'Dear Men... Take The Photo'

Woman’s viral post urges dads to take more pictures of their wives for kids to remember them by

Thanks to smartphones and apps like Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, we’re taking more photos than ever before. But when it comes to the photos that we don’t delete off our phones, the “keepers” that we save to print out and pass on to our kids one day, how many are just of the kids and our partners and how many are we featured in ourselves? (And no, selfies don’t count). Far too often moms are stuck as the photographer and never end up in the picture.

Kaylin Maree Schimpf, an inspirational speaker from Glen Rose, Texas, posted an emotional plea to Facebook with a photo by ShaiLynn Photo and Film, noting this phenomenon. She calls on men to take more photos of their wives for the sake of the kids, because they’ll cherish having pictures of mom to see once she’s gone.

“Dear men, ” she begins, “take the photo… It doesn’t matter what she looks like, or if she tells you no, take the photo. You may not think about it often, or at all honestly.” It’s true. On those days when your hair looks cute and you happen to have an outfit on that isn’t leggings you’d think your husband would offer to take a photo of you and the kids, but let’s be honest, if we don’t ask outright, it’s not happening.

“But when she is gone, those photos won’t show your children the women who was behind the camera. Take the photo. Messy hair, no makeup or a dirty old t-shirt won’t matter to your children when she is gone someday.” While Schimpf geared her words towards men, her point cuts both ways. In every family there’s the adult who’s the designated historian, the person who always makes sure to capture special moments on film. They’re the ones who can show you what the family looked like on Christmas morning every year since the kids were born, but since they’re the ones taking all the pictures, they’re rarely in the frame. And while our kids will surely appreciate having pictures of themselves to look back on one day, they’ll want to see us there too.

Schimpt told The Huffington Post that after her father’s death a year ago, she realized she only had a few photos of him because he was always behind the camera. Ask any adult who’s lost a parent if they’d rather have a complete collection of photos showing just them on every single holiday posed by a tree or just one more picture with the parent they’ve lost. It’s not even a contest.

One day we’ll be gone and those we leave behind will want pictures to remember us by. They deserve to have them, and we deserve to be photographed, no matter if it’s in full makeup or while rocking a messy bun and laying the couch.

As Schimpf says, “No woman wants to look back at a lifetime of selfies.”