Blogger Who Started Gender Reveal Party Craze Has Some Regrets

Gender reveal parties have gotten way out of hand. They're not only bizarre and often confusing, but sometimes they can be fully disastrous. Unless you’re having a celebration of your own claimed gender, rather than one for the presumed gender of a baby that doesn’t exist in the world yet, seriously consider just skipping the whole thing.

It’s an opinion that even the purported “creator” of the gender reveal party now agrees with, ten years later.

Long-time blogger Jenna Karvunidis shared her thoughts on the craze yesterday on Facebook, acknowledging that these parties took off after The Bump did an interview with her based on a blog she wrote about her own gender reveal party for her eldest child.

“Anyway, I’ve felt a lot of mixed feelings about my random contribution to the culture. It just exploded into crazy after that. Literally — guns firing, forest fires, more emphasis on gender than has ever been necessary for a baby.”

“Who cares what gender the baby is?” she continued. “I did at the time because we didn’t live in 2019 and didn’t know what we know now — that 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.”

It’s entirely likely that gender reveal parties would have become a ridiculous, wholly unnecessary thing even without Karvunidis sort of kicking it off, since society often puts such an intense emphasis on gender. But knowing that even someone who put such a huge emphasis on the revelation of her child’s gender can come around and realize that’s unnecessary, and more importantly, say as much to a bunch of people who may have gotten the idea from her, is certainly a step in the right direction.

Karvunidis also shared a photo of her family, including two daughters wearing dresses and…her suit-wearing eldest daughter, bucking the gender norms her parents once expected from her when they threw that party ten years ago.

The universe tends to be cheeky like that sometimes.