ontheedgeofeverything

Allow me to acknowledge that the topic of today’s post arguably seems a wee bit random; my mom and I recently had a conversation about gender reveal parties, despite not attending one as of late, and while I have no clue what originally prompted this topic of conversation between us, we ended up having a thorough and interesting chat about and them, and I wanted to share our throughts.

Gender reveal parties have gained tremendous popularity over the past decades, and from my understanding of their origin, a woman in the U.S. can hold claim to inventing them when she hosted a party for friends and family to celebrate an upcoming birth; she knew the baby was a girl, and decided to turn the inside of the cake pink to serve as the reveal. The idea exploded across North America, and these days, more people than not tend to host them if they’re expecting a child.

After my mom and I discussed them, I wanted to see what sort of opinions I could find about them on the internet. I came across a Reddit page in which someone asked for people’s general thoughts about gender reveal parties, and one of the responses honestly gave me a whole new perspective on them. Someone commented on the post saying how they have never been a fan of gender reveal parties because, in essence, they’re a celebration of an unborn child’s genitals, and while this assertion is a little extreme, it is the truth.

Why are so collectively obsessed with knowing the sex of a child prior to its birth? I think this information is relevant to the parents, close family, and friends, but I don’t necessarily think a party must be held to learn what the child will be. A celebration in anticipation of an upcoming birth is one thing, like a baby shower, for example, but hosting a party solely to learn the sex of the baby seems a little bit weird.

Shouldn’t the main concern be that the child in question is healthy?

Photo by Dust & Pixels on Unsplash