{"id":72597,"date":"2018-11-29T09:43:39","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T14:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=72597"},"modified":"2018-11-29T09:43:39","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T14:43:39","slug":"gender-reveals-sparking-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2018\/11\/29\/gender-reveals-sparking-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Reveals Sparking Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years now, expecting parents have been popping balloons and cutting colorful cakes to announce the sex of their babies. These “gender reveal parties” can be a fun new take on the baby shower, but they also show just how much we invest in the gender identities of children<\/a>. In a world where gender inequality persists and gender identities can be in flux, cultural traditions like this can lock people into rigid thinking that separates boys and girls.<\/p>\n

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Photo Credit: Peter Mai, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, point this out at the wrong time and you’ll usually get accused of raining on the parade. It’s just a cake after all, right? The tricky part is that social scientists often show how identities can turn into ideologies that have real stakes for human behavior.<\/p>\n

For a dramatic example, last week the world got footage of the gender reveal party that sparked a massive 2017 wildfire in Arizona<\/a>. These parents wanted to go big to announce their new baby boy\u2014so big that it warranted explosions in the middle of dry grasslands<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It’s not that gender stereotyping directly caused this fire\u2014even if we didn’t have a rigid gender binary, people would still start disasters with a stray campfire or sparkler. This case is still useful for thinking about gender, though, because what we celebrate and how we celebrate it shows a lot about where people learn to place their interest and effort. We don’t have massive parties for baby’s first steps or first conversation, and I can’t think of a time when a First Communion needed\u00a0800 fire fighters<\/a> to come clean up afterwards.<\/p>\n