This week’s cover for The New Yorker is making waves on social media as people react to the magazine’s illustration.
The image, titled “A Mother’s Work” by R. Kikuo Johnson, gives readers a glimpse into the lives of New York’s child caretakers. In the cover story for the magazine this week, Francoise Mouly, the New Yorker’s art editor, writes that the cover shows children who grow up in the city and their time in the playground.
But in many of these times, instead of having a parent there sharing these moments, Mouly writes that they have women who are “hired to watch over them and attend to their needs–women who may also have their own children to care for.”
The cover picture shows two women described as child caretakers in conversation while taking care of two children in a park. The images shows of the caretakers show the other a picture of what we can assume is the caretaker’s actual child graduating.
“My wife and I became parents this year, so we’re just beginning to face the challenges of raising a kid while working in New York City,” Johnson told the New Yorker. “We interviewed a few nannies before realizing that we couldn’t afford one.”