These 12 awful gender reveal party reactions are going to scar the poor kids for life

Gender reveal parties are a cultural phenomenon and they’re not going away. And don’t try to criticize them.

Gender reveal parties are just about fun – of course parents don’t care if they’re having a boy or a girl. That’s why parents gather their loved ones around, serve party food, build up anticipation, and then cheer the announcement – to show how little they care about gender.

Related:

Mom sobs intensely as gender reveal shows she’s having another girl in viral video

She wants to normalize discussions of “gender disappointment.”

And if we didn’t have gender reveal parties, then we wouldn’t have video proof of “gender disappointment” – that feeling that 20% of mothers say they experience when they find out the sex of their baby, according to Louann Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California – San Francisco.

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In this first video, a couple’s guests were congratulating them on having a boy before they even opened their balloon box. When pink balloons came out, though, the dad didn’t hide his disappointment and someone even said, “I’m sorry.”

That kid will have so much fun showing this video to a psychiatrist one day!

When a gender reveal disappoints dad and his pals

These people couldn’t hide their disappointment when they found out the baby was a girl, audibly shouting “Awwwwwwwww.” Before the big reveal, the cameraman repeatedly reassures the father-to-be that he’ll be having a boy. But then when the surprise gift box is open, he seems quite glum. Someone even tells him, “I’m sorry.”

Mom pitches some disappointment in baseball gender reveal

The music plays as a young father raises his bat, prepared to hit a baseball that will reveal his soon-to-be-born child’s gender. But when the ball connects withe the bat, he quickly crumples in defeat — perhaps he thinks he struck out?

Gender reveals grandma’s unenthusiastic disappointment

This grandmother is downright angry to find out she’s having a granddaughter, muttering, “A f**king girl.”

After a pause, she says in a flat tone, “Oh, never mind, as long as it’s all right, as long as it’s lovely.”

What a convincing performance!

A deflated gender reveal

When this dad has his two daughters help him open up a cardboard box to reveal pink balloons, he says, “Yay it’s a girl,” in just about the flattest tone possible.

When his wife asks, “Is Daddy happy?” he sarcastically responds, “Daddy’s always happy.” He doesn’t even look at the camera.

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This cupcake gender reveal is all wet

Mom tried to make a cute gender reveal by having her four daughters eat cupcakes with dye inside. But when one girl reveals that it’s pink inside, dad buries his face in his hands, leaves the room without saying a word, screams to the heaven outside and hen walks into the pool while his dog watches.

Haha, this dad pretended to kill himself when he found out he was having another daughter!

Casually joking about how little he values girls in front of his daughters? Fun!

This gender reveal is a smashing success

This Brazilian father was so happy to find that he was having a boy… so happy that he smashed the cake up entirely when he saw that it was blue.

At least he had a positive reaction. Who thinks he would have done the same for a girl?

This gender reveal isn’t exactly a touchdown

In this video, the parents opened a box and found a football inside, which meant that their baby would be a boy because girls can’t play football.

But then… oops, grandma read the letter wrong and the baby is going to be assigned female at birth.

Sure, the parents didn’t throw a tantrum or anything when they noticed the mistake, but this girl will now always have video proof of how happy her father was when he thought that he was having a boy instead of her.

A gender reveal goes up in smoke

The friend of this married couple bought a fire extinguisher filled with colored spray for the big reveal. The father-to-be empties the entire canister, covering himself and his partner in blue powder. Thankfully, they have a playful attitude about the whole thing.

Gender reveal cupcake served with a sprinkle of tears

The “bad reactions to gender reveal” genre is mostly children throwing tantrums about their future siblings. While one daughter in this video seems delighted to find out she’ll have a baby brother, her younger sister doesn’t feel the same way. The younger girl bursts out in tears, leaving her older sis to console her.

Knives out for a disappointing gender reveal

When a young boy and his sister — both wielding butter knives — cut into a cake to reveal their coming sibling’s gender, the girl has a bad reaction to finding blue frosting in a cake. The truly disappointed look on her face is priceless, especially compared to her brother who just seems happy to have cake.

This gender reveal reveals how much a young girl hates boys

When she finds out that her mom is going to have a boy, this little girl runs from the table and repeatedly screams, “I hate boys!” even as the man recording the video tries to say that she’ll make a great older sister.

Hilariously, later in the video, she tries re-cutting the gender-reveal cake, hopeful that it might reveal a different color if she cuts it differently.

A gender reveal with an agenda

This little boy seems happy to eat a cupcake that will reveal his upcoming sibling’s gender … until he learns that he’s going to have a baby sister. “I’m done,” he says, “I’m done with this dumb baby reveal stuff.” Luckily, his sister seems happier about it.

Why are there so many kids on social media throwing tantrums over a baby’s sex?

One possibility is that these kids have already absorbed how incredibly important gender is, that their entire relationship with this person will depend on it, but they haven’t yet learned how to control their feelings and pretend like they don’t care.

Kids know that if there’s cake involved, then something is important.

Like LGBTQ+ people who feel like their parents were disappointed because they didn’t live up to their gendered expectations, and like women who were told by their parents to limit their dreams just because of their gender, kids know that gender reveals aren’t just mindless fun — the implications run deep.

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Why gender reveal parties are harmful

In 2020, Jenna Karvunidis, the woman credited with starting the gender reveal party trend with a blog post in 2008, said that she regretted starting the trend because the reveals “overemphasize one aspect of a person” in a way that “becomes limiting in many ways and exploitative in others.”

“Assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what’s between their legs,” she said.

Indeed, many of the videos above show fathers being very disappointed when they figure out that they’re having girls. This disappointment reveals a misogynist outlook that girls are somehow more difficult and unsatisfying to raise, possibly because we live in a patriarchal society that often discriminates against girls and women.

Karvunidis pointed out another issue with gender reveal parties though: Some of them have turned deadly. Two gender reveals have resulted in deadly plane crashes, one father died while creating an explosive device for his child’s reveal, one gender reveal contaminated an entire town’s water supply, and another reveal caused a deadly wildfire, leaving the parents-to-be facing possible prison time.

However, some parents of trans youth have taken a healthier approach to gender reveal parties by celebrating their teen children’s gender transition or their teen’s non-binary gender identity.