What to expect when you’re expecting gender-reveal backlash

With their colorful bombast and collectivism, gender reveals can feel like a new twist on an ancient ritual. And this ritual might be more for the mother’s benefit than the baby’s. Rituals are often created for times of enormous stress, says Nick Hobson, a psychologist and consultant who studies rituals. Take wintertime, whose depressing dreariness we zhuzh up with candles and presents during the holidays. Similarly, “pregnancy and labor is basically an exercise in managing massive amounts of stress and uncertainty,” Hobson says. Gender reveals lend structure and order to the chaos, helping parents manage their stress. You don’t know how your delivery is going to go, but you know one thing: It’s a girl, and everyone was so happy to hear it.

Florence Pasche Guignard, a religious-studies instructor at Ryerson University, watched hundreds of videos of gender reveals for her 2015 study on the topic, “A Gendered Bun in the Oven.” She notes that there is otherwise a stark lack of pregnancy-related rituals in North American culture. A baby might get baptized and Christened, but pregnant women mostly get told not to drink wine or eat soft cheese. They’re frequently advised to buy baby stuff and read baby books—for the good of the baby. Gender-reveal products can certainly play into that industry by giving women even more stuff to buy, but a special ceremony to celebrate the pregnancy itself also can help fill that void.