The Art of Pandemic Motherhood

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept through the United States last March, the home suddenly became the office, restaurant, and school all in one. None, perhaps, felt this sharing of space more adeptly than women, who often disproportionately share the responsibility of parenthood in their double burden as mothers. This double burden was not new to mothers, but the circumstances of a global pandemic have had a way of exacerbating inequities that already existed. In December 2020, the US lost 140,00 jobs. But women lost a net of 156,000 jobs. Men gained 16,000.^[1]

Tracing the origin of this double burden is complex and systemic, but the masses of women who poured into the workforce during World War II is a compelling source. While men were drafted into the war, women entered the workforce in droves, replacing them in support of the war effort. During the war, the female labor force grew by 6.5 million and during the war the female labor force grew by fifty percent^[2]. But even though they were now working, they were still expected to keep up with their domestic responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, and child care. Even as the war ended, this was the beginning of a significant proportion of the workforce being women– even as their home responsibilities ceased.

Art has long been a way of portraying different mothers reflecting different types of motherhood. Perhaps the most famous artwork portraying motherhood is Duccio’s Madonna and Child^[3], a portrayal of Jesus and his mother as people with an intimate relationship, rather than exclusively godly. In the canon of more contemporary art, Mary Kelly’s Antepartum^[4], a video of her feeling her child’s kicks on top of her pregnant belly. Very few works at the time portrayed women as mothers using the pregnant body, especially portraying the pregnant belly naked and as the main subject of the piece. Kelly’s other canonical work on motherhood, Post-Partum Document^[5] from 1973-79 uses psychoanalytic principles to document the six years following the birth of her son. The piece records everything her growing son did, from his feeding schedule to speech patterns. Post-Partum Document calls attention to the gender disparities in childcare, the expectations of women during the performance of motherhood.

With time, the art of mothers and children became less romanticized and more reflective of the complex reality of motherhood. In Alice Neel’s Nancy and Olivia from 1967, Neel, a portraitist, paints her daughter-in-law with her newborn baby. The mother in this painting looks shocked and caught off guard, as if she was not expecting to be captured. She holds her baby awkwardly, as if she is not quite sure if she’s doing it right. Motherhood is a motif throughout Neel’s work, Neel herself had complicated feelings toward motherhood. Society has mythologized maternal attachment as something biological, immediate, and unbreakable. But not all mothers feel this kind of attachment, and Neel is exploring this in her painting. Sometimes motherhood is awkward and uncomfortable and tiring. It does not always live up to the mythology that precedes it, often causing life-altering disruptions. In this way, Neel’s portrait shows a kind of realistic motherhood, a revolutionary portrayal for its time.^[6] Building on the artists that had portrayed motherhood before them, artists in the coronavirus pandemic have been documenting the difficulties of being a mother and artist during the pandemic. Mothers Who Make is a global initiative which according to their website, aims to “support women and non-binary people who hold the dual roles of carer and maker.”^[7]They lean into what it means to hold both roles, encouraging each to inform their work– not inhibit it, as many have suggested in the past.

Mothers Who Make produced a project called “Motherhood and Making: Portraits in Lockdown” including portraits artists took in the UK during a 2020 lockdown. In one photograph by Margaret O’Brien, the viewer’s gaze is aimed at a central doorway in which a mother and child are sitting behind it, with the child sitting in their mother’s lap. In front of them is a sea of rainbow colored toys, stacked and placed in all kinds of arrangements. There is a stark contrast between the minimalism and muted tones of the house and the bright, rainbow toys which seem to have taken over. The piece seems to speak to the kind of chaos that has enveloped home spaces during the lockdown, overtaking the house’s normal order. The mother has become the mediator of the chaos, as shown in how the mother comforts her child in the photograph.

In another photograph by Nomi McLeod, the camera is beyond a panel of glass (presumably a window), reflecting the physical distance that is required by the pandemic in order to stay safe. The barrier is clearly evident in the photograph, as the image is slightly distorted and has reflections of the outside world. Within the glass is a mother sitting with her three children (one of which is a baby) at a table. The table is full of eclectic objects, including the mother’s artists and mothers have faced a specific challenge during the pandemic. Since their work is often individual and not bound to a specific workday, they are not necessarily bound to deadlines and can be more flexible. That flexibility can overburden them with parenting responsibilities. The piece also conveys the seclusion of motherhood during the pandemic, as the photographer is even positioned outside since it is unsafe to share air with those you do not live with.

The Maternal Art Project is another collaborative started during the pandemic. They serve by “bringing together work by artists who produce inspirational work about the maternal”^[8]. During the pandemic they published their first edition of Maternal Art Magazine, entitled Stay at Home. The issue includes a ton of work from artists dealing with both the maternal and the pandemic reality. In a paper collage by Lauren McLaughlin entitled Madonna of Home Learning, Madonna (from Madonna and child) is pasted on top of a black and white photograph of a woman writing at a desk. During the pandemic, especially in the first few months, mothers have become their children’s school teachers– often at the expense of their own work. The artist describes the piece as “representing women’s shift back to a state of maternal idealism, confined to her domestic space with her own needs and identity secondary to that of her child.” Perhaps most obviously, the piece alludes to the kind of motherhood portrayed in the original Madonna and Child and how it has been pasted onto mothers during the pandemic.

Another artist featured in the first edition of Maternal Art Magazine is Penny Davis. Her work Responding to the call is a pencil on paper drawing of a face using different handwritten variations of “Mama,” “Mummy,” or “Mother”. The only distinguishable features are her eyes which are just blank holes. The whole piece has a very frayed quality to it, reflecting a subject that is, herself, frayed. The words are a recording of how many times her children would call for her. Eventually the repetition becomes meaningless and it blurs into something else entirely, in this case a self portrait. The constant calling out showcases the unrelenting demands of a mother when her children are home all day.

Starting on International Women’s Day 2021, Spilt Milk^[9] has put up an online exhibition called If Not Now, When? The exhibit aims to document the unique challenges faced by mothers during the pandemic. Included in the exhibit is a digital collage by Jen McGowan called Runaway. The piece features a mother jumping away and over a stack of dirty dishes, while five children stand with more dirty dishes from behind. Cleaning responsibilities often fall on the mother, and the stacks of dirty dishes can feel endless. The ultimate irony of this piece is that even though it is entitled Runaway, the pandemic prevents any real escape or respite.

Also in the exhibit is the piece I Don’t Know How You Do It All But You Sure Make It Look Effortless by Katherine Duclos. It is a sculpture made of plastic breastfeeding pump and bottle parts arranged in a configuration that is resting on a singular bottle. The title is in reference to the heaping of praise that often comes when people become mothers– as if the most desirable trait of motherhood is making it look effortless. The sculpture does not look like it should be able to stand, but it does in a way that looks effortless but is actually really difficult to arrange. This metaphor for motherhood– a performance that often looks effortless to outsiders but is complicated for outsiders– can also be applied to the process of breastfeeding. Pumps are used to supplement breastmilk production and perhaps can be a signature of early mothers also trying to also work– a symbol of a mother also trying to work beyond the home.

Cholë Marsden’s contribution to the exhibit is a collage/photograph called Domestic Conflict. It is a photograph of a kitchen, a traditionally female assigned domestic space, with the artist’s self portrait as Medusa looming over the space. The piece is a commentary on the domestic work that has been unequally thrown onto women, using Medusa, which the artist says references the Medusa Complex, a psychological dissociated state that leads to the freezing of emotion due to a fight or flight response. The artist is comparing being caught in between her domestic responsibilities– a messy kitchen– and the life beyond the kitchen, and just freezing in response to the daunting nature of all her responsibilities.

It is important to acknowledge the limitations of looking at motherhood almost exclusively. Not all children have mothers, and homosexual relationships often have different parenting roles that escape the traditional norms. Additionally, recent trends showing a move to more egalitarian parenting responsibilities could be holding true– we do not have pandemic data yet. However, the powerful forces of traditional motherhood remain a burden to mothers around the world, making this a worthwhile area of study.

2020 has laid bare the excessive burden of mothers, especially in their balancing of domestic responsibilities, often which disportionately fall on them. They have become school teachers, before school care, after school care, chefs, and cleaners– outside of their own jobs and careers which also have unrelenting demands. Sustaining this for an entire year must have been exhausting. Only time will tell if the pandemic’s surfacing of mothers’ double burden will lead to a larger national conversation about the distribution of domestic and childcare responsibilities, a problem perhaps only remedied by large structural change.