How Horror Movies Helped Me Grow Up in a Single-Parent Home

First of all, before I start this, I just want to point out that my childhood, despite various factors, was still really great and I’m truly grateful that I grew up the way that I did. My circumstances allowed me to learn a lot and grow to be fiercely independent, and much of that is still something that I carry with me. But the reality is that I did grow up in a home with only a single mom (for most of the time), which meant my childhood was a lot different than many kids I grew up with. And at times, I felt like the odd girl out—but all that changed when I really got into horror.

I spent the first 14 years of my life living in a trailer park in Des Plaines, Illinois, practically a stone’s throw away from the O’Hare International Airport. We didn’t have a fancy house, but I did grow up with a roof over my head in a community that was very close at the time, which I appreciated. My mom, being the sole breadwinner with the responsibility of raising her daughter on her own, was often forced to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet, and that meant I was often shuffled around from babysitter to babysitter just so she could be able to work.

But one thing we always seemed to find time for was watching movies—specifically, horror movies. From a very early age, my mom (because babysitters could be damned expensive for a single parent to afford) would cart me to the movies with her. In fact—and I may be aging myself here—the first movie I remember seeing at the drive-in was Blazing Saddles, and the first horror movie I can remember watching in a theater was An American Werewolf in London. Appropriate movies to bring a toddler to? Probably not, but I might not be sitting here today if my mom hadn’t taken me to see them.

At a very early age, I became obsessed with horror movies, particularly ones with vampires and werewolves. I can remember watching Salem’s Lot at age five, peeking from behind my blanket whenever Barlow’s piercing visage came into frame, and while I was terrified, I was also entranced by the unholy creature. The Thing was another movie I saw right around that time, and not only did it fuel my distrust of dogs at that age (I was attacked by a neighbor’s dog the very same summer we rented The Thing), but I was also convinced after seeing Rob Bottin’s mind-blowing effects that not only were aliens real, but that they really did exist in Antarctica and it was only a matter of time before we were all dead. I also remember bawling my eyes out at the age of six during the end of The Howling because I couldn’t believe Dee Wallace had just killed herself. I still don’t know if I can explain it now, but it all affected me very deeply.

Throughout the years, as my love for horror continued to grow, my mom and I kept heading out to see the latest horror movie every weekend (depending on her work schedule), and when she happened to have a whole weekend off, that meant we could go to the drive-in and see two great movies on a Saturday night. We didn’t often get to connect in other ways, but seeing films was our way of spending time together doing something we both loved. And had it not been for her willingness to let her monster-obsessed daughter’s freak flag fly, I’m not sure what my outlet as a kid would have been.

Whenever I happened to be over at my babysitter’s house (whichever one it was at that time), I always talked them into letting me watch horror movies. One babysitter, Judy, who took care of me for years and was the reason I was able to get my very first Cabbage Patch Kid during their heyday, was the sweetest woman in the world, but knew nothing about horror movies. Because of Judy, I got away with watching Children of the Corn, Sleepaway Camp, The Burning, and the very first A Nightmare on Elm Street (which my mom had deemed as being “too early” for me to watch, since I was still only seven years old at the time, so you can imagine how that conversation went the next morning when my mom came to pick up her traumatized kid).

I also spent a lot of time at a sitter that had two kids the same age as me, and who also didn’t really monitor what her kids watched. The three of us got away with a lot during those days (we may or may not have rented The Texas Chain Saw Massacre when we were eight, but I’ll never officially cop to that, even now, for fear of Lea’s wrath). For several years, I spent countless nights sleeping over at my (still) best friend Jenna’s house, where I would torture her with endless horror movies, especially repeat viewings of Fright Night, Terror in the Aisles, Alien, The Lost Boys, and Clue, which, although it isn’t horror, could still be quoted in its entirety to this day because of my ridiculous viewing habits.

Horror was my only real constant in a world filled with variables, and for many years, these movies, characters, and creatures were my way of connecting with my mother when her schedule wouldn’t let us be together for real.

Horror also helped me while growing up by showing me that as different as I may have felt, there were other kids out there like me. Whenever I had to draw a picture of my family in class, most years I was the only student with just one parent in my drawing, and it always made me feel weird. Never mind the fact that I grew up barely lower middle class (we often went without groceries and other necessities if things got too tight), you can’t imagine the jokes I’d hear about my lack of a dad growing up. Suffice to say, kids are dumb, but horror was the one place I often found kids who were “just like me” (so to speak).

We began to see more single parents in horror movies somewhat during the 1970s, but especially throughout the 1980s. The ideals of the all-American family were dissolving as divorce rates were rising, and society began to see a surge of parents having to step up and assume both parental roles in their homes.

While I’m not exactly sure how many other film genres explored that parental trend thematically (I’m not quoting any of this as science, just from my own personal experience), the breakdown of the nuclear family was certainly prevalent in horror, and that comforted me in a lot of ways. In fact, it’s probably the reason why some of my favorite horror movies to this day—Fright Night, The Lost Boys, A Nightmare on Elm Street parts 1 and 3, Carrie, Friday the 13: The Final Chapter, The Fog, and The Exorcist, to name just a few—tackle the single-parent household head-on.

Not only did these films entertain me, but they often also gave me an idea of what my mom was going through while trying to raise me: the sheer desperation you see on Adrienne Barbeau’s face and hear in her voice in The Fog as she helplessly watches the titular force consume the home her young son is trapped inside, the extremely brutal and tragic way that Margaret White dealt with her daughter’s kinetic abilities in Carrie, or even the lengths Chris MacNeil went to in order to save her daughter Regan from the evil force consuming her in The Exorcist. I found solace in these characters, because even if she wasn’t always around to say so, it helped reaffirm (in my head, anyway) that my mom really loved me.

These horror movies also showed me how kids who grew up just like me, often fending for themselves, could prevail against the odds. Nancy outsmarted and outmaneuvered Freddy, Sam and Michael Emerson took on a pack of vampires (they may have had some help from their grandfather and the Frog brothers, but still), Tommy and Trish Jarvis put a (temporary) end to Jason Voorhees’ reign of terror, and Charley Brewster destroyed the dangerous vampire next door.

I saw these examples as a kid and realized that regardless of what the odds were, I wasn’t going to let life get the best of me. I was just as good as those kids with two parents, and even though I didn’t have both a mother and father to dote on me when I was growing up, I still had one mom who was willing to do whatever it took to raise me the right way. I didn’t fully comprehend these cinematic links back then, nor did I really even notice them at the time, but they’re certainly apparent to me now. I’m grateful that I could count on horror movies when I was growing up, and that it was my mom who introduced me to them in the first place.