Meh. I’ve never been to one, but the videos show people who seem to enjoy themselves. The family and friends come up with a fun way to reveal it, and they do. The father (usually, though sometimes also the mother) gets a fun reaction that the friends and family , and everyone else has an excuse to get together, which is all parties are anyways. The actual party is never very elaborate.
It also, I’m sure, hearkens back to older traditions where people would in fact go around announcing “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl.” The cigarettes existed when I was a kid, and I’m sure they have for much longer. It also connects with the idea that having a baby is a societal event, and not just something for that one family. A new human is being added to the local tribe. Knowing the gender is part of preparing.
But, mostly, it goes back to what I said in the beginning. The people there seem to enjoy it. If they didn’t, the whole thing wouldn’t have started. Far be it from me to tell them that they’re wrong, or assume bad things about the people who throw them.
… and that is why I loathe the color pink and absolutely refuse to wear it, and avoid it as much as possible. I refuse to be color-coded in that manner.
But back to reveal parties - I remember the days when you didn’t know the sex until the kid popped out, every now and then it still strikes me as weird that we can know ahead of time. Then I start thinking about kids who are born intersex and start having weird fantasies about one day someone will be doing a reveal party and instead of pink or blue will have white (or something) because they know in advance their kid is intersex… except that will never happen, of course.
Sure, have a party if you like parties and need an excuse, but this seems to be evolving into a “must-do” and yet another expectation of perfection and performance, and really, we don’t need more of those. Whether it’s the parents lavishly spending on the reveal or the extraction of yet more money from friends and relatives, I am not a fan of excess. There seems to be pressure to make each event more over-the-top than the last. I don’t like that.
It’s just a reason for a party, which involves people getting together in real life, talking with each other, and having fun. Of course it’s a terribly unpopular idea on the SDMB.
Next week, I’m invited to a party because it’s back to school week. Those bastards, trying to make me not play Minecraft in my basement or listen to my old record collection for a couple hours! Who do they think they are? Society is broken!
In my culture, you’re not even supposed to build the crib until the baby is born - at the retail chains, you can order a full nursery and have its delivery postponed until, well, the delivery. Baby showers? Gender reveal parties? Haven’t these people heard of the evil eye? You wait until the baby is born, alive and healthy, and only *then *you celebrate.
Oh, please - a bunch of friends getting together, bringing out a cake and cutting it to reveal pink or blue is actually a fun idea.
Spending thousands of dollars you don’t really have on elaborate set-ups and demanding gifts is what’s over-the-top crazy.
I feel that way about weddings. If you can afford an elaborate destination wedding with big ceremony have at it! But don’t go tens of thousands into debt for a wedding. But what do I know? I eloped - in part because that’s all we could afford at the time. I was told I’d regret not having the fairy-tale wedding but I never did, in fact I’m really glad we did things the way we did. Of course, there are people for whom the big party is important, in which case they should throw a big party within their means. On the other hand, I’ve been to some atypical weddings, and weddings outside the “wedding industry” memes, that were fabulous where everyone had a good time. I’m all for people having options and having fun, what I object to is the meme that a couple MUST do specifically this or that thing, or go into debt trying to out-do someone else’s party.
This is almost literally my thought. But in this and age, everyone goes to the doctor to check out the unborn baby’s health, and while they’re doing tests they might as well check the baby’s gender. And number. (If you have twins, do you have to buy more than one crib? I assume so. And you’ll want an appropriate number of diapers too!)
The first time I heard of a gender reveal party, I read an online post about how the person who knew the baby’s gender* decided to rant about gender issues and wouldn’t tell the parents what gender the baby was… in front of everyone at the party, of course. An embarrassing situation was had by all (except the ranter, I guess). So I probably have an overly negative image of these parties.
It’s not a big deal if the parents don’t know the baby’s gender until birth. You can paint the crib gray or white, and the baby won’t care what color its clothes are until it can talk anyway (by which point all the old clothes will have been tossed out or given away because babies grow fast!).
*So does the doctor just tell this one person, and not the pregnant mother? I wonder how the first doctor to get this request reacted.
Any excuse for a party, I guess, altho I expect for some folks it’s definitely a gift grab. To my mind, the only reason to learn ahead of time is to narrow the name search. Personally, I wanted to be surprised when I squeezed the kid out.
My daughter was adamant that she didn’t want a lot of fluffy girly stuff for her daughter, so she held off telling anyone the baby’s sex for a pretty long time. At 16 months, my granddaughter has clothing that ranges from unicorns and bunnies to dinosaurs and planets. Not that the kid cares - her fashion genes haven’t kicked in yet.
Anyway, to answer the question - I think the spectacle of “gender reveal” is pretty silly, but in the grand scheme of things, meh.
Hey, having a kid is a Big Deal (even if it has happened 83 billion times before), and when things happen to people that are a Big Deal, they want to celebrate it. Sounds perfectly natural to me.
that’s fine, but this wasn’t A Thing until recently. Apparently my parents and grandparents (and so on) got by just fine w/o having their butts kissed over having a kid.
That they’re often called “gender” reveal parties is particularly silly.
Sometimes it’s nice to have an excuse to get family together for something fun. My family had a long gap in weddings and babbies so for a while it seemed like the only big get-togethers were funerals. A reveal party is dumb but for a while there I might have welcomed it. Although I suppose it would have come along with other babby stuff so maybe not.
Of course if your family sucks, never mind all that.
Nobody is ever in a position to demand gifts. Not for birthdays, funerals, weddings, divorces, housewarmings, welcome back from prisons, bar mitzvahs, bar crawls, Arbor Day, or Super Bowl Sunday.
Once you eliminate that, there’s really no difference between any “come here and eat cake” event.
If someone wants to blow their money, that’s generally their issue and not mine. I’m not a busybody who insists that people adhere to my priorities on party spending, sports preferences, travel plans, or whatever.
I don’t see anyone here insisting that anyone adhere to any particular standard. People are just expressing their opinion about a relatively new social phenomenon. As far as I can tell, no one here is signing a petition to ban anything.
I wanted to know the sex of my kids ahead of time because…why not? You know early on which pronouns to use when talking about the baby and
it saves time on coming up with names. Me and my husband invested hours deliberating on what to name our daughters. It makes me tired just imagining having to come up boy and girl names for both pregnancies. There are practical benefits to not waiting until the baby arrives.
But a gender reveal party? Not my style at all.
In the case of the OP and similar situations, I wonder if the panoply of celebrations is an effort to infuse joy and merriment into a bad, stressful situation. Like, maybe the grand niece needs these parties to lift up her spirits and make her excited for what lies ahead. For this reason, I wouldn’t be surprised if parties like this occurred more frequently with unintended pregnancies.
Initially I kind of liked the idea. An excuse to get together and drink, plus a chance to show off creativity. Then we were invited to one that was a “sober event”. Fuck that noise; we sent our regrets and had a good time doing something else.
And nobody is taking of forcing anyone to throw a gender reveal party.
I see criticism of people who want to have a party, on a couple main grounds that I view are unfair:
It is an expression of self-centeredness — well, parties for retirements, birthdays, weddings, etc are just as self-centered.
It’s an excuse to hit me up for a gift — you are not obligated to bring a gift to any party you attend. And if your host for any party — not just a gender reveal — insists on a gift they are in the wrong.
I’m just expressing my opinion on why those criticisms are unfair.
