If, as others pointed out and the OP confirmed, there are no "symbols of destitution, decay, drug use" in the photo, just a "clean, healthy, unconcerned] baby/young mother," then it raises the question why we are looking at it (as in: why did the OP show it to us)?
Who cares about "clean, healthy, unconcerned] baby/young mother" (apart from the family members)? If it is nothing but a "clean, healthy, unconcerned] baby/young mother," then it belongs to a family album. So that, years from now, the junior can look at it hear the mother saying: "Look, honey, this is when mommy had to dirty her butt because your butt got dirty!" Cute, yes, but who cares (again, other than the family)?
Tolstoy said "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." In other words, happy families are boring. You saw one, you saw them all. Photos of happy families are suitable for advertising, but rarely, if ever, for art.
I guess you are wondering by now where I am going with this. I am trying to explain why some people, when facing a photograph like this, subconsciously (or not) look for (and find) signs of trouble. Had the mother and the baby looked into the camera and cracked a smile, everybody would agree that it is a cute family-album photo.
However, there is no smile and no looking into the camera. The baby appears uncomfortable and crumpled, mother resigned and tired. Both are looking down. The do appear relatively well-off, but so do millions of middle-class foreclosure victims in the States. People who, until yesterday, lived in half-a-million homes, still have their designer clothing and even fancy cars, yet are suddenly on the street after eviction. That is a scenario I can see this mother in.
Humans are hard-wired to look for justification, explanation, cause-effect. If it was just another happy-family-diaper-changing-scene, who would care?