Parehts who found out beforehand that their child is intersex would probably tell the people who they felt needed to know, and everyone else after the baby was born, if it was warranted. Sometimes it isn’t, if it’s clear-cut how the baby will be raised. Fortunately, that condition is very rare.
I’ve been following a vlog for a family who found out early in the pregnancy that their baby had a genetic disorder that is incompatible with life (Patau Syndrome, or trisomy 13). They did do a gender reveal (they exploded pink chalk popper thingies on a beach) and they knew the baby would not be coming home with them, so they did not prepare a nursery. She lived exactly 38 weeks prenatally, and 60 minutes afterwards.
As for girls and pink, I’ve never been a “girly girl” by any stretch of the imagination, but I wear pink sometimes because I do look good in it.
I look good in it, too, with my coloring, but I refuse to wear it because, as I said, it’s too strongly associated with attempts to re-engineer who I am. Blame it on people who in the 1960’s and 1970’s couldn’t accept that a girl wanted to run around outside, get muddy, repair/build things, fly airplanes, drive trucks, take woodshop, lift weights, and do other “boy” things incompatible with lacy dresses, panty-hose, and “lady-like” behavior. Forcing me to wear pastels - especially pink - was part of that process, as well as sending me to charm school not once but twice, constantly berating me for my interests, telling me to be quiet, be a good girl, don’t get dirty, stop being so loud, etc.
Oddly enough, in large part it wasn’t my parents doing this but the school system I was attending and the area I lived in. My parents at some point realized I was a tomboy and supported me, it was other adults in my life who made it very clear that my behavior was deviant and not acceptable in their version of polite society.
I saw a clip where the wedding cake was pink to reveal the baby’s gender. That rang my fogey bell hard. I’m the least judgmental person out there; I didn’t marry my daughter’s father, and I was right not to. But gosh that’s, just, wow.
That said, I don’t see it as an attention grab. Hell, you’ve got grown ass adults throwing themselves birthday parties and nobody blinks an eye at that. Gender parties are no worse.
The only gender reveal party I’ve been invited to specified No gifts!, so it took the gift-grab designation off the table.
We did find out the sex of our babies…sort of. At the time, we were strapped for cash and it made planning easier. At the very least, I knew which friend to hit up for hand-me-downs. But I say sort of because it turned out that we were wrong about my oldest. Assumed female at birth, he is actually a trans guy. When he was ready to share that with the outside world, I jokingly said to my husband that we could jump on the gender reveal bandwagon that we thought we’d missed. In that case, though, would totally make it a gift grab. Kid’s got very expensive taste.
I have two daughters aged 4 and 1. We knew the sex of both from as early a stage in the pregnancy as possible; neither my wife nor I are the type who couldn’t know and plan accordingly. We did not have a gender reveal party for either.
Personally, I have no problem with them. For expecting parents, especially 1st timers, it can be a pretty exciting time for both the parents and their family and friends. Of course every expecting parent is asked “Do you know if its a boy or a girl?” about a hundred times over the term of the pregnancy. I don’t hold having a “gender reveal party” against a parent - it’s just another fun way to celebrate a momentous occasion in their life with friends and family.
I can absolutely sympathize with the OP and the situation, it sounds like a recipe for disaster in terms of his great niece. It can be very hard to celebrate a pregnancy when it seems apparent to others this is a bad mistake.
This is not actually true - in English gender was first used to distinguish social roles from biological sex in 1955, and before that it was normally only used for the grammatical concept of gender. The use of ‘gender’ as a way to say ‘sex’ without using a naughty word came after it’s use to discuss societal gender roles as opposed to biological sex. Genders that don’t conform to biological sex have been part of human societies pretty much as far back as we have records, at least as far as 4500 years ago. Intersex conditions have been known for a similarly long time. There was a strong push in Western Europe and the US in the 20th century to suppress and ignore this, but it’s a pushback against something with a long history of being understood. While it’s not surprising that people are confused, it’s not because this is a new concept but because there are large powerful groups pushing to perpetuate the confusion.
The first transgender person to be legally recognized so in Spain lived in the 17th century, but there was neither legal record of their gender, nor registry records to be changed, nor passport, nor did the King have a word for it other than “far be it from me to cirticise the work of God Our Lord, but it seems quite clear to His humble servant that this person happens to be formed by a male soul in a female body.”
How many people do you think had heard of him between then and the 1970s? How many among those who never learned to read and write? Some had, because the story made good material for romances de ciego (the pre-newspapers version of tabloids), but nobody thought of it as “something which may happen to anybody, anywhere”. That some societies recognized third genders as a matter of fact, and that some people knew that babies could be born with deformed genitalia (as it would have been seen then) doesn’t make the current talk about gender “general knowledge that some people have actively tried to suppress in recent times”.
They seem kind of silly to me, but I am a firm believer in letting the flimsiest excuse for a party stand. What’s not to like about getting together with your friends to drink booze and eat cake?
I am mildly disappointed that my wife vetoed my idea to have a gender-reveal party with bachelorette-party style pornographic cupcakes displaying the appropriate genitalia. So much more exciting than blue or pink cake batter.
I think they’re silly; but someone started them and now everyone has to follow the trend until something new comes along. Just like the silly grand gestures for asking dates to prom.
No way are they necessary. In my experience usually word has gotten out anyway; which is its own problem I suppose.
The ones I’ve witnessed were mostly just parties. No gifts were exchanged.
The Talmud, a text central to Judaism and written nearly 2000 years ago, recognized that there were intersex people, people of ambiguous sex, and even people who were identified as female at birth but became male at puberty, as well as those who ceased to be male (a category which included those whose penis was cut off through human intervention.)
I do feel like there’s been a movement to “simplify” the world, and cut it into clear buckets in the last hundred years or so. The sexes overlap, species overlap, “races” overlap. That’s how the real world worls.
Nope, sorry. “Period parties” are a thing, and have been for a good while. Not linking, but you can easily search the term!
As for gender reveal parties, I’m no more for or against them than I would be a Super Bowl or Welcome Home party. Just an excuse to share good times with family and friends.
OK, 1st blowjob party then. The need to celebrate and or document every single event in one’s life has been become excessive in my opinion. Of course people can do what they want, but they shouldn’t expect buy-in.
I’ve never been to one, but they weren’t really a thing when I had my 4 kids.
I have watched some videos of them and have been amused (mostly at the fails), so in the (extremely) unlikely event I had another kid and my wife wanted to throw one, I’d be in. I wouldn’t be looking for gifts though. I wouldn’t throw one on my own. Generally we didn’t tell anybody about our pregnancies until late in the game because she has miscarried.
We did not have a gender reveal party for either.