Mothers are the great absentees from family photos

French newspaper of reference Le Monde has just posted an article about mothers being the great absentees from family photos. It is not behind a paywall so you can throw it into Google Translate if you wish to read the entire piece. Knowing that the majority of scrapbookers and Peas are mothers, I thought I'd share this interesting and pretty unnerving analysis on the presence of mothers alongside children in photos which ultimately constitute the record of family life for not only the current generations but also those still to come.

The article was born out of an observation made by Laura Vallet, a librarian and mother, who tracks down the place of women in society. As a librarian, she often counts the parts played by boys and girls respectively in childhood fiction and questions how both genders are represented. For anyone interested, her French blog on childhood literature is here. This time, she counted the amount of times she appears alongside her children in family photos. 


She notes that she mostly appears on what she refers to as "ritual photos", yearly photos taken by someone else (birthday celebrations, Christmas, etc.) and on wedding portraits. She was only featured twice on her own in thsoe 450 family life photos. 


Sociologist Illana Weizman explains that the significantly lesser occurrence of mothers in family photos underlines the load that befalls mothers in pretty much all domains of parenting, especially when it comes to emotions and memories. "It is a system in which mothers are always at a disadvantage, in which mothers are always expected to think of everything."

A debate on Twitter ensued with people noting you'd think fathers did most of the parenting load going by the family photo archive. Or perhaps that is considered normal that women do most of the parenting work so their absence from family photos is almost a given. Whatever your take on it, consider this your reminder to include yourself in your photos more for 2022. If there is one good resolution we can take as documenters, it is to be more present, right there, not just in the journaling or the work of creating family albums, but also in the photos themselves. Bring your role in your family to life, fellow Peas! Celebrate everything you do and make it visible. You are a huge part of your family. And as a childfree person, I'm taking this as a cue to photograph my own mother more this year and make sure she is regularly present in my album this year. Because I do realise, looking at my own childhood photos, that she wasn't featured enough (it's a good thing I love taking photos as a kid or she'd barely be in those).

Here's a 2019 article by Chelsey Hill on the same matter, Why Moms Need to Start Including Themselves in Family Photos, for some extra thinking on the matter.