Yes, this is for real!
I’ve always found gender reveal parties creepy. Of course, I’m old enough to remember when waiting until the baby was born to discover its sex (do gender reveal parties reveal social construct?) was part of the “fun” of new parenthood. Gender reveal parties sound like an excuse to prove that you had sex with somebody. or in some cases a high tech turkey baster. But that’s just me.
While these parties are bad enough for bios, I learned today that they are also a thing for PAPs.
Adoptions from the Heart, a multi-office adoption agency out of Pennsylvania, posted a blog today, Can you still have a gender reveal party if your (sic) adopting. It’s short, and ya really gotta read it for the ultimate in adopa-narcicism.
ME!
After a fast net surf I learned that it is also a thing to invite “your birthmother” to the festivities, where she is “pampered” and encouraged with inspirational thoughts like a County Fair Blue Ribbon heifer.on her way to the slaughterhouse.
AFTH, while finding nothing wrong with this claim staking (or that claim jumping?) horror, warns readers to remember that that baby is “technically not yours”–yet. Technically? Excuse me. That woman’s baby is not “yours” until the adoption is ordered by the court. And no matter what you want to believe, she is still “your baby’s ” mother post-adoption. The reveal party is traditionally held half-way through the pregnancy, so she has plenty of time to change her mind, especially after being subjected to the cooing. cajoling, and coercing of the adopter crowd with their fun and games furnished courtesy of Party City.
Pink and blue, of course, are still popular reveal “gender” representations, but there are a plethora of choices now to bring the “gender” across in more graphically stereotypical terms. We have the choice of bucks or does, bowties or bows, baseball or softball, lures or lace, Guns or Roses. Had enough of gender reveal patriarchy?. Try these two: found on Pinterest:
Stud muffin?
What next? Boxers or ballerinas?
Talk about embarrassing!
And how about all those Instagram pics that need nuked after “your birthmother,” totally humiliated by your party, cancels-out and appropriates her own motherhood?
If you thought (regular) baby showers were awful, try an adoption gender reveal party. There is no bottom to adoptee acquisition fun. Or as longtime adoptee rights activist and Bastardette friend Bob Alberti said after reading this: The Pit of Bad Taste is bottomless.