{"id":5155,"date":"2012-04-09T00:06:18","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T05:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=5155"},"modified":"2012-04-09T00:06:18","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T05:06:18","slug":"quick-hit-six-reasons-i-think-gender-reveal-parties-are-for-the-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2012\/04\/09\/quick-hit-six-reasons-i-think-gender-reveal-parties-are-for-the-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"QUICK HIT: Six Reasons I Think Gender-Reveal Parties Are For the Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Crossposted at The Pink and Blue Diaries<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I honestly think parents judge each other too much. <\/span>So far be it for me to judge the expectant parents in yesterday’s New York Times article, \u201cA Boy or a Girl? Cut the Cake\u201d<\/a>. <\/span>But let\u2019s just say, as a researcher, if I were <\/em>going to judge the concept of a gender-reveal party, here are 5 things I might say:<\/p>\n

1. The stat in the article regarding the percentage of people who find out the sex of their fetus through amnio or ultrasound is at odds with other stats I\u2019ve read. <\/span>The percentage is more like up to 80, not 50. <\/em><\/p>\n

2. <\/span>Gender \u2013 and therefore gender stereotyping \u2013 begins in utero. How do we know? Because i<\/span>n 1986, around the time that amniocentesis first allowed pregnant women to find out fetal sex, sociologist Barbara Katz Rothman asked 120 pregnant women to describe the movements of their fetuses. <\/span><\/strong>\u201cWomen who\u2019d learned they were having a girl gave answers such as \u2018very gentle, slow, more rolling it seemed than kicking,\u2019 \u2018moderate, reassuring but not violent,\u2019 \u2018quiet in the mornings and afternoons,\u2019 \u2018lively but not excessively energetic.\u2019 <\/span>Mothers who knew they were carrying a boy described \u2018many somersaults and very vigorous movements,\u2019 \u2018rolling from side to side and little kicks and punches up and down,\u2019 \u2018a constant jabbing under my ribcage,\u2019 and \u2018a saga of earthquakes.\u2019 <\/span>Tellingly, the responses of women who did not find out the sex of their fetus showed no such stereotypical patterns.\u201d <\/span>(Lots more about this in Annie Murphy Paul\u2019s meaty chapter on sex and sex selection in\u00a0Origins<\/em>)<\/p>\n

3. This story about g<\/span>ender-reveal parties is the antithesis of last year’s stories about Pop and Storm \u2013 kids whose parents didn\u2019t divulge their child\u2019s sex, for months after they were born. <\/span>I wonder what that says about us as a culture, or a zeitgeist, in terms of how we feel about young children and gender. \u00a0Thesis, antithesis, anyone?<\/p>\n

4. I realize that finding out the sex is a threshold moment. <\/span>It\u2019s the thing that makes a pregnancy feel real. <\/span>Sex transforms a fetus from an abstract \u201cit\u201d into a specific \u201che\u201d or \u201cshe.\u201d <\/span>But don\u2019t most enlightened parents these days act with shock and glee regardless of which sex is announced? So why all the fuss?<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Shouldn\u2019t we be a tad more concerned with \u201cWho will it be?\u201d than \u201cWhat will it be?\u201d in the end? \u00a0I’m mean, if I’m going to get all lofty about it and all. \u00a0And why, for that matter, are these called “gender-reveal” parties and not “sex-reveal” parties, which is what they actually are?<\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, a personal story:<\/span><\/p>\n

When I was mentally preparing for the great reveal, lying on the table waiting for my ultrasound at week 20, I thought back to my grandmother who was pregnant with my mom and her twin sister back in 1941. <\/span>Grandma Pearl, an orthodox Jew, assumed she was carrying boys\u2014or, rather a boy. <\/span>She didn\u2019t even know she was carrying twins until the doctor suspected a second heartbeat in the seventh month and ordered an X-ray. My grandparents<\/span> didn\u2019t bother picking out girl names. <\/span>Their sons would be David and Jonathan. When David and Jonathan turned out to be baby girls, my grandparents ended up naming them after two Catholic nuns who took care of my grandmother on the maternity floor: Sister Rita and Sister Renee. <\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

I’m not sure what all this means, but I find it damn funny somehow. <\/span>I mean come on, it was an act of irony destined to make even a stern Old Testament God crack a smile.<\/p>\n

PS. Did anyone else find the photo below incredibly creepy?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crossposted at The Pink and Blue Diaries. I honestly think parents judge each other too much. So far be it for me to judge the expectant parents in yesterday’s New York Times article, \u201cA Boy or a Girl? Cut the Cake\u201d. But let\u2019s just say, as a researcher, if I were going to judge the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1902,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21107],"tags":[55,21388,3290],"class_list":["post-5155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mama-w-pen","tag-gender","tag-gender-reveal-parties","tag-pregnancy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1902"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}