The Core
Why We Are Here => Water Cooler => Topic started by: rcjordan on June 24, 2021, 08:30:17 PM
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https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/o72vjm/best_gender_reveal_ever/
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No explosives?
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Anybody else think gender reveal parties are among humanities dumbest creations?
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>dumbest
Yeah.
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>>dumbest creations
That's some pretty stiff competition. I mean, there's nuclear weapons and Las Vegas and, for a few hundred years, the practice of baptizing dead babies in Europe.
I wonder what the "why" is.
A first shot at a theory....
We have the confluence of a number of trends.
- Medical tech. The enabling trend is the widespread use of medical technology that makes it possible to learn the gender of a child ahead of time. I think that is necessary, but not sufficient.
- generally safe births and low infant mortality. Sure, the US has a high rate of infant mortality on a global scale, but it's still less than 6 in 1000. And infant mortality tracks with income (https://jech.bmj.com/content/54/9/644), so the people who are sufficient medicalized to know the gender of their fetus are probably at much lower risk of infant mortality. All that adds up to a perception that once it's in the cooker, the meal is a foregone conclusion. That is something no reasonable human would have thought 100 years ago - my grandmother had seven pregnancies in order to end up with three children who lived to adulthood.
- fewer children. If I'm not going to get to celebrate the birth of my four children, I will celebrate the birth of my one child four times - baby shower, gender reveal party, birth announcement, and there must be at least one other occasion.
- performative lives. If I don't celebrate it and, ideally, post it on social media to gauge the reaction, how do I know how important it is? There is an expectation of a performance, a theater of pregnancy, and this is now one of the acts. All the world's a stage. I show my worth by making the gender reveal party I organize the most spectacular gender reveal party ever, even if it takes 80 pounds of explosives (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/23/gender-reveal-party-using-80-pounds-of-explosives-sets-off-earthquake-reports).
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W.T.F. did I just watch?
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Slow on the uptake. Thought it was something to do with a man/woman deciding to pick whatever gender they're going to be next. After noticing the pregnant woman, makes much more sense!
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Saw one where the massive balloon just got blown away. Nobody found out
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Almost want to have another baby so I can recreate that.