Why Does Taking Pictures Always Fall on the Woman in the Relationship?

There’s really no way around it.

When it comes to taking pictures in our marriage, there’s only one person who can lay claim to the camera …

And it’s me.

I don’t really know how it happened, other than the fact that it may be that we are like 99.9% of the rest of the male-female relationship world in which the female is unequivocally responsible for the chronicling of all pictorial memories.

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But if I want to look back on our relationship, our marriage, or our journey into parenthood throughout the years, I need look no further than my Facebook albums. Because apparently my husband ain’t got no time for that.

The weight of the world

Honestly, it’s not easy being the keeper of the camera in our marriage. I feel a lot of pressure to capture the important memories in our lives. Even this past weekend, when I threw two giant birthday parties for our daughters, I was horrified to discover that because I had been so busy actually, you know, hosting the party and enjoying my girls, that I forgot to take pictures of them on their actual days.

My husband claims that he eschews the picture-taking of our important family moments because he would rather be there and be present in the moment, which I totally agree with — but at the same time, as a mother, I want those memories preserved in this crazy time when my kids are little because I know I won’t remember them all, as much as I want to. Plus, it would be a little bit easier to enjoy the moment if I knew someone else was capturing it for me …

A picture says a thousand words

It’s also important to me to try to document my husband with our children; I want them to have those memories someday to look back at when they giggle at how much hair he had or how young he looked. But when it comes to me with our kids? Unless it’s a poorly-angled selfie, mama apparently didn’t exist when they were growing up.

And then there’s the fact that we literally have no pictures of us together, as a couple. I mean, I write here for Babble in the relationships channel and constantly struggle with having zero pictures of us as a couple. We have taken probably two in the last four years and they were all — wait for it — of the elbow length selfie variety instituted by muah.

So if a picture says a thousand words, what do ours — or the lack thereof — say about us and our relationship? That we need to put in more effort? That we are too tired to care? Or that to us, the most important thing is living the moment, not capturing it to live through later?

I don’t know what the right answer is. On one hand, I like the thought of being able to enjoy the here and now, to simply be in the moment with my kids and my husband, but on the other hand, I also love documenting our lives and can’t imagine not having those pictures to look back on someday when I am old and gray and probably lonely.

So for now, I guess I’ll just keep soldiering on as the sole keeper of the camera in our marriage.

And perhaps train my 6-year-old on taking more pictures of her parents.

But only on my good side, of course.

How about you? Do you find that you are the keeper of the camera in your marriage? Or do you share picture-taking duties equally?

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