Motherhood in the Time of COVID
© Steph Wilson
It may be a strange time to be a parent, but it is undoubtedly the most appropriate time to celebrate mothers across the globe. As schools and daycare centers remain closed, playdates halt, and normalcy for America’s youths hovers in the distant horizon – parenting might at times feel like a thankless task. During these unprecedented times, mom’s roles have expanded far beyond those that were traditionally hers, as mothers learn the ropes of teacher, playmate, chef, housekeeper, doctor, fort-builder, crayon-collector, stain-remover, as well as the professional, the provider, and the breadwinner.
It’s not uncommon for parents to vacillate between gratitude for the unexpected time they’re spending with their children and the anxiety they feel for the current state of the world and the precarious state of their employment and finances. A myriad of media stories have documented the rediscovery of family life – the joy of coming together for dinners, of working dads sharing care-taking responsibilities during the day, as well as the afternoon nature walks, movie nights, and other wholesome activities that have been keeping the American nuclear families busy during quarantine.
But what about our nation’s single mothers? The burdens of this pandemic, while affecting all parents, have naturally fallen hardest on single mothers, many of whom were already struggling. Basic daily tasks like grocery shopping and seeing a doctor are always more difficult with a toddler in tow. Now, every activity outside the house is suddenly not only logistically more complicated but also unsafe, thereby threatening mom’s primal responsibility of keeping her child safe and secure. And as services have closed due to COVID, the various support systems upon which single mothers rely, have effectively disappeared, leaving mothers isolated, unmoored, and scared.
Almost a quarter of all children in the United States live with a single parent, the highest fraction in the world. In New York, the American city that has been hardest hit by the pandemic, more than 425,000 children live with single parents, most of them single mothers – weathering the economic fallout, emotional toll, and logistical inconveniences that come with pervasive job loss and shelter-in-place orders – alone. U.S. Census Bureau data from 2018 show that, among black and Latinx single mothers in the city, the child poverty rate was 40 and 55 percent, respectively.
Photography has used motherhood and pregnancy as subjects long before the COVID-19 crisis. A critical part of celebrating mothers is being there to document the moments they share with their children. Steph Wilson, a London-based photographer, uses the body as her central theme for shooting. She uses the body – it’s awkwardness and sensuality – to disarm her viewers and show beauty in nature's imperfections.
“Aesthetically speaking, I really wanted to shoot images that were not typical mother-baby photos... I wanted to remove the individual and, instead, abstract the bodies, creating something quite amorphic and fleshy: I suppose what a baby would see itself as… portraying the sense of oneness between the two bodies… I suppose there are infinite angles and ever changing perceptions that need challenging.” – Steph Wilson
And with that thoughtful reflection, Musée wishes a happy Mother’s Day to all 1.5 billion mothers across the globe.
You can view more of Steph Wilson’s work here.
