Why Do Mums Take So Many Selfies With Their Kids and Post To Social Media

It’s a question I here a lot from friends who get annoyed at other friends who post image after image of selfies they take with their kids.

Like anything I’m sure there are many valid reasons for this sort of activity but recently I came across an article that gave a very different reason for why mums do this.

The article, “The sad reason why many mothers take selfies with their kids” states that mum’s don’t want to loose their sense of identity when it comes to their family. They feel the urge to photograph and document their family’s life but in doing so are constantly not in any of the photographs with their children. To compensate they are urged to take selfies with their kids in order to say, “Hey, I’m here too!!”

On our Facebook page I recently did a Live video on the topic. You can watch the video below or if you prefer you can read the transcript underneath it.

Being a dad I have to confess that I am guilty of some of the things that I discuss in the video. I don’t take as many photos of my wife with our daughter, Aria. When I do photograph the two of them together I get beautiful images like the ones below. Images that Aria is going to LOVE when she is older.

I do frequent Facebook Live videos on our page on very interesting topics like this. I encourage you to join me there by Liking the page and watch a few. Volare Photography Facebook Page.

TRANSCRIPT

So the question I am posing tonight is “Why do mums take so many selfies with their kids and post to social media. Like Facebook and Instagram?”

Now some people may say that they are showing off to their friends and some might use the words narcissistic.

But I was reading an article the other day and the likely reason is something a lot more positive than that. It has more to do with a mum’s innate instincts.

Now I will post the link to the article in the comments below so I encourage you to read it for yourself.

To summarise mothers tend to have a greater sense of the importance of documenting their family’s life a lot more than Dads have.

As a photographer, I’ve heard countless stories of adult children lamenting the fact that they had very few photos of their parents only realising this after they had sadly passed away.

I can understand how this could happen back in the day where not every family had cameras. But there really is no excuse these days with everyone having cameras on their phones. You should be always documenting the lives of all family members.

OK but going back to my original question, why so many selfies? Well its simple really. Because mums want to document their families lives, they are usually the ones taking the photograph and therefore are not in any of the family photos. There’s plenty of photos of the kids on their own and the kids with dad BUT mums usually are left out of the happy snaps.

So realising that they don’t want to be left out of their family’s history they resort to taking awkward selfies with their kids. This way they are recording that they do exist and are indeed a part of their children’s lives.

Dad’s Im talking to you now. Mums deserve more. Pick up the camera and take more photos of your wife and kids when they are interacting and having fun. Your wife will love you for it. Think of it as an investment also because your kids are going to want to see these images when they are older so they can remember what mum was like back when they were young.

OK so a bit of confession time for me here. I’m also guilty of not doing this often enough.

Photographing so many other families I don’t take as many photographs as I should of my family. Especially of my daughter Aria and her mum. Sometimes I just forget, sometimes I’m too tired or sometimes I may have taken photos of a few clients and I’m just over taking photographs for that day.

Don’t worry. There have been plenty of times when Ive been yelled at for not doing it. It’s usually goes something like “YOURE A PHOTOGRAPHER AND I HAVE NO PHOTOS OF ARIA AND ME TOGETHER”

So I’ve tried to be conscious of this and Ive tried to take more personal family photographs. When I do its great and I get beautiful images and happy memories like these. Images Aria can look back on and see how happy they were together.

So next time you start complaining about how many baby photos so and so keeps posting on Facebook, just have a think of why that may be the case. There could be another more important reason.

That’s it. Thanks for listening.

Until next week take care.

Warren