Are American baby showers really cheesy, lame with parlor games? Or worse, purely commercial? Do that have a legitimate historical or psychological background?
Tomorrow I will attend my very first baby shower. I am excited but also intimidated. I don’t know the rules, am already embarrassed about the “games,” and am unsure about my gift. I might also be very misinformed about the whole thing. Its reputation is that it’s rather cheesy. Or worse, that it is a “Hallmark occasion” created by businesses of impersonal greeting cards and baby products. Is there some meaning, beyond mere commercialism, that can legitimize the occasion for me?
When seen in the context of all life-cycle ceremonies (cf. Encyclopedia Britannica), the baby shower does achieve some historical and psychological authenticity. Birth is celebrated by many cultures at various moments and in various ways.
In North America, baby showers only became popular after with the baby boom after World War II. Before then they used to be an occasion for the more well-to-do class. They were held after the birth, when the baby was presented, and if the family was religious, it coincided with the baptism. It was also a way of keeping the new mother company while she and her baby were in confinement, often for a month. Only women were invited because birth and children were long considered a “women’s affair”. It was also traditionally a party for the first child only, the idea being that the (mostly practical) gifts would see the next children through as well.
Nowadays also men and children can attend baby showers. But the most spectacular change is that the shower is now held about a month to two weeks before the due date. This is a new and rather exceptional custom.
A key element is the “showering” of gifts on mother and baby-to-be. For this reason, baby showers are hosted by a female friend of the family, and not by herself, her own mother or mother-in-law: that would make the expectation of gifts seem greedy. The gifts range from practical (the traditional route) to aesthetic and fun, from handmade to very expensive.
Games are a large part of the party. There are a lot of guessing games: guess the due-date, the gender, the mother’s girth, the flavor of the baby food. I like to think that these games are our culture’s secularized, sanitized and light-hearted versions of the more solemn religious rituals that marked these occasions in the past.
Related articles:
- Baby Shower: Before or After Birth?
- Strange and Sweet Baby Shower Facts from around the World
- Suikerbonen: Belgian Food for Birth
