The Grandmothers Who Become Mothers Again

Photographs by Anthony Wilson Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story In West Virginia, there are nanas and nans, grams and grandmas, grannies, abuelas, and even some nonnas. But many of the grandmothers there, as in so much of Appalachia, are known as mawmaws. The photographer Anthony Wilson spent five years getting to know some of these women, and his new book, “Mawmaw,” is a tribute to a specific subset of them: women who not only have grandchildren or great-grandchildren but who are their primary caregivers. These are not women who just help get their grandkids ready for school in the morning or watch them on a Saturday night; these are women who have chosen to become parents again, sparing their grandchildren from life in the foster system.

Grandfamilies, as these families sometimes call themselves, are almost always forged by tragic circumstances, whether abuse, neglect, addiction, arrest, or death. They exist everywhere in this country; nearly three million children in the United States are being raised by their grandparents, another way that older Americans are working longer, well beyond retirement age. Such families are common in Appalachia, where poverty and incarceration rates are high, and the effects of the opioid crisis linger across successive generations. In West Virginia alone, somewhere around twenty-five thousand grandchildren are being cared for by their grandparents.

Wilson met his particular mawmaws through a support group organized by West Virginia State University. He went to one of their meetings in Lincoln County, two hours or so east of Lexington, Kentucky, hoping to make a documentary, but he soon found that the children liked being filmed less than they liked being photographed. From 2021 until 2026, Wilson came and went throughout the seasons, taking pictures of grandfamilies in living rooms and on front porches, during birthdays and beside burn piles, holding on to the barrels of shotguns and the handlebars of dirt bikes, wearing ponytails and barrettes made from Queen Anne’s lace.