Profile Story
By: Sydney Fischer
This past year has been difficult on many individuals, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic among other things. Whether people have run into issues with economic anxiety, the raising of a family, or having moved and still settling down, the pandemic raised one further level of concern. In the United States alone, over 45 million people have been impacted by testing positive from the virus, and caused over 700,000 fatalities, as explained by the New York Times. Over the span of less than two years, this is a statistic that is shocking to many.
Rebecca Zuckerman-Krueger, a 31-year-old woman residing in Chicago, has dealt with all of the following issues, and with great success. She, along with dealing with the effects of the pandemic, has experienced financial hardships and the importance of balancing time between her new family and her highly-demanding occupation. She has constantly pushed for a successful life for herself and, despite the challenges she faced, has managed to still do so. Throughout her journey in past years, she has also managed to move from Las Vegas into her current home in Chicago, adding on to another financial stress for her.
Rebecca, or Becca, attended the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Performing Arts Center, where she studied and performed musical theatre during her high school years. She enjoyed her time performing at this school and originally enrolled to be a musical theatre student at a Chicago university, Kendall College. However, she explains that her stage fright convinced her to stop continuing in this path.
“I was going to go to college for musical theatre but the stress of performing really got to me,” Becca states. “I would go home and bake and one day it hit me, “Hello! This is what you should be doing!” After her reflection during her college years, she met her husband while enrolling in her new culinary educational path. It was in this college that she also began forming more independence from her family.
Upon moving to Chicago, she reflects on how hard it was — and is — to be far away from family when her family is so important in her life. “Moving to Chicago was a huge change,” she says. “I hated, still hate, and will always hate living so far away from my family. Having my son and not having my parents be a 20 minute drive away can really get to me at times. I know that moving to Chicago was the right move for me as an individual, but I still get homesick for my family all the time.”
Her ability to change the outcome of her future career path so quickly led to the success she’s seen for years with her many occupations that have revolved around baking. However, working in such a high-paced and intense environment can be overbearing, no matter how much experience one has. While she enjoys being creative in her field, the anxiety that follows can get to her often. “I love the creativity,” Becca says. “I never have the same day twice. The most difficult part is never having an off switch. When you own your own business there’s always something you can be doing and that can be stressful and overwhelming at times.”
Unfortunately, the struggles of the Covid-19 pandemic only put more stress than she previously felt on both her and her family. The pandemic reported high levels of economic anxiety, as demonstrated from research conducted by the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health. This institute declared that economic anxiety and health anxiety have become almost equal as a result of Covid-19, along with them both being higher than general anxiety often witnessed nationwide.
This information aligns well with what Becca saw with herself and her family during the pandemic. “I worked as a Pastry Chef and an Event Coordinator when the pandemic hit,” Becca said. “My husband is also a Chef and we both got furloughed. We were scared and didn’t know what to do. I had started side business of cakes and desserts and I decided that I had to make it full time. I created the “Comfort Box” which was a box of mixed treats and delivered them all around the city of Chicago. They were a huge hit and paid our rent during that rough time.” She goes on to explain that this recently developed side bakery business also helped her generate many new customers across the Chicago area.
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of other individuals nationwide also suffered from the results of a furlough. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, when Covid-19 originally began, almost nine million individuals were on furlough. However, “The most recent figures show 1.6 million people were on furlough at the end of July — the lowest level since the start of the pandemic and 340,000 fewer than a month earlier.”
While a decrease in the number of individuals unemployed and furloughed is beneficial for people’s overall anxiety, it isn’t the only main reason anxiety has increased for Becca lately. As Becca’s economic anxiety grew, she recently had a baby who also would need to be taken care of. This was an interesting transition for her in the middle of a pandemic while struggling to pay rent.
“It has been weird, but because he’s our first we don’t know any different,” Becca says about her newborn, Jackson Krueger. “We never got to have a giant group of people come to the hospital to greet him before or had the chance to take our baby places, therefore it’s not really any different than what we know.”
Brookings shows that, “There were 53.9 births per 1,000 women (at an annualized rate) in the last quarter of 2020, in October, November, and December. That is substantially lower than the 57.6 annualized births per 1,000 women in the last quarter of 2019.” With these statistics in mind, it shows that women were more often discouraged from having a baby during the pandemic due to the unforeseen hardships, but Becca decided that the hardship would be worth having her baby.
Another issue Becca ran into while pregnant during the pandemic was her inability to receive a Covid-19 vaccination for a while. As it was important the baby grow up safely, her doctors needed to ensure it was grown enough before she could receive her vaccination. Once her doctors approved her for the vaccination, she received it almost immediately.
While many first-time mothers decided they would like to wait for what is being called the Covid-19 Baby Bust, Becca is glad that her son entered her life when he did. Upon reflection, she realizes that her new baby has been beneficial for a personal and necessary lifestyle change.
“A child really changes everything!” she says. “My husband and I used to go out with our friends multiple times a week, but we’re much more homebodies now. It was a transition that we needed.” With her newborn son being less than 3 months old, she has already been able to witness him growing. Becca explains that watching him grow alongside her husband is a wonderful bonding experience.
The difficulty that comes with her personal experience with motherhood is something she calls “Mommy guilt”. Am I doing it right?”, she says. “Why did he make that sound? Is he ok?!” This form of guilt deals with taking care of another individual, especially when that individual depends on you entirely. This can easily become another stressor in a new mother’s life, especially with many other major life events occurring simultaneously.
With a change in routine comes a change in work. Becca explains that she has begun to take less orders as she has started to take care of her new baby more. While she is still working, she enjoys the lower level of stress that she must take on as a result of needing to balance work and family. She explains that having to balance both of these has led her to appreciate both of them in greater amounts. With all of this in mind, she looks forward to continuing to be a mother, wife, and baker for years to come.
Having to balance multiple priorities in one’s life is a difficult task. Having to do so all at once with a worldwide pandemic developing is an entire different level of difficulty. Becca Zuckerman-Krueger has demonstrated what it takes to be a new mother during a pandemic after having previously moved across the country. The economic and health anxieties, the anxieties of raising a new baby, and the anxiety of moving have all proven to be strong in Becca’s life. However, her determination has helped her through her recent rough patches that she’s gone through, and likely will continue to do so for years to come. She will continue to watch her son and business grow, and I believe she will always do what is best for her family.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7258609/
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/05/05/the-coming-covid-19-baby-bust-is-here/
https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-52135342
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