of autonomy by offering them more freedom in other respects and looks forward to being the mother that advocates for their social life instead of hindering it. In this short essay, she confronts how fear and COVID create contradictions in her parenting, and in the process presses the importance of encouraging teenage agency during a period when it is being severely limited.