Whitney Houston's mother has told People Magazine that she questions her skills as a parent and wonders if she could have saved her superstar daughter from the drug use that played a role in her death.

"Was I a good mother?" Cissy Houston, 79, was quoted as telling the celebrity magazine in an advance excerpt released on Wednesday from the magazine's Friday edition.

"I still wonder if I could have saved her somehow. But there's no book written on how to be a parent. You do the best you can."

Whitney Houston drowned accidentally in a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub on Feb. 11, 2012, after taking cocaine and after a well-chronicled battle with drug addiction. She was 48.

Houston talked to People about her daughter's personal life and career while promoting her upcoming memoir, Remembering Whitney.

In the memoir, Cissy Houston says she was not aware of the early "partying" days of her daughter, known to the family as "Nippy."