What Is the Deal With "Gender Reveal" Parties?

Some people are just dying to announce: “It’s a boy!”

One of the strangest differences between parents my age and parents slightly younger than me is this bizarre new practice of “gender reveal” parties or announcements or whatever else you call them.

To me, the cringe factor is just totally off the charts. I can’t even watch them when I see videos of them on the internet. I have to look away or turn it off altogether when a video like that pops into my feed.

Seriously, they’re so insanely weird, it’s hard for me to understand why anyone would do that, and I wonder if I'm not the only one who feels this way. I suspect many people find them uncomfortable but aren’t willing to say anything out loud about it, so, okay, fine, I will:

People, please stop it with the “gender reveal” parties.

This weird (and new) cultural practice is a puzzle to me for so many reasons.

First, the most glaringly obvious problem is simply that you could be wrong. You could make an announcement to all your friends and family that you’re having a baby girl, but when your child is born, your baby girl could actually turn out to be a boy, or vice versa.

So what’s even the point? How embarrassing would that be if it happened to you?

I know that ultrasounds are much clearer these days than they were when my kids were born, and even more so than when I was born, but still, nothing has 100% accuracy. It’s so strange that people play the odds like that.

I sometimes imagine how a young man who was “misgendered” (heh) in this way might look back at photos from years past that show an announcement erroneously saying “It’s a girl,” like President Truman mockingly held up the newspaper with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” to shame the press. It’s just a really bad look.

Second, so many people have obvious preferences for the sex of their child, and the inevitable outcome of a “gender reveal” announcement will be disappointment.

I have actually seen video clips of this exact circumstance play out online, where one or both parents are clearly hoping for a boy and find out “It’s a girl,” or the other way around. It is heartbreaking to see people wither and die on the inside, in front of everybody else, as they make their discovery in real time.

If you even have the slightest potential to be disappointed, why would you risk making that known so publicly?

(Also, can you imagine being the child of an unwanted sex, discovering photos or videos of that moment someday in the future, seeing the disappointment in your parents’ eyes? That would be crushing.)

I saw something very close to this happen once at the only “gender reveal” party I ever went to, and it was really sad. (Note: I only went to this because it was a big party for lots of people I knew, and the “gender reveal” just happened to be one of many things happening that day. I don’t know that I would go to a party if I knew that was the main event.)

The couple at the party had multiple sons. Many years had passed since, and she had gotten pregnant in what seemed like a miraculous last-ditch effort at motherhood.

After the cake was cut and the blue icing made its appearance, everybody smiled and clapped. But I noticed later that there were tears in the woman’s eyes, and I overheard her say, “Why does everybody keep asking if I’m disappointed?”

Of course, they were asking that because they were clearly anticipating that she had wanted a daughter. Their obvious conclusion was that she would be bummed out to learn she was having another son.

What a rotten thing to say to a mother.

Third, what is up with sharing all this stuff online? Even if you do believe in finding out the sex of your baby before he or she is born, why would you announce this publicly? Or, even if you have a party to celebrate it, why would you share it with the entire world on the internet?

I just cannot understand any of this.

Look, I get wanting to celebrate. Becoming a parent is cool. Having babies is cool. I’ve done it five times. I loved the experience each time.

Also, I made a guess each time on what we’d end up with: I correctly predicted the sex of four of our five kids. I was absolutely certain that our first child was a girl (I was right), our second child was a girl (I was right), our third child was a boy (I was right), our fourth child was a boy (I was right), and our fifth child was a girl (I was wrong).

Oh well… an 80% guess rate is still pretty good. But again, I never told anybody about this. This was private, special information only for me and my family.

Zooming out even further, when my parents found out my mom was pregnant, they’d get an ultrasound to check on fetal development and health, and all that, but as far as I know, they never once asked to find out if they were having a girl or a boy.

In my own family, my wife and I decided to do things differently, but not in the way people expected.

When we discovered my wife was pregnant, we would go in for an ultrasound, and of course, we checked on the health of the baby, but we also took advantage of the technology and asked to find out if we were having a boy or a girl.

Yes. We “peeked.”

But we never told anybody.

Before we went in for the ultrasound, we would each read through a book of baby names and pick out our choices, separately. I’d write out my choices for girls’ and boys’ names, and she would do the same, then we’d compare notes.

This made for a fun evening. We turned it into a game: I’d list all the names I liked for boys and then the names I liked for girls, and if any of them were names she didn’t like, I would cross them off my list.

Then it was her turn: she’d list all the names she liked for each, and if I didn’t like them, she’d cross them off her list.

Round one, round two, round three… on we’d go, slashing names left and right until we narrowed them all down to four names total: two options for a boy, and two options for a girl that we both agreed on.

Then, at our doctor’s office (in the case of our first child), and our midwife’s office (for the remaining four), we would look at the grainy black-and-white picture and wait for the announcement: “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!”

We’d squint our eyes to look for either the hamburger or hot dog on the screen to verify that we were, in fact, going to be having a girl or a boy. Then I made the final decision: in that moment, I’d tell my wife what I picked for our child’s name.

This was a fun, special, private moment for us.

With each pregnancy, though, people acted weird around this stage. They’d start asking probing questions that I felt were intrusive.

“So, do you know if you’re having a girl or a boy?” people would sometimes ask.

“Yep,” I’d say.

“…AND?” they’d push, irritated, as though I hadn’t fully answered their question.

“And what?” I’d reply.

“So?! What is it?! A girl or a boy?!” they’d ask, impatient.

“Oh, I’m not telling you,” I’d say.

This really seemed to annoy and even offend some people, which is absolutely mystifying to me, still to this day. I don’t understand why people feel like they were owed this information.

And I wasn’t playing games with them, either: I didn’t taunt people or wave the fact that I knew if we were having a girl or boy and had already picked out a name in front of them.

I was just being honest: they asked, I answered.

But why did they even ask in the first place? Whatever happened to simply celebrating with a couple when their baby is born? Why do they push and act so entitled?

Yet, here we are now, and it seems like everybody on earth makes these gigantic, extravagant, almost grotesque announcements that are just off the charts with flamboyance: cannons, fireworks, confetti, blue and pink smoke—it’s just totally insane.

And then they post it on the internet for anyone, anywhere, to see.

Why? That is just… super weird.

Some of these parties are so over-the-top that parents are becoming nearly deranged with a competitive drive, trying to come up with the most outrageous efforts possible, to the point where people are literally dying and even being charged with crimes.

In many instances, multiple people have died from smoke bomb explosions. In Mexico, a plane flying a banner saying “It’s a girl” crashed into the ocean, killing multiple people.

In California, “gender reveal” fireworks started a wildfire that burned 22,000 acres and killed a firefighter.

A family in Iowa created a pipe bomb that killed a grandmother at their party.

Here in Tucson, Arizona, one foolish father used Tannerite (!!) to create a huge blue explosion to announce the arrival of a baby boy and, in the process, burned 45,000 acres of national forest land and was fined $8 million.

So, parents, here is my public plea to you, today:

PLEASE, EVERYBODY, CALM THE HECK DOWN!

Just enjoy the moment at home with your family in peace. If you insist on peeking and telling people the news before you’re even sure of it, by all means, have the barbecue, pop a balloon with pink or blue sequins, and clap, I guess.

Celebrate your excitement quietly, privately, and inexpensively.

This stuff is getting TOTALLY out of control. Please, stop the madness. Let’s go back to passing out cigars and buying pink or blue clothes after the baby’s born, can we?

---