Mom's viral plea to spouses everywhere: 'Take our picture'
Mom Mary Katherine Backstrom was surprised when she realized she had no recent photos of herself and her children.
"Unless it was a selfie, I wasn't in photos with my kids for the last eight months," she told "Good Morning America."
The search was spawned by a request from her book publisher. "Mom Babble," which is also the name of her popular blog and Facebook page, will hit store shelves in 2020.
The fruitless search prompted Backstrom to write a now-viral post on her Facebook page which began, "Dear men, husbands, people who love us, on behalf of mamas everywhere, I have an important request: Take our picture."
"I think the post verbalized what many of us are already thinking," Backstrom said. "Often we are the photographers documenting our families lives but when it comes to photos of moms with their kids, there's a big gap."
In her post, Backstrom wrote, "Here is a little reminder of these pictures are SO dang important: One day, we won’t be around for our babies. One day, you and I will be gone and what will remain of us will be the memories we’ve captured of this beautiful life we made. One day, our kids will gather around a table and scroll through images of these precious, fleeting days. They will cry and laugh and commiserate.They will say 'Remember that vacation? Remember that day?' And it will be so, so beautiful. But if every single picture was taken by their mama, guess who won’t be in those memories?"
Of course, the men aren't totally to blame.
"Many moms don't want to have their photos taken candidly, but posed photos don't capture the intimacy of our relationship with our kids," she said to "GMA."
She added, "I think women have a heightened emotional awareness about how fast our kid are growing up and feel the need to document in a way men sometimes don't."
Backstrom ended her post with a final plea.
"Even if we moan that the angle isn’t good or our smile looks a little insane, I promise you this: We want to be seen. We want to be remembered. And it means the world to us when you take our picture," she wrote.
