Mindy Kaling opened up about her most personal project yet: being a mother. The actor discussed parenting during the pandemic with Dr. Robin Berman, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA.
In the discussion, Kaling shared which philosophies inform her parenting style and she discusses that secret pregnancy.
Mindy Kaling Discusses Parenting Amid Pandemic and What She Thinks Makes a Good Parent.
Mindy Kaling, who is mother to Katherine “Kit” Swati , 3, and Spencer, 6-months, spoke to Dr. Berman at the #WOW2021 event on Thursday.
When asked about motherhood, Kaling said, “It’s a wonderful thing.”
“I don’t know if I recommend everyone having a secret pregnancy during a worldwide pandemic, but I will say I learned a lot from it,” the Mindy Project creator said. “Definitely like a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing.”
The comedy queen was also asked about what inspires her as a parent. She’s “inspired by parenting where the parents don’t scream. If you can not scream at your children, I think you’re a good parent.”
“To me, people who do not blow their top and also can stay on a consistent message,” Kaling added. “That to me, I’m the most impressed by those people.”
She also takes inspiration from her own parents who were immigrants and how she struggles to “eliminate all risk” for her kids when she knows better.
“My parents were immigrants, and they both worked, and they had a different kind of more immediate fear, which is like ‘Okay, we’ve got to put food on the table, build our careers over again,'” Kaling explained.
“I sometimes try to summon that feeling that my parents had, which is like, if I could just extricate myself a little bit from this, and allow them to experience risk, I think that would be the best for them.”
Kaling acknowledged her privilege and said that “being a single mom is not for everyone.” She said that it would have been virtually impossible for her to do it without the current full-time nanny she employs and other resources.
Further, she said that her retired father helps out by watching Kit and Spencer often.
“So we have this like little strange little house of like intergenerational, interracial people that are coming in and out to take care of everything,” she told Berman.
Kaling characterized her life now as “rich” as she enjoys reliving moments of her own childhood with her kids as they experience their own.
“If anything, [parenthood] has given me this flooding of memories of my childhood, I feel like I’m able to write even more,” she said of motherhood impacting her career. “That has been one of the most unexpected pleasures of having children, is being able to tap back into my own youth.”
Last November, Kaling revealed to Jenna Bush Hager how she managed to keep her pregnancy with Spencer under wraps. “With him, I would just occasionally have meetings,” she told the Today host. “So from here up, I would have to look nice, but I was just kind of like pregnant, and no one saw. And then I just thought, ‘What if I could get away with this?’”
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The Never Haver I Ever creator also shared that her daughter, who was 2-years-old at the time of Spencer’s birth, was not excited to meet her baby brother.
“She was very suspicious and worried about him at the beginning,” Kaling revealed.
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“Because I think in her mind, she thought that he would come out as a 2-year-old. She kept saying like, ‘I’m really worried about my toys.’ And then when she saw that he was just like this helpless, little, adorable blob, but like not interested in toys at all, she’s like, ‘Oh, I love this guy.’”
We are glad Kit has come around! We are also pleased to learn that Mindy Kaling thinks motherhood is “wonderful” even in these difficult circumstances!