>>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, 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.
