Iceland's single mums featured in The New Yorker

An exhibition by Canadian photographer Annie Ling called Independent Mothers is the subject of a feature in The New Yorker. "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," writes Janet Elise Johnson. She cites the benefits of raising children in Iceland including nine months of paid leave, affordable preschools and the lack of "stranger danger" when kids can walk home from school without adult supervision. 

Ling has so far photographed six women in various parts of Iceland, spending time in their homes observing their lives and their interactions with their children. 

"As almost all Icelandic mothers work, there are no “mommy wars," writes Johnson in the article. " Few women seem to suffer from the overwrought desire to “have it all.” There is also relaxed sexual morality: two thirds of the country’s babies are born to unwed mothers—the highest rate of out-of-wedlock births in the world—with couples often having children together and then getting married, or deciding not to."

The exhibition by Annie Ling is at the Mjólkurbúðin Gallery in Akureyri. 

The full article in The New Yorker by Janet Elise Johnson can be read HERE.