Thanks to smartphones and photo apps, it’s easier than ever for parents to capture special moments with their kids. But when you’re going through those photos, sending the cute ones to relatives and deleting the outtakes, you might notice a common theme: Mom is nowhere to be found. While moms are frequently behind the camera, snapping images of their kids with dad, grandma and everyone in between, so often, there’s no one around who thinks to turn the camera around on mom.
Chrissy Teigen recently pointed out this problem in a hysterical Instagram post that has other moms nodding in solidarity. The model and TV personality, who has two kids with musician John Legend, posted a selfie while wearing a mud mask and a robe, and captioned it, “I never post [photos of] myself because no one in my family takes pics of me.”
Her post got over 500,000 likes and immediately resonated with other moms. One wrote in the comments, “Almost all of the pictures I have of myself with the kids (or just by myself) are selfies. My husband snapped a photo of me nursing our 1-year-old in a furniture store a few weeks ago & it’s now my favorite thing. I didn’t even know until he sent it to me later on.”
Another person added, “Mom life … always taking the pics, never in them.”
It’s a problem that a lot of moms have been complaining about for years. On parenting sites, you can find dozens of essays with titles like, Dear Dads: Take the Picture and Moms to Dads Everywhere: ‘Take the Damn Photo!’
I’ve even noticed it in my own life. This past summer, my husband and I took our two kids to Disneyland for the first time. I have photos of him and my children laughing on rides, walking hand-in-hand through the park and sweetly clinging to each other as they gaze up at the fireworks show. The only photos of me are a few that I asked an employee to take at the park’s entrance.
“When our kids are grown up, they won’t even remember that I was there,” I remember joking as we went through the photos after our trip.
And the problem isn’t just that dads aren’t taking enough pictures. Friends and family can skip over mom photo ops, too. I have hosted Thanksgiving for my extended family for the past five years. In that time, I’ve had maybe two photos of myself taken with my kids. Despite aunts, cousins and grandparents all milling around the house and having their photos snapped, no one has thought to capture a candid image of me laughing with my kids or dishing up my famous homemade chocolate cream pie. I only get a photo if I stop what I’m doing and ask for one.
It’s not that people are neglecting to take photos of moms on purpose. After all, not everyone is naturally inclined to fill the role of family documentarian. When I asked my husband why he never snags random photos of me and the kids, he sheepishly admitted that he just doesn’t think about it.
“I’m enjoying the moment and enjoying making memories, but I don’t always think about the extra step of preserving the memory for the future,” he says.
Sometimes, the lack of photos also has to do with a mom’s own insecurities. In 2017, a mom’s Facebook post got over 270,000 shares when she admitted she worries about how she looks in photos but begged dads to take pictures anyway.
“I always feel like I have to have on makeup or have a good angle because I have a social media mentality,” she writes. “I always assume it will be posted and everyone will see it. Dads, if you have a wife like me, one night when she’s laying in bed reading a story to your daughter, whip out your phone and take a picture.”
“Whip out your phone and take a picture” is actually good advice for anyone who spends time with moms and their kids. Many moms have no problem with being the family memory keeper, but they still want to be able to see themselves in the moments they spent with their kids and their loved ones. After all the sleepless nights, kissed boo-boos, stories read and family holidays and trips planned, moms don’t want their only photo memories to be a bunch of Instagram selfies — even if they happen to be as gorgeous as Chrissy Teigen in a mud mask. Whether you’re a grandparent, uncle, aunt, cousin, bestie or partner: Make sure moms are in the photo.
