On 14 February 2012, Fran took her two children, both aged under five, and left her partner of 10 years. Their relationship had broken down. “He went to work. By the time he came back, we’d gone. We took no clothes, nothing. We just walked. I went into a photo booth and took a photograph of the three of us: I call it my liberation photo. I never looked back.”
She had to give up a job she loved to look after the children. “I worked for the ambulance service and there was no one to look after the children when I was on nights,” she says. Like many single parents, she then struggled to find a place to live, because those on housing benefits are affected by discriminatory, blanket “no benefits” bans. “I couldn’t tell the landlord I was on benefits. He lived next door, and kept asking, ‘Are you working?’ I had to hold it together for six months before my new job started. I’d take a packed lunch and go out all day, to make him think I was going to work.”
Single parents are no longer a tiny minority: one in four families are single-parent households; about 90% are with a single mother. Holding The Baby, a project and exhibition by photographer – and single parent – Polly Braden, brings inequalities such as Fran’s to the fore, but also celebrates single parents’ strength and resilience. By highlighting the day-to-day reality of what it means to be one in the UK – from the resourcefulness of converting a sitting room into a bedroom and creating a special space for their children to thrive, to the loneliness of being sole breadwinner, teacher and playmate – she puts the distinctive culture of solo parenting in the spotlight.
Fran wild swimming with her children, Dominic and Penny. Photograph: Polly Braden
The project was prompted by a visit by Philip Alston, the UN poverty expert, to the UK in 2019. He concluded that the impact of austerity was greatest on single-parent families. Braden started looking at some of the prejudices that manifest in countless ways for those left “holding the baby”. She spent time in the homes of mainly mothers and one father – when Covid-19 stopped visits, she set up cameras and lights so they could take photos themselves.
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