Gender reveal parties are particularly popular in the United States. Online Retailer Party Delights reported an 87 percent increase in gender reveal-related products over the past three years, and attributed the craze to social media and viral videos.
This kind of party is celebrated during the earlier stage in pregnancy, but is not similar to the baby shower. It is a party where it is announced whether the expectant parents will be having a boy or a girl, and most often, is also a surprise for the couple themselves.
At the 20-week scan, the point when it is possible to tell the gender of the baby, couples will ask the sonographer to write down boy or girl on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope. Couples will give the envelope to a trusted friend or relative, who will be organizing the party, per BBC News.
Claire Grasby, managing director of Online Retailer Party Delights, said customers are looking for more creative and unusual ways to celebrate a pregnancy. Commonly, traditional reveals entail a cake with blue or pink sweets hidden inside, and a guest taking off a hat to reveal a pink or blue wig, but announcing genders using fireworks, smoke grenades, and burnouts is now becoming more and more common.
Prevents children from being celebrated in all their infinite diversity
Jenna Karvunidis, the woman who was credited with inventing gender reveal parties, released a statement regarding her mixed emotions towards the phenomenon. In 2008, she baked a cake with pink icing on the inside to reveal she was having a baby girl. She wrote about it in a blog and instantly sparked a new trend.
That baby girl she baked a cake for now wears suits and short haircuts; thus, Karvunidis' perspective on gender identity has changed.
"Assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what's between their legs," she posted on Facebook in July.
She added that potentials and talents have nothing to do with what's between the kid's legs. She explained that she did the gender reveal as they didn't live in 2019 and didn't know then that focusing on gender at birth leaves possible harmful impacts on the child.
Karvunidis said the plot twist is that the world's first gender-reveal party baby became a girl who wears suits. According to Marie Claire, millions of kids do not agree with their gender at birth as their perspectives and beliefs do not align.
Gender reveal parties execute hideously stereotyped boxes
Margarida Rafael, a licensed psychologist, said gender reveal parties reinforce the concept that blue means boy and pink means girl and that gender must stay the same as the child grows up as it is the sex assigned at birth.
It rejects the assumption that the child's gender at birth may not be aligned with how the child behaves growing up, as their choices of toys and colors may not be the same as the ones assigned to the respective genders. People usually disagree when a child chooses something over what is accepted as the norm, rather than accepting and embracing their individuality.
According to Very Well Family, gender reveal parties limit the unborn child as well as the people involved in the party.
