In her “Independent Mothers” series, from 2015, the photographer Annie Ling documented the distinctive culture of single motherhood in Iceland, where two-thirds of the country’s babies are born out of wedlock. See more of Ling’s photos:
One sign of this egalitarianism can be found in Icelandic attitudes toward motherhood. In contrast to the competitive, anxious parenting of middle- and upper-class Americans, there is an ease to being a mother in Iceland, at least among the native population. This can be explained, in part, by the fact that Icelandic parents receive extensive social benefits, including nine months of paid leave to be shared between parents and affordable preschools.
The distinctive culture of single motherhood in Iceland forms the subject of a new series by the Canadian photographer, who first travelled to the country last winter, on an artists’ residency. Ling has so far photographed six women—three who live in Reykjavík and three who live in the north of the country—spending time in their homes observing their lives and their interactions with their children.
At the same time, the reality of Icelandic women’s lives is more like that of American women than first meets the eye. Over the past few years, women have gone public with allegations of sexual abuse, including against a former foreign minister and the former bishop of Iceland’s state church.
Ling’s stark portraits capture some of these tensions as well. Single mothering may be less fraught in Iceland, but the women she photographed are not what we Americans would see as comfortably well off. You can see the independent mothers living in nondescript apartment blocks, in chock-full homes, in a sparse landscape—not easy lives, but full ones. “This one mother I photographed had had a pretty hard day when I showed up,” Ling said.
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