Hello World, just a little prematurely!

 In conversations about workplace inclusion, attention usually turns to gender, culture, or identity. Yet one of the least visible dimensions of diversity is caregiving, particularly when it arrives in forms few people expect or understand.

In a recent interview, global icon Priyanka Chopra spoke about the premature birth of her daughter and the long months spent navigating the uncertainty of neonatal intensive care. Her reflections briefly opened a window into a world that most people never see. For many families, the arrival of a child is imagined as celebration followed by adjustment. But when a baby arrives far too early, the experience can instead become an abrupt immersion into a medical landscape few anticipate.

India records ~ 3 million premature births yearly > any other country in the world. Among the smallest of these are what doctors call ‘micro-preemies,’ born weighing barely 600 to 800 grams. At that stage of development, many of the most basic organs are still WIP including vital functions like breathing, feeding, maintaining a stable heart rhythm etc. Parents face steep unexpected learning curves. In the absence of a handbook, many become accidental students of neonatology (a qualification they hadn’t planned to earn): airway instability, cardiac irregularities, feeding complications, or disorders like ROP, which famously affected Stevie Wonder. The internet contains endless advice on parenting. Curiously, very little prepares someone for raising a 700-something-gram human-being connected to a constellation of monitors.

Alongside this, mothers face another invisible battle, recovering from childbirth navigating postpartum physical, emotional realities. No time to heal. Grief, anxiety coexist with caregiving demands + financial strain of prolonged NICU stays. Life rarely returns to normal. The DSLR waits to be taken out. The bike waits to rake dirt again. None of this is visible in obvious ways.

Outside the hospital, life rarely returns to anything BAU. Evenings once spent reading, travelling, practicing music, or writing blogs. Shrink. Now, the DSLR waits to be taken out. The bike waits to rake dirt again. The half-finished novel remains bookmarked. WhatsApp replies are no longer instantaneous. Social plans are postponed more often. Bucket lists quietly remain packed. None of this is visible in obvious ways. 

Even well-educated circles have limited knowledge, and so rarely understand, and yet frequently reassure: “Humne bhi bacche paale hain” (We’ve raised children too), “Bacche to apne aap bade ho jaate hain” (Children grow up on their own), “You’re being overly anxious”, or “Just hire help!”. Premature parenting is an entirely different syllabus. Support systems too behave unpredictably during prolonged crises, some grandparents step up in extraordinary ways while others unceremoniously withdraw, distancing themselves from the labour. Medically knowledgeable paid-childcare is difficult to find and often prohibitively expensive.

Extreme prematurity is only one example of a broader category of invisible caregiving responsibilities. Across many households, employees quietly navigate demanding situations and chronic conditions. Caregiving exists on a spectrum of complexity and visibility, and the burden rarely falls evenly, family size, proximity to relatives, and household composition all matter. Because these realities are episodic, private, and difficult to quantify, they rarely appear in diversity frameworks. Yet they shape how people organise their time, energy, and attention in ways workplaces seldom recognise.

In many discussions around International Women's Day, one statistic oft-appears: only ~20–30% of Indian women remain in the workforce after childbirth. The reasons are complex, but childcare responsibilities and limited support systems play a significant role, especially when caregiving needs are medically complex. Yet, caregiving intensity of any kind remains largely absent from conversations about workplace inclusion. 

Organizations speak extensively about identity, representation, and culture, but far less about the invisible work employees carry. Recognising it is not about lowering expectations or special compensation. Many (as we often notice) continue striving to meet professional responsibilities, often through careful coordination that others may never see. Others quietly reduce hours, step back temporarily, or leave, a form of survivorship bias rarely acknowledged.

Sometimes the only visible signals are small: an email at 4 am, a polite decline of a late call, or a request to shift a meeting, moments that may appear routine but reflect a life being managed with unusual precision outside the office.

This is where leadership empathy matters. Leaders, managers, colleagues who pause before judgment, listen without assumptions and respond with understanding, create an environment where employees feel trusted rather than scrutinized. The most meaningful support often comes through measured flexibility, trust where uncertainty exists, and the willingness to assume colleagues may be navigating circumstances not immediately visible.

Workplace wellbeing, after all, is rarely built through policies alone. It is shaped through everyday interactions, the tone of a conversation, the benefit of the doubt, the quiet understanding that life outside work does not always unfold predictably.

Caregiving responsibilities rarely announce themselves. Their demands are often private, their resilience quiet. Yet when organisations recognise this reality, even without fully seeing it, conversations about workplace inclusion begin to expand beyond identity alone. They begin to acknowledge something equally real but far less visible: the lives people are managing outside the office.

Look around, chances are, someone in almost every team is quietly managing a version of this story.