I can understand why they would prefer cash over typical gifts but asking specifically for cash is incredibly tacky.
I would give the baby a piggy bank with $15-20 worth of coins in it. That’s what I usually give for a new baby gift. There’s all kinds of piggy banks out there to choose from ranging from really fancy and expensive to pretty plain and cheap.
I wouldn’t go out and buy a bunch of diapers, wipes, lotions, shampoos, etc., etc. because some babies can be allergic to certain types of these things and the parents don’t need to have a stockpile of crap they can’t use.
My father bought my children something called a zero-coupon bond. I have no idea if they are still available.
But hell, Google is getting ready to go public. Buy the stock in your name now, then add the child as a beneficiary after it’s born. (You can do that, right?)
Did these people send out birth announcements with “don’t applaud just send money” at the bottom? I’m confused about how they are money grubbing…
If this is a shower, the tackiness should belong to the host and not the parents. I believe the shower etiquette is supposed to be that the hostess has the registry information available upon request and not included in the invitation.
That all said. I have two kids, 3 and 7 months. I got a bevvy of outfits all sized 0-3 months. Most of them never got worn or were worn once and then I discovered it was designed by a sado-masochist and we never wore it again. I have a box filled with breakable memorabelia my daughter won’t see until she’s at least 10 and probably will never appreciate. I have a bounty of baby blankets we’ve never used. They are all hand made so I can’t donate them but my daughter preferred the fleecy ones and my son the silk ones. I use what stops the crying - sorry.
My mother in law is always disappointed when she asks what the kids need and I say things like formula, diapers, shoes… they aren’t glamor gifts but they are necessary.
Even the people who tried to guess ahead and buy clothes for the next season left me with clothes that were never worn. My 3 year old wears a 5/6 and my 7 month old wears 18-24 months. sigh
Someone said bibs are a necessity. I never use them. If the kid is going to make that much of a mess it is never confined to the bib area. My son gets zwieback in his toes!
If you are this unhappy with the couple - don’t give them anything. I’ve always felt gifts should be given freely and not extorted from people. You should see the shocked people when I beg them not to get my daughter gifts! She’s 3 - she has more toys than toysRus and she will have a wonderful birthday anyway.
boy, tanookie you described the situation perfectly. The fact is any child in this society with a more than a very small number of gift-giving adults in their lives is going to end up with a LOT of stuff, much of it inappropriate i.e. wrong size, unflattering color, difficult to wear style, toy only interesting once, makes extremely annoying noises, has too many pieces to loose, etc. etc. etc. Or just not to the family’s taste. (OK, I admit it! I sold the Lenox statue of Jesus-holding-his-arms-out-to-angelic-toddler-on-a-cloud on ebay. I am an evil parent)
I hope that when I give gifts they are the right thing, but I try to always make them easily returnable/exchangeable (gift receipts!).
I thinks savings bonds are a great idea. Another one I heard is a bottle of fine wine each year, ones that will age well of course. By the time kiddo is legal, s/he’ll have a nice little wine cellar.
(My favorite baby gifts so far have been Land’s End crib sheets. Far too expensive for me to consider buying myself, but very good quality, and don’t pop off the mattress)
The perfect gift! NOBODY has enough of them and the store-bought ones are uselessly unabsorbant. Wife makes a bunch of 'em out of two super cheap wash clothes back to back with a half-moon cut out for the neck and a string made of cloth ribbon. A dozen for maybe ten bucks and an evening at the sewing machine.
When I’m pissed because a kid is getting christened even though the parents are not churchgoers so I KNOW it’s just to extort presents I get a children’s Bible (enscribed so they can’t return it).
A friend of mine invited me over one night and said “bring a gift for the baby”. WTF? the baby was like 3 months old, what sort of shower crap was this? Instead of trying to buy something “perfect”, I just bought a Hershey bar at the gas station. I tucked $30 in the wrapper and left it sticking out. I said “hope the kid likes chocolate”, message received, money taken, obligation fulfilled.
If they want money, give it to them. It will mean alot more to them than a 24 pack of huggies, since it’s something they can use as well.
I was invited once to a baby shower for a child #2. Included in the invitation was an extensive list of what the mother wanted, and everything, EVERYTHING was name brand: Gerber bottles, Gerber nipples, Similac formula in cans, Diaper Genie refill bags, Huggies disposable diapers (in newborn size, and also in a size for the older child) and on and on it went.
I was offended. Keeping in mind that I’m about as opposite to this as I could be - you know, cloth diapers washed at home, breastfeeding, etc) there was nothing on that list I could bring myself to pay money for. But I can sew. So I sat down and I sewed together 6 velcro-on bibs, with a bright-colored recycled beach towel for the backs, and bright cotton prints on the front, all different prints. I couldn’t attend the shower regardless, but I sent along the gift.
The mother was absolutely delighted. She had received no other bibs, or perhaps she had gotten the sort that’s good for catching drool but not much else, and she was tickled to death to get such sturdy, practical bibs that (as it happened) lasted until the child didn’t need them anymore, about 3 years. She was not offended at all to receive something practical. I imagine she’d have been offended if she knew why I’d sent them and not what had been asked for… but all was well that ended well.
I’ve seen identical bibs to these sold for $5 or so each at holiday bazaars. I can sew one in 15 minutes if I don’t get interrupted. For $30 or an hour and a half of my time, I can give somebody a gift they’ll use every single day for years. I call that a good present. And heck, if they don’t like it and give it to Goodwill…? It will make somebody else very happy.
Oh, my! You were much more gracious under the circumstances than I would have been! I think I would have opted for (A) saying “I’m sorry, but I seem to be clean out of baby gifts this evening!” or (B) a box of baby cereal and a couple of jars of strained fruit, explaining that I thought it would be perfect since the kid was just about the right age to start eating solids.
When will people figure out that it’s incredibly rude to demand gifts?
Really? This is something the pediatricians can’t seem to make up their minds on. When my 16 and 13 year olds were born, the prevailing medical wisdom was no solids at all until the kid was a year old. When my 4-year-old was born, the docs were saying to start cereal at 3-4 months, followed a couple of weeks to one month later by fruits and veggies. In fact, at the time, the docs were saying that sometimes babies started on solids too late can develop an aversion to solid foods, and you have a hard time ever getting them to eat properly. Sometimes I fear they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about!
How about one of the little boxed (or however they display them) sets of coins from this year? Not the big collector coins, but the penny-nickel-dime-quarter sets? Not much monetary value, but something the kid will probably think is pretty cool. I’d certainly like to have a set of mint coins from my birth year, especially since everything had special designs for the bicentennial. I don’t want one badly enough to go to the time, trouble, and expense now, but it would be really nice if someone had put me one together when I was a baby.
A mint Kennedy half-dollar (I assume they still make them) every year would probably go over well with the kid, too. I remember being fascinated with them as a kid, because you never saw them anywhere. A friend of mine used to put away Saccies from her daughter’s birth year away for the kid.
Personally, though, I’d buy a fairly small, but very sturdy wood bookcase, some board books, and a hardcover collection of fairy tales. Buy age-appropriate books (and some to keep for later) for other gifty occasions, and start building the kid’s library. Storytime is good for baby’s development and good for parent-child bonding, and a well-made bookcase will last for decades. It might not appreciate in monetary value, but it will gain in sentimental value, and the hardcovers should still be in readable shape if/when baby has babies of his/her own.
Someone I know received a 12" high piggy bank with "[Babyname]'s College Fund nicely painted on the side. (Seemed like a nice business, by the way. I imagine that you can buy unglazed piggy banks cheaply, perhaps from China. Glaze them with a custom message and sell them for $20-30.)
For a friend about to have a baby, I suggested to our group of friends that we get them a collection of classic children’s books, perhaps starting with books ideal for an infant (Goodnight Moon, for instance), and then getting some more books each year. In that case, though, the new mother is a serious bibliophile and already owns most of the classics.
(By the way, I’d love to hear how the gift request was phrased.)
Not many of my friends reproduce . . . but when some friend did about eight years ago, I went out and bought some newsapers and magazines from the day the baby was born: the NY Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Time, People, Vogue, etc. (even then, you’re talking up to $50!). Wrote a little note to tuck into a copy from me, and told the parents to save them for the kid’s 21st birthday and give it to her then.
They said it was the most imaginative and meaningful gift they got. Of course, maybe they were being polite and chucked it in the Dumpster when I left . . .
If I had received an invitation to give, of the sort you described from the type of people you described, I think I would have responded, if at all, with something along the lines of the following.
First, I’d find a charity which I could support in good conscience; preferably one which is dedicated to selflessness or poverty (perhaps the order of Mother Theresa), and ideally one which would subsequently solicit further donations from those parents.
Second, I’d send a generous donation in the names of the child and parents.
Third, I’d send the parents a card or nicely framed certificate commemorating the donation to that charity in their names.
We did something similar for the 50th birthday of a family friend. After buying a standard but forgettable gift, we happened to be in a store that was selling old issues of Life magazine, so for $5 we bought the issue from the week he was born. He opened his gifts during the party and seemed happier with that than anything else he received. It helped that he is a photography buff. He tried to do the same thing for his wife for her 50th birthday, but she was born during the same week as the attack on Pearl Harbor, so magazines from that week were not easy to get.
