In truth, I am a single mother. But I don’t feel alone at all in parenting my daughter. Krishna has a whole other side of her family who loves her, too. And so Krishna is parented by me, but also by her grandmother and aunts and cousins and uncles and friends.

Padma Lakshmi reframes “single motherhood” as a description of legal or romantic status rather than a measure of support. By emphasizing the presence of Krishna’s extended family—grandmother, aunts, cousins, uncles, and friends—she highlights parenting as a collective practice and challenges the cultural assumption that a child must be raised primarily by a two-parent nuclear household. The quote also functions as a statement of gratitude and resilience: she acknowledges the realities of parenting alone in some respects while insisting that emotional and practical labor can be shared across a wider kin network. It affirms community, intergenerational care, and chosen family as stabilizing forces in a child’s life.