0:03

Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told

0:05

You from House top Works dot com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen

0:14

and I'm Caroline, and today we are

0:16

talking about a new baby

0:20

celebration tradition.

0:22

Can we already call it a tradition? Hasn't been around long

0:24

enough for it to be a tradition? Came think

0:26

in this age of the internet, we

0:29

can call it a tradition already. Yeah, we're

0:31

gonna talk about gender reveal parties.

0:33

They're also known as gender cake

0:35

parties. And this

0:37

is a little bit different than a typical stuff

0:40

I've Never told you topic because it's

0:42

something that hasn't been around that often. It's it's

0:44

a pretty niche type

0:47

of thing to discuss.

0:49

But since we're talking about gender

0:52

babies, parenting,

0:54

it's a lot of cake dessert

0:57

when you talk about cake all the time. Yeah,

0:59

it's just actually an intersection of a lot

1:01

of different common stuff Mom Never

1:04

told you themes and I have a feeling that

1:06

there are a lot of people

1:08

listening who are either planning

1:11

gender revealed parties, have been to one,

1:14

or maybe hoping that they don't

1:17

have to go to one. Uh

1:19

So, why don't we talk about what these

1:21

things are. Yeah, I want to start off by saying

1:24

what they are not, because when Kristen

1:26

suggested this topic, I was like, oh,

1:28

okay, that's kind of neat, Like that's not something

1:30

I've heard of. Thinking that

1:33

a gender reveal party was

1:35

when a transgender

1:38

man or woman announced

1:40

or debuted their

1:43

new sex. I I didn't.

1:45

I literally never heard of this. I was like, okay,

1:48

so a party once you've had like a sex

1:51

change or you've decided to live as a

1:53

man or so, okay

1:55

that that also could make total sense.

1:58

Yeah, but that is not at all what we're talking

2:00

about. Well, speaking though, of gender and sex.

2:02

In a lot of ways, gender reveal parties

2:04

are a misnomer because the whole

2:06

point of it is to reveal the biological

2:09

sex of the baby.

2:12

So linguistic quibble aside,

2:14

they're called gender reveal parties, and

2:17

yeah, it's when you find out what

2:19

the baby is going to

2:22

be according to chromosomal

2:24

data, right, put

2:27

that on the cake. Yes,

2:28

yes, And it's it's funny how how big

2:31

they've gotten so fast. And it really is

2:33

not to sound like I'm ninety years old, but

2:36

thanks to the Internet, these

2:38

things have blown up websites like

2:41

Pinterest have fostered this

2:44

this like kind of pseudo industry

2:47

as far as cakes go, as

2:49

far as you know, ideas

2:52

for parties. Here, fill this box with balloons

2:54

that are either blue or pink and then release them.

2:57

Things like that. Yeah. Yeah,

3:00

according to a couple of articles

3:02

that we found reporting on this in two thousand twelve,

3:04

because it seems like was

3:06

really when gender revealed

3:09

parties came into the

3:11

mainstream, because there were trend pieces

3:13

in Time Magazine, in the New York

3:15

Times, in the New Yorker, and they

3:17

reported, for instance, um that

3:20

over at baby center dot

3:22

com, which is, as you can imagine,

3:24

a very popular website for

3:26

a new parents that by April twelve,

3:30

the number of threads

3:32

discussion threads about gender revealed parties

3:35

had gone up to two eighty two

3:37

from just twenty eight the year before. Yeah,

3:40

a lot of people are talking about it. And then

3:42

if you go over to YouTube, so you

3:44

know, just in our society in general

3:46

right now, everybody's youtubing everything

3:49

or instagramming or whatever. And so if

3:51

you look for gender reveal videos on

3:53

YouTube, the first one dates

3:56

back to all the way to two

3:58

thousand eight, and it simply shows

4:01

the parents opening a sealed envelope containing

4:03

the ultrasound results before friends and family.

4:06

There were a couple more that trickled in

4:08

in two thousand nine, and but

4:11

in the six months preceding April,

4:13

more than eight hundred gender revealed videos

4:15

were uploaded to YouTube, and this morning,

4:18

before we walked into the podcast

4:20

studio, there were fifty

4:23

three thousand, three hundred results

4:26

for just gender revealed party. I

4:28

mean, look at that. This was April,

4:30

there were eighteen hundred. Yeah,

4:33

yeah, But I think that it

4:35

has everything to do though,

4:37

with the Internet and with social media,

4:39

and in terms of a specific origin for

4:42

gender revealed parties. Clearly, as

4:44

that two thousand eight YouTube video

4:47

indicates, there have been families that have been having

4:50

these little celebrations here and there.

4:53

But I think that the origin really

4:55

has, you know, traces back to people

4:58

seeing other people doing this on

5:00

YouTube, or reading threads about it on a

5:02

place like baby center dot com, seeing ideas about

5:04

it on Pinterest. It seems all fueled

5:07

by the Internet, so much so

5:09

that it seemed to have started out as a very

5:11

American centric kind of thing to

5:14

do, in the same way that baby showers are

5:16

sort of American and they have now jumped

5:19

over the pond. We we read

5:21

a column by a very disgruntled

5:24

woman in the Telegraph saying,

5:26

well, thanks Americans, because

5:29

not only did you give us baby showers, now

5:31

we have these gender reveal parties. And

5:33

you know, I mean there was a lot there

5:36

was a lot of negativity about these

5:38

parties online and I was telling Kristen

5:40

this, you know, I when

5:42

I started reading about this, because I was

5:44

so wrong about what they were, and so when I started

5:46

reading about them, I was like, oh, that's kind of stupid.

5:49

But then again, I think baby showers are kind of stupid.

5:51

But as I read more, I was like, who

5:53

cares. Let these parents or families

5:56

celebrate however they want to celebrate, right,

5:58

And I'm sure that your perspective,

6:00

our perspective on baby showers

6:03

and all of the announcements

6:05

via social media of the development of said

6:08

baby inside our wombs and all those different

6:10

things, our perspective on it would probably change

6:12

if we walked a mile in that womb. Sure,

6:15

yeah, if if we're the ones having it. But

6:17

also on the other side of that coin, if

6:20

we were the ones being invited to all of

6:22

them, right, right, But first we have

6:24

to give a rundown of what specifically

6:28

a gender reveal party entails,

6:30

because it isn't just parents

6:32

saying, oh, it's gonna

6:35

be X y Z. I don't know

6:37

whether there'd be three things, but you know, sure.

6:40

Uh So. What happens though, is

6:43

that usually it's

6:45

in the second trimester that

6:48

the mom to be will have the ultrasound done

6:50

to determine the sex, and around eight percent

6:53

of parents choose to see

6:55

what the sex is going to be beforehand, because hey,

6:57

that makes sense, you know, we can start thinking about that

7:00

thing inside of you as a person with

7:02

an identity. And then parents who want

7:04

to have a gender revealed party instruct

7:07

the ultrasound technician to not

7:09

tell them what is inside

7:11

that womb, but rather seal up Oscar's

7:14

style. The results in

7:17

an envelope, which the ultrasound tech

7:19

then hands off too said

7:22

mother or father whomever to be, And

7:24

then they go to a bakery

7:26

and then they hand the envelope to the baker

7:29

and they say, baker, inside

7:31

this envelope, you will find the sex

7:33

of our baby, maybe plural

7:35

babies. Please make a cake

7:38

of either pink or blue coloring,

7:42

cover it with a frosting that won't

7:44

give away with inside of it and

7:46

put question marks all over it maybe if

7:49

you want to do that style, or in

7:51

some cases a really creepy fondante

7:53

baby. Yeah, they're also fond of babies.

7:56

And so then at the party, in what

7:58

is kind of a brew little fashion,

8:02

cut into a cake to see

8:04

what color it reveals, or if

8:06

you don't have a full cake, some people choose

8:08

to do cupcakes filled with

8:11

pink or blue cream filling

8:13

of some sort. So you have a room full of adults

8:17

biting into a cupcake.

8:19

It's kind of hilarious. What do you

8:21

think about it? Because you're like, oh, baby,

8:25

let me take this giant knife. You

8:28

know, I don't know if this had happened. A friend of

8:30

mine um has just had her second

8:32

baby. They're both boys. She was devastated

8:34

both times when to find out they

8:36

were boys instead of girls. And I'm

8:38

really glad she didn't decide to have a gender reveal

8:41

party because I feel like if you had given

8:43

her a big knife and

8:46

told her to cut

8:48

into a cake to to find out that her baby was

8:50

going to be a boy, or the second time around

8:53

a second boy, she might have stabbed somebody

8:55

like probably your husband or something. But

8:58

people would also say that

9:01

having a celebration for

9:04

this moment could

9:06

be away to ease

9:09

those possibly dashed expectations

9:13

or hopes for having one or the

9:15

other. Well, what I think is weird? So okay,

9:17

it's not weird enough just to cut into

9:20

something you know and determine

9:23

the sex of the baby, or or bite into something

9:25

that's cream filled to determine the sex of a

9:28

baby. But like a lot of times

9:30

these parties, people will vote

9:32

for one way or the other, and that's weird.

9:35

What that's awkward When you're like wearing the pink

9:37

shirt, it's like whoops. Yeah, a lot

9:39

of times they'll do it. Where will you

9:41

when you arrive at the party, if you're a guest, you're

9:43

either going to be on team girl or team

9:45

boy, or yeah,

9:47

you might place a bet. There's

9:49

all all these things involved with splitting

9:52

people into the pink

9:54

or the blue. And before we get

9:56

into are we going

9:59

are j revealed? Parties like taking us

10:01

way back in time now to where

10:03

like girls are in a pink corner and boys are in a blue

10:05

corner. Um First, it's interesting,

10:08

though, to see what some culture critics

10:11

perceive as the motivation

10:13

for having. It's almost

10:15

like a pre baby shower, Like, why do

10:17

we need another celebration

10:20

on top of a baby shower. Yeah,

10:22

a lot of people out there are saying that this

10:24

is just proof that we are, you

10:27

know, narcissistic, that self

10:29

involved. We just want another excuse to

10:31

celebrate ourselves. And a

10:33

lot of people are out there saying that the

10:35

gender revealed party is putting the

10:37

focus on ourselves rather than

10:40

the future human that you're about to have,

10:42

and that we're celebrating I

10:45

don't know almost that we're celebrating the wrong

10:47

thing. And the New York Times was particularly

10:50

snarky. They wrote, in a culture

10:52

where many expected parents feel obligated

10:54

to tweet their pregnancy announcement, live

10:56

post their ride to the hospital via Instagram

10:58

and skype, the babies first smile, it's

11:00

the latest example of one of parenthood's

11:03

formerly private moments becoming

11:05

a matter of public consumption and

11:07

also literal consumption when you're eating

11:10

the cupcake or delicious consumption

11:13

exactly. Uh. Linda

11:15

Murray, who's editor in chief over baby

11:17

center dot com, thinks that it also

11:19

has to do with that social media aspect

11:22

where you know, maybe expectant

11:26

moms really want to do this because

11:28

it will provide some fun

11:30

fodder for their Facebook or

11:32

Instagram accounts um

11:35

or kind of on a more dismal side

11:38

to that, maybe

11:40

we are so involved, Murray

11:42

speculates with our social media

11:44

lives that our real life,

11:47

our offline life, is a little

11:49

bit lacking, and especially

11:51

when you're going through something that can

11:53

be a bit difficult and taxing

11:55

and exhausting, like pregnancy,

11:57

that this is a moment for us

12:00

to actually have a good time

12:02

and and do something fun and actually get together

12:04

face to face with people where

12:06

we normally don't so much anymore. Yeah,

12:08

and I mean the New York Times does drop a snart long

12:11

enough to say that, you know, maybe this is

12:13

just a modern way to savor

12:16

the surprise to not be stuck

12:18

in a dark ultrasound room at

12:20

the doctor's office and they're like, oh, it's a girl,

12:22

and you're like, my legs are in stirrups.

12:25

You know, Instead, you're at home

12:27

wearing your party dress, surrounded by friends and

12:29

family, and you get to do something fun

12:32

and you know, actually make it enjoyable. Well.

12:34

Invendors like bakers are

12:36

certainly not disappointed

12:39

by this trend at all, because There

12:41

are not only so

12:43

many d i y ideas for

12:46

gender revealed parties over on Pinterest,

12:48

but there are also plenty of bakers

12:51

who are now specializing in things like

12:53

this filling rush orders. You have

12:55

entire commercial websites

12:58

popping up just to um

13:01

fulfill the kinds of decor

13:03

needs you might want for a

13:05

gender reveal party. Yeah. And

13:07

I mean even Etsy, you know, we've talked about Etsy.

13:09

Etsy is getting in on the game too. There are plenty

13:11

of sellers over there who make

13:14

all sorts of neat, artistic little

13:16

items that you can have and feature

13:18

at your gender revealed party. I gotta

13:20

say, like, you know, Kristen and I went through the Pinterest

13:24

search for gender revealed

13:26

party items and there's

13:29

a lot of cute stuff. I mean, people

13:31

get really creative with it. Yeah, I mean we

13:34

were kind of poking fun at or not kind

13:36

of. We were were poking fun at the whole cutting

13:38

into the cake and the cupcake, biting

13:41

into cupcake thing. But there are also

13:43

ideas like opening up

13:45

a box of balloons, he healing balloons

13:47

that will either have pink or blue, or

13:50

shooting confetti, or going

13:53

to say baby bou

13:55

cheek and handing off the sonogram

13:57

results or the ultrasung results. Excuse me

13:59

to a clerk and say, buy

14:01

us a gender appropriate outfit

14:04

to go with this. And then you open up

14:06

the outfit and

14:08

you're like, oh, look it's address. It

14:12

comes with baby lipstick. Well,

14:15

you know, there are arguments against

14:18

these parties that go beyond just snarkiness

14:20

in the New York Times saying that people need to

14:22

keep their private lives private. And we

14:25

will get more into that and talk about

14:27

other people's views of these gender

14:29

revealed parties right after a quick break

14:31

and now back to the show. So

14:33

earlier in the show, we referenced a column

14:36

over at the Telegraph newspaper

14:39

and that that was the one written by the disgruntled

14:42

brit who wasn't quite happy yet

14:44

another American export

14:46

of a baby related party. But she

14:48

talked to Professor Cathy Warwick, who's

14:50

the head of the Royal College of Midwives,

14:53

who notes that there

14:55

is a possible downside

14:57

to having a gender revealed party

14:59

be because even though the chances

15:01

for miscarriage drop dramatically

15:04

once you're into the second and their trimesters,

15:07

something could still go wrong.

15:09

Warwick says that you know it could

15:12

give women false hopes, because

15:14

even after that twelve week mark,

15:17

there is still the possibility for a

15:19

miscarriage or something happening. Yeah, And I mean

15:21

some people could argue that, well,

15:24

I might have my baby shower and then something could

15:26

could go wrong. But I think the argument here is

15:28

that these gender revealed

15:30

parties are by their very nature so

15:32

public and so social

15:35

media driven, like I'm going to post it on Twitter and

15:37

Facebook and YouTube and Instagram

15:39

and so well. It's not to say you

15:41

wouldn't post all that stuff about your baby

15:43

shower, but I think there's maybe a different

15:46

cultural attitude maybe about these gender

15:48

reveal parties. And some are also concerned

15:50

at whether or not these

15:53

parties are inadvertently celebrating

15:55

gender essential ism of girls

15:58

or pink and this this and the US

16:00

and boys are blue and their masculine

16:02

their boys, and whether or not we're

16:04

sort of taking gender

16:07

couple steps backward in the process.

16:09

Yeah. Somebody cited a study

16:12

that had talked to moms who

16:14

had found out the

16:16

sex of their baby ahead of time while

16:18

in utero and asked

16:21

them kind of the temperament of the baby

16:23

and moms who knew they were going to have

16:25

a girl said that, you know, there

16:27

were soft movements and it was like she was

16:29

doing ballet in there, and it was rolling

16:31

movements and very peaceful and calm.

16:34

Moms who knew they were having a boy were much

16:36

more likely to say, oh, it was like he was

16:38

doing karate in there and tumbling around

16:40

and punching up in the air and things like that, whereas

16:43

mothers who never found out the sex until

16:45

birth were more kind

16:47

of evenly split on how they described

16:50

their babies movements in utero. And

16:52

so there is a lot of that discussion about, like,

16:55

is this just another thing we're already

16:57

priming ourselves and our future

16:59

chill aldren to have to be a certain

17:01

way exactly. That was a debor

17:04

Siegel writing over at the Society

17:06

Pages, and she was

17:08

referencing that study on amnio

17:11

synthesis and gender stereotyping

17:13

sort of lead up to her point about

17:15

gender revealed parties, which is that

17:17

they left her with the question of,

17:20

quote, why all the what questions?

17:22

Instead of who? Why gender

17:24

and not sex? Who's saying shouldn't we

17:27

be more celebratory and expectant

17:29

of who this child is going to be

17:31

rather than what? So much it's going to be

17:33

Yeah. And it's funny that she brought this up, because

17:35

that is exactly what I was thinking reading

17:38

all of these articles about gender revealed parties,

17:40

because first of all, I was like, well,

17:43

they I don't know if they should go ahead and jump

17:45

on the gender. It's more the sex

17:47

that they're finding out. But as

17:49

I mean many people commented under her

17:51

piece, they were like, Okay, a

17:53

lot of people don't know to even

17:55

differentiate between sex and gender.

17:57

They don't see that dividing line. And

18:00

then the whole what versus who? I was

18:02

absolutely thinking that. I'm like, no, you

18:05

you want to put a food to it, not a what

18:07

I saw all these cakes with, like what's it gonna

18:10

be? You know, human?

18:13

Probably going to be a human child? Well,

18:16

I mean, and that also does relate back to your

18:20

your first inclination of a gender revealed party

18:22

being a transgender person kind

18:24

of coming out and celebrating, you know,

18:27

this identity that they're now embodying

18:30

day to day. And to that

18:32

very point though, that is a

18:35

bit of a problem though with this idea of like from

18:38

the very get go, saying pink or blue, you

18:41

know, and that because that's that you know, that's

18:43

just looking at things through the gender

18:45

binary rather than the very well

18:47

established spectrum that

18:49

exists. Um. But Laurie

18:52

over at Feminist NG did

18:54

have an interesting point to all of this. She saw a silver

18:56

lining which I was surprised. As soon as I saw

18:58

a link to a gender reveal

19:01

party article of Feminist NG, I

19:03

assumed that it was going to be two

19:05

thumbs way way down. But she

19:08

said that, yeah, in

19:10

theory, it seems kind of silly and anti feminist,

19:13

but she says there's also a

19:15

progressive message underlying

19:17

those celebrations that no

19:19

matter the sex people

19:22

are celebrating, they're just happy

19:24

at whatever it's going to be

19:28

or whomever it's going to be. In theory,

19:31

yeah, yeah, so yeah, before

19:33

before the sex is even known, before

19:36

the gender is determined, we are excited

19:38

to have this person show up and

19:40

Donna Onesie in our household.

19:43

But I mean, if you scrolled out unto the comments under

19:45

that piece, pretty much nobody

19:47

agreed with her. Really. Yeah, well

19:49

that's interesting because she made, you know, a valid

19:52

point of saying that, you know, we're living

19:54

in a time when girls

19:56

are valued so much less than boys,

20:00

and that's not I mean, not that that's necessarily

20:02

a new thing or anything like that, but just talking about

20:04

how we have issues of sex selective

20:06

abortions on the rise in India.

20:09

I mean even in the United States, you

20:11

have sex selection becoming

20:13

a multi multi million dollar

20:16

business with parents who can

20:18

afford to pay for

20:20

treatments going in from the get go and saying

20:23

listen, we want a boy or we want a girl, which

20:25

really could be an entire podcast

20:28

unto itself. And if you're listening and would

20:31

like to hear an episode on baby

20:33

sex selection, let us

20:35

know and I'll do it. Yeah, I mean that, I

20:37

mean side note, I mean it's I think it's

20:40

terrible and scary to be

20:42

able to do that. I kind of didn't realize,

20:45

uh, the reality of that situation

20:48

sex selection. But I mean I

20:50

I I hope that laureate

20:53

feminist NG is accurate about her

20:56

silver lining viewpoint as far as

20:58

like people just being excited about baby, you

21:01

know, I hope I hope that there aren't gender

21:03

revealed parties where people are like

21:05

genuinely sad. Yeah,

21:07

that would be that would be an awkward moment.

21:09

I mean, like you said, if if your friend had

21:11

had a gender revealed party, it might

21:14

have had an awkward littlemit she would have I

21:16

don't even doubt that she would have

21:19

cried. Oh, I can't imagine

21:22

be pregnant. I feel like being

21:24

pregnant and disappointed would be

21:26

the combination of like physically the most uncomfortable

21:28

thing and mentally the most uncomfortable things. Yeah,

21:31

I mean, my friend is far from the only woman

21:33

I've heard of. Like my friend's mom

21:36

um had

21:38

her first child, who was

21:40

a boy, is a boy. Still had

21:43

her second child, who was also a boy. She was really

21:46

hoping for a girl, got pregnant the third

21:48

time it was another

21:50

boy, and I mean she fell into a deep depression.

21:53

Ah. Yeah, I think we've got to do

21:55

an episode on on baby six

21:57

then, because yeah, that's uh

22:00

that that definitely would drive home. Then

22:02

Laurie's point of Hey, Lee, we're

22:04

celebrating, isn't

22:06

this isn't this great? Yeah?

22:09

But I think my friend who

22:11

had the two boys, and my friend's mom who

22:13

had the three boys kind of fit into

22:17

uh kind of science. Uh.

22:19

You know, there there was a Time article we read that

22:21

that showed that parents actually

22:23

do have pretty strong um

22:26

opinions about what they want their kids to be, who they

22:28

want their kids to be. Yeah, they were reporting

22:30

on a study publish in the journal

22:32

Open Anthropology which came

22:35

out of Queen's University, and it

22:37

confirmed sort of a longstanding

22:40

anecdotal assumption that women

22:42

tend to want daughters and men tend

22:44

to want sons, and at least

22:47

from these more than two thousand

22:49

participants in Ontario,

22:53

that pattern held up. Yeah.

22:56

So, um, I don't know, maybe

22:58

everybody just should have parties when they're

23:00

pregnant, just like all the time. Let's

23:03

just have parties that all all the

23:05

time, Kristen, I'm

23:07

glad you exist. Let's have a party. But that

23:09

is one thing though, if you are someone who

23:12

doesn't have kids, doesn't want kids, uh,

23:14

you might feel the same way that Lizzie

23:16

Skirnick over the All did at the

23:18

prospect of gender revealed parties, where it's

23:21

like, Okay, you're my friends

23:23

and I love you, and I went to

23:26

your wedding and I went to all the stuff associated

23:28

with that. I'm gonna go to your baby

23:30

shower, I'm going to go to that child's birthdays,

23:33

and I gotta come to something else.

23:35

Yeah, that's a question like

23:38

do you get to have a

23:40

baby shower if you also have a gender

23:42

revealed party, absolutely, because I come

23:44

on, I well, I don't think people bring presents

23:47

because you can't. You can't gender

23:49

stereotype pre gender

23:51

revealed party, so you don't

23:53

bring the presents. I think you just come and

23:57

watch some one thrice into a cake. I

24:00

you know, honestly, I'm gonna go ahead and put it out there. If any

24:02

of my friends who want to have babies Monday or

24:04

listening, I probably would not come to

24:06

both. Yeah, I think I

24:08

think, you know, I am on a limited income

24:11

people, and I don't think I should be expected

24:13

as a human person to have to

24:15

go to every single party.

24:18

Yeah. I think I think that the friends should

24:20

definitely be allowed get out of

24:22

jail free kind of cards for things

24:24

like that. Although I am I am

24:26

sure though again that there are

24:29

parents listening who I

24:31

think exactly the opposite, like, come

24:34

on, come to my come to my parties.

24:36

This will be fun. Let us have fun. I need

24:38

something to put on Instagram. Don't we

24:40

all know, don't we all? But

24:42

I think it's an interesting snapshot of

24:46

sort of where we are today

24:48

in this our cultural

24:50

landscape where so much is driven

24:52

by social media. We pick up and spread

24:55

trends so quickly through our Pinterest

24:58

boards and YouTube videos, and

25:00

how we still though really

25:05

celebrate the most like

25:07

traditional kinds

25:09

of norms. I don't know, It's

25:12

like we're recycling

25:14

the old and just a new kind of way.

25:17

And it was George Packer speaking

25:19

of traditions. It was George Packer

25:21

over at The New Yorker who said that, um,

25:24

these parties are really a manufactured

25:27

custom in an instant tradition.

25:29

And he says basically that, um,

25:32

it reflects our narcissism, and that we

25:34

have moved away from traditional

25:36

sinners of worship, traditional

25:38

religion and religious beliefs and

25:40

practices, and so we

25:43

as the you know, YouTube and Facebook

25:46

generation, are kind of

25:48

using our own fetus

25:51

as an excuse to kind of publicize

25:53

ourselves. And I

25:55

don't I'm not going to say that he's right or

25:58

wrong. I think a lot of the critique

26:00

of gender revealed parties say more about

26:02

the people who are critiquing them than they necessarily

26:04

do about the parties themselves. I agree,

26:07

I totally agree. I think that the reaction

26:09

to this trend,

26:12

tradition, whatever you want to call it,

26:14

is as informative as the very

26:16

events themselves. Yeah, a lot of

26:18

people are mad about social media and therefore

26:21

will be mad about anything that picks

26:23

up steam on social media. Yeah,

26:25

and and really we need also to

26:27

do probably an episode about

26:30

kids and social media and

26:33

more the the parents putting

26:35

kids on social media, especially

26:37

since all I feel like all those apps came out

26:39

not too long ago about like, you know,

26:41

replace pictures of your friends babies

26:44

on Facebook with a picture of a cat. Yeah,

26:46

yeah, you know. I mean there's a whole

26:48

movement behind getting rid of baby pictures

26:51

on Facebook, which I don't. You know what if I had

26:53

a baby, I don't think I'd be offinitive if my friend

26:55

wanted to replace its face with a cat face.

26:58

I love cat faces, cat face to great faces,

27:01

baby faces mean whatever. Some days I'd like to replace

27:03

my own face with a cat face, just for a day to

27:05

day. Well, now it's time

27:08

for us to hear from you. Yes,

27:10

you a listener about gender reveal

27:12

parties? Have you been to one? Have you

27:14

heard of them? Have you hosted

27:17

one? What do you think about all this? Because I especially

27:20

to want to hear from parents

27:22

who might take a more sympathetic

27:24

approach to these parties.

27:27

Let us know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery

27:29

dot Com is where you can email us. As

27:31

always, you can reach out to us on social media

27:34

as well, including Twitter at mom Stuff

27:36

podcast, and you can message us on

27:38

Facebook as well, and we have a couple of

27:40

messages to share with you right

27:42

now. In fact, well,

27:46

I've got an email here first of all,

27:49

in a response to our episode

27:51

on women in hip Hop, and this is

27:53

from Erica and I really enjoyed

27:55

her type of the subject line because

27:58

as I also tweeted out when I

28:00

received it, because it taken me so much subject

28:03

line as women in Wrap w R A P. But

28:06

she wrote, I found this podcast really interesting.

28:09

I came through high school in the late eighties early

28:11

nineties in the Bay Area and rap was huge.

28:14

In particular, I saw Queen Latifa as

28:16

an amazing role model. She didn't objective

28:18

by herself and seemed so comfortable in her

28:21

skin. It made a huge difference to see a woman

28:23

like her getting it done in rap.

28:25

And there were some other people who also tweeted

28:28

us at mom and Stuff podcast about

28:30

how yes, Queen Latifa and

28:32

those other other early

28:35

female trailblazers in hip hop

28:37

were so much about empowerment

28:40

and and less about, you know, being objectified

28:42

in any kind of way, and that was one reason why

28:44

they were inspired by

28:47

early women in hip hop as well.

28:50

So thanks Erica. Already,

28:52

I have a letter here from Tara about our Women

28:54

and Hunting episode. She

28:56

this is the first time she's ever written to us. Hello

28:59

Tara, Hello, she

29:01

says. I'm from rural Maine, where many families

29:04

hunt for food and for fun. While it is mostly

29:06

men, there are plenty of women and children who

29:08

hunt to Just two seasons ago,

29:10

the lunch lady from a nearby school made the

29:12

local news by bagging a sixteen point

29:15

buck, and she actually included

29:17

links two articles about it

29:19

in a video and says that they

29:21

featured some great main accents, So if you

29:23

want to find those, bangor Daily

29:26

News dot com and w b S

29:28

News dot blogspot dot com.

29:31

And Caroline, I read the news

29:33

article about this lunch lady

29:35

who shot the buck, and never

29:38

before have I

29:41

read something that was so celebratory

29:44

over this woman hunting. When she she brought

29:47

this buck back with her to school

29:49

because the kids wanted to see

29:51

it so badly and they

29:53

were asking whether or not she would she would

29:55

cook any of the buck for lunch

29:57

one days. Apparently she had already brought in moose

30:00

and elk in in lunch's past,

30:02

just for special treats. And they had a photo of

30:04

her with this buck and it was

30:07

massive. It was a two pound

30:10

buck, and she was She described

30:13

how she just went out after work

30:16

one day and got into her the hunting

30:18

stand and was just hanging out playing solitaire

30:21

to like keep herself busy and quiet,

30:23

and looked up and there it was.

30:26

But I loved it because it was in one

30:28

photo caption described her as a local celebrity.

30:31

So the lunch

30:33

lady, the huntress, that's right. So

30:36

thanks again to everybody who's written into us. Mom

30:38

Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can

30:40

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30:43

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31:01

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31:03

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31:05

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31:11

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