Parenting in Pandemic
Watching the sunset over the Santa Cruz boardwalk. Finding a picture-perfect spot for our first family portrait in front of the iconic Golden Gate bridge. These were the moments I’d been anticipating for months — the moments that would make up the perfect staycation spring break for me, my wife, Chaitra (GSB ‘19), and our four-month old baby, Kiaan.
Instead, we are confined to our Escondido Village home, and we haven’t seen another person in over 20 days. With just a series of quick events, the holiday plans we’d dreamed up — and Kiaan’s first months of life — look nothing like we could have imagined.
March 6, is a day I won’t soon forget, and not just because it was the day we received the first of many ominous emails from Stanford. It was also the day Kiaan turned 3 months old and Chaitra and I bid goodbye to my mother-in-law, who was here to support us with the newborn. As I drove my mother-in-law to the airport, and then watched her pass the security checkpoint, my heart was heavy. I wondered how we would take care of Kiaan until my mom visits us in April. Still, the anxiety paled in comparison to my excitement for the spring break we had planned.
The only class I had for the day was the last session of Winning Writing with Glenn Kramon. It wasn’t like any other class — students had lots of fun playing Shenanigans and Glenn leaned into the merriment, even wearing a costume while he taught. Halfway through the class, we received an email stating that the rest of the winter quarter classes would be virtual. I happily welcomed that news, seeing it as an opportunity to spend more time with Chaitra and Kiaan. It didn’t occur to me in my wildest dreams that this joyful session with Glenn would be the last in-person class I take at the GSB, and that Friday would be the last time I’m around my classmates on campus.
As global news and Stanford updates came in over the next few days, each signaling that the situation was intensifying, I felt many different emotions (and thanks to Touchy Feely, I’m able to identify them!). The student in me echoes the frustration and disappointment that my classmates feel about missing the in-person GSB experience. The parent in me is anxious, how my wife and I will take care of the baby while she gets back to work and I stay on zoom classes. There is uncertainty on when and what kind of job I’ll find in these turbulent times. Every day I fear of falling sick and being unable to provide care for our baby. All of these feelings are at a level I’ve never felt before.
In this chaos, my top priority is to protect my four-month-old son. Over the last three weeks of full-time parenting, we’ve locked ourselves up in the house and have been extremely cautious. Our daily walks around the beautiful Escondido Village parks have ended and Kiaan now stares at the park through the windows. My plans to meet classmates over dinner and introduce Kiaan have taken a back seat. We are isolating ourselves as much as we can — we can’t afford to fall sick and be quarantined with no family in the area to take care of Kiaan in the worst case. With the Indian airspace closed, traveling back home or having my mom visit to support us is not an option.
As I cope up with mixed emotions in these testing times, I’ve come to see the bright side of shelter-in-place and appreciate little things in life:
For one, I am grateful for this time to bond with Kiaan. I will graduate in few months and Chaitra will get back to work in a week. We both are staring down the barrel of a long journey of career hustle. I see this as an opportunity to spend quality time with the two most important people in my life. Last week my eyes were filled with tears of joy as I saw Kiaan rollover for the first time and try to crawl by grabbing the sheet underneath him. I’m enjoying these baby milestones and teaching him his first words — Amma (mom), Tatha (grandpa), Atha (aunt) — easy to pronounce two syllable words in my native language, Telugu. Now is the chance to spend time with loved ones and still save the world, before we go on to change the world.
Second, the respect I have for Chaitra grows with every day we shelter in place. The last few weeks have opened my eyes like nothing else. As I’m now home full time, I am humbled to understand the physical toll she went through caring for a baby when I was living the GSB life last quarter. Let me share some data that business students will appreciate. In the first three months, a baby needs: ~7 feedings a day (~45min ea.), ~8 diaper changes (~10min ea.), ~5 daytime naps (~30min ea.) and 5 activity sessions (~30min ea.) before falling asleep for a longer stretch in the night. That adds up to about 10–11 hours a day of caregiving, in addition to self-care, household duties and career responsibilities. That’s more like the number of hours a management consultant puts in, and the output is way better than slides: raising a human. I’m able to empathize with Chaitra as she seeks to balance career and caregiving. I realized I need to lean into caregiving, so that the two of us can have equally rewarding careers.
I am not sure when this pandemic will come to an end, or when we will be able to resume our “normal” life. But one thing is for certain: I will come out of this period as a better parent to Kiaan, and I will have a stronger, more equitable relationship with Chaitra. And for that I feel grateful.
