Having just been to one, it struck me as sort of a silly way to tell the future child’s future siblings what sort of sibling they were going to be getting. Certainly those 2-6 year olds were all very excited to learn they were getting a brother (though the youngest clearly didn’t have any idea what she was exited about).
Everybody else there seemed to be more in the ‘meh, whatever, now cut the cake’ order of things. The pregnancy itself was exciting and congratulationworthy and such; the reveal of the sex, not so much.
Yeah. I’m 42 years old and my mom’s best friend asked her if we were going to do anything to celebrate my first period (ha, no), so the idea’s been around a long time.
As for the OP, I see them as yet another vehicle for people to show off their narcissism and bask in the warm glow of believing everyone is fascinated by every detail of their lives.
I went to a reveal party a couple years ago. It was for a friend’s daughter. She already had twin boys were were 4 and they really wanted a little brother. She had them cut the cake together while Daddy was standing by with his phone to take pictures. When they saw pink crumbs on the knife they kind of froze and started asking Mommy questions like, is it really a girl, are you sure, we wanted a brother. Then they both kind of melted down so my friend and their Daddy had to take them out of the room until they settled down. My friend’s family was horrified but I thought it was hilarious. And yes the twins calmed down after a while and by the time Little Sister was born they were happy about it.
That’s not what she wrote. She wrote they make fun of the party, not the people. Although “discovering the gender of their unborn child” is a pretty dumb thing to celebrate. Never mind that unborn children don’t have gender.
Who are holding these parties? People are holding them. She’s choosing to make fun of the party, to me that includes making fun of the people holding said party. She’s also getting her kid to be unkind about the celebration too.
Unnecessary nastiness. You do you, there’s need to be bitchy about how people choose to celebrate.
And in the context of a trans kid who would have been misgendered by that sort of party at their own birth, I think you are being really harsh. A “gender reveal” party is sort of telling a trans kid, “no, you are wrong, your gender is what parts you were born with.”
Too bad they aren’t called “sex reveal” party, although I suppose that might bring stripper to might.
If a trans kid had been given a reveal party I’m thinking they would realise the sex revealed at that party was obviously not the sex they are.
I’d hope a trans kid would be getting support to realise that they had most definitely not been born with the wrong parts but they’d been misgenered at birth.
If the parent is an asshole and throws it in their trans child’s face, maybe. But there’s no way a parent can look into a crystal ball and say, ok, this child has female body parts but at age 10 will realize he is really a boy, so I better make the cake blue and dress him accordingly from birth.
These parties happen way before the kid is born. It takes years before they would be self aware enough to know what their real gender is. I don’t see how it’s any different then baby pictures of girls in frilly pink dresses and baby boys in little overalls and flannel shirts. If the parents are supportive of the trans child now and in the future I don’t see why the past would be that big of a deal.
But reveal parties are all about conflating sex and gender. One of the ways of coping with people doing hurtful things is to make fun of the thing they are doing, and how it doesn’t make sense.
Reveal parties in practice are not about just telling others, “here’s what kind of genitals my future kid is going to have, and the pronouns we will provisionally be using.” The reveal is typically all about the trappings of gender – pink and blue, frills vs sports, etc. And it seems like the purpose is to let people set their expectations of what the kid will be like, and what kinds of clothes and other gifts they can expect to give in the future. Like, grandmothers saying “Yay, I can’t wait to buy lots of princess dresses and have tea parties!” when the reveal is “it’s a girl!” The reveal is not “they are female, gender to be determined.”
So in 2019’s Woke America, giving an infant who is born with a penis and testes (or a vagina and ovaries) a blue or (pink) rattle is now a hate crime, eh?
Somewhere, good ol’ President Donald John Trump is rubbing his hands in glee…
If a kid is being born into the kind of family where Grandma says “Can’t wait to buy all the pink dresses for this baby girl.” having a reveal party (or not) won’t stop grandma buying all that pink.
Maybe the kind of parents who do hve reveal parties are the types to dress their baby girl in pink, boy in blue. Who the heck are we to judge? As I said before, you do you.
I’ve never dressed my child in specific colours or bought certain toys aimed at their sex.
I wasn’t brought up wearing pink just cos I’m a girl, although at age 3 I decided pink was my favourite colour and wore it everyday for 5yrs
One of the reasons my favorite holidays are Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year, Easter and 4th of July =) An excuse to get together and consume massive quantities of food and have fun.
