These photos are going viral for a very surprising reason.

When 83-year-old photographer Ken Heyman received a call about a box of old photographs, he didn’t realise the treasures he was about to uncover.

A storage facility where he had kept old prints was closing. He needed to collect the boxes his photographs were kept in straight away.

There was one box of photos that stood out to Ken. It was a box labelled ‘mothers’.

The series of images, taken almost fifty years ago of mothers around the world, perfectly captures the love, pride, hopes and dreams that universally binds all mothers.

All are multi-tasking, listening, laughing, caring, and most importantly totally infatuated with their little ones.

Not surprisingly, the images are now going viral.

Take a look:

The photos were taken as part of an anthropological collaboration with Margaret Mead in 1965 for a book titled ‘Family’.

To view more of the gorgeous photographs recovered from Ken’s collection, click through our gallery below:

Ken Heyman is a Pullitzer Prize winning photographer. You can find more of his works on his website or on his Facebook page here.