“I have to receive that and listen to that,” The View co-host said after revealing the “very painful” criticism from her 19-year-old daughter — and why she felt that way.
Sometimes it’s not easy to hear criticism about parenting choices from your own kids, but that’s the beauty of teenagers — they’ll often tell you anyway. The View’s Sunny Hostin found that out the hard way when her 19-year-old told her what she really thought.
Hostin was speaking as one of the guests at “Reinvention & Renewal: Living Fully in Midlife,” a 92NY panel on Sunday alongside Tembi Locke and Allison Gilbert, as covered by People, when she opened up about having to deal with feedback from her children.
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“Being totally candid, my daughter told me a couple months ago, ‘You weren’t always the best mother,'” she shared, which she said was “very painful” and, in her initial instinct about her parenting, unwarranted.
She said she asked daughter Paloma why she felt that way and the response was, “Because you weren’t there.”
Hostin had to admit the response took her aback. “it was interesting because I never missed a dance performance. I never missed a basketball game. I never missed a track meet. I never missed a piano performance,” she said.
“But for her, that wasn’t showing up,” the legal analyst explained. To her daughter, “showing up was being there at home instead of perhaps being at a speaking engagement, perhaps traveling for a book tour.”
It was more than just rearranging a busy schedule to hit the highlights of her child’s life that mattered, she was told, explaining to the audience that when her daughter’s first boyfriend broke up with her, she wasn’t physically there to offer any comfort.
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“And to her, that meant I wasn’t a great mom all the time, and I have to receive that and listen to that,” she conceded.
On the other hand, “My son thinks I’m amazing,” Hostin added. Hostin shares Paloma and Gabriel, 23, with her husband Emmanuel.
One of those life highlights Hostin has talked about was when she was present to drop Paloma off at college last year, becoming an empty nester for the first time. “I’m a mess, I’m in grief,” Hostin admitted on The View’s Behind the Table podcast last September.
Hostin was also absent from The View in May 2025 when she took a week off to attend Gabriel’s graduation from Harvard. “We knew you could, and now you did,” Goldberg told him from the show per Hello! Magazine. “So yay for you!”
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And while she may not always be able to be there for her kids physically, Hostin has made it such a point to be present in their lives that she’s been known to take a phone call from them live on the air with The View.
Shortly after Paloma went away to college, Sunny interrupted the start of one show to make sure a crew member had her phone so they could monitor to see if her daughter was trying to get a hold of her. She even once took a phone call while guest Arnold Schwarzenegger was on the show, promoting his new book, as chronicled by Monsters & Critics at the time.
No one can argue that Hostin isn’t always there for her kids, but sometimes it may not enough to be reachable by phone. Sometimes her daughter wants her mom to be there there.
