Motherhood alone during the pandemic

diciembre 15, 2022

Loneliness and uncertainty are the two words that are repeated the most when a alone mother is asked what the quarantine meant to her. Single parenthood is presented as a family structure where only one of the parents takes care of the household responsibilities. Of the 18,535,900 households in Spain, which are collected in the 2018 Continuous Household Survey, 10.1% are single-parent households. These households are feminized: 82% of them are headed by a woman. In Spain, it is a type of family that is booming, there are 2% more single-parent households than the previous year. In monomarentality components of different nature converge and interact: family diversity, women’s historical asymmetries, job insecurity, feminization of care, and the sociocultural dimension in relation to social representations. “Traditionally, these mothers were stigmatized and not necessarily considered a type of family. The rate of risk of poverty and / or exclusion, (AROPE), indicates that half of single-parent households live in a situation of risk of poverty and social exclusion. According Save the Children, «the lack of these job opportunities, the wage gap or the inability to reconcile their personal and professional life very significantly affect women and their children who grow up in unequal conditions.» Currently, there is no law at the state level that addresses the specific needs of families. For FAMS «the configuration of public policies is designed from a biparental family model and this could be seen in all the measures during the state of alarm.» The COVID crisis has locked single mothers in four walls without specific measures that contemplate their situation.
Here have been collected honest stories of women, during an unprecedented confinement in full maternity alone. Interviewed and photographed in the atmospheres of the homes where they have been confined, the report shows the diversity of experiences.
This report was supported by National Geographic.