Actor, screenwriter and all-round superstar Mindy Kaling recently sat down with Meghan Markle for a chat on Markle’s and made some revealing comments about being single.
Kaling, 43, who has typically been very quiet about her private life talked about the stigma associated with being a single mother.
Kaling has two children, four-year-old Kit and two-year-old Spencer, whose privacy she is fiercely protective over. She doesn’t share photos of their faces on her social media channels and has never revealed who their father is.
Despite having the kind of career that would be the envy of most, Kaling revealed that there were still people who worried about her single status.
"You get this feeling from people that... your existence as a single woman at a party, you feel like you're changing the vibe. Everyone's worried for me or sad for me, and they want to set me up with some loser they know," Kaling said.
"They think, 'Oh there's no happiness greater than a life in the bed of a man who loves you'. I think that could be great, but I also promise you that I'm happy and I'm not just saying that."
Kaling also references her own heritage for why she may have experienced such pressures.
“There’s a whole Indian angle on it, too, to choose to have your own children by yourself,” she said.
Even though the actor hasn’t visited India since she was 14 she admitted to worrying about casting shame on that side of her family.
“You start thinking, like, ‘OK, what do my relatives in India think about this? Is this causing tremendous shame upon our family, that I made this decision?’ I can make myself go crazy if I think too much about those things,” she said.
As Kaling reveals, when she was younger she hoped she would have a traditional family set-up.
“I’m a highly traditional person, I came from a really happy nuclear family … I wanted that for myself, plus more,” she explained. “Growing up, I used to write in journals like, ‘I’m going to be married to a guy named Josh and we’re going to have five children and I’m gonna start having kids when I’m 24’.”
She goes on to reflect on how not having a father will affect her children.
“The idea of like, ‘Why not me? Why am I not the person that got married?’ I think that’s harder to talk about,” Kaling said. “I’m still examining it. It makes me emotional . . . I do know that that would be so valuable for my kids, you know, that they have a dad. It wasn’t our lot, our family’s lot in life, and I do think about it with wistfulness and then also fear what will they think when they get older?”
Kaling of course is far from the only single mother juggling a family with work. The latest census showed that there were in Australia, with the vast majority (81.8 per cent) being single mothers.
In Kaling’s case, she admits she is very privileged to have the sort of financial security she has, as well as a strong support system around her that allows her to focus on her family and career.
"My father and my stepmother are picking up my daughter from camp today. And I have a nanny that lives with me. I have my community. I also waited until I was in my late 30s to have children because I knew I needed the resources to do it comfortably and not everyone has those abilities," she said.
"I'm okay. I'm a rich, successful woman with nice clothes and a nice family, I'm okay."
Saman Shad is a freelance writer.
