Guessing the gender of an unborn child has been a hallmark of human pregnancy for thousands of years. Will it be a boy or will it be a girl? Until recently, there was no way to know for certain. Expectant parents and others with an incentive to know could only sit back and speculate until the delivery date arrived.
Thanks to advances in technology, uncovering the gender of your baby before birth is a simple matter of having an ultrasound technician take a look. But just because you can doesn’t mean you have to; many parents opt to keep the gender of their baby a surprise until birth.
Which is right for you? Consider the following pros and cons of learning your baby’s gender before birth:
PRO: It provides a chance for celebration
Many parents choose to throw a gender reveal party for finding out whether their baby is a boy or a girl. This is a great opportunity to gather close friends and family members for a day or night of fun and festivities. The gender reveal celebration culminates with a color-coded visual cue signifying boy or girl. Blue means boy and pink means girl!
CON: It could lead to added anxiety
Some expectant parents report being suddenly struck by anxiety when learning the gender of their unborn baby. While not exactly giving a face to the child, knowing your baby is a boy or a girl establishes their identity in a way which is difficult to appreciate when gender is unknown. This can lead to a rush of emotions, some of which can prove to be too much for expectant parents.
PRO: It helps with planning
Learning the gender of your baby is more than just the novelty of finding out whether you’re having a boy or a girl. A gender reveal helps expectant parents plan for the future. From deciding how to decorate the baby’s room to what types of clothes to buy, the gender of your unborn baby will play a role in which choices are made.
CON: It can diminish the significance of birth
The joy of learning whether you’re having a boy or a girl is just the beginning. There remains plenty of work to be done once the blue or pink smoke bomb clears. Don’t make the mistake of taking the birthing process for granted; ensuring your boy or girl enters the world as healthy and happy as possible should remain a top priority. Gender Reveal Smoke Bombs offer you the opportunity to capture so many amazing gender reveal pictures that you will have forever.
PRO: It can help expectant parents connect to their unborn
As previously mentioned, it’s sometimes hard to feel an attachment to your unborn child in the early months of pregnancy. In many ways, they are an abstract concept in your head as much as a physical presence in development. Learning gender helps to make them more real, which in turn helps expectant parents feel more connected.
CON: It can set unrealistic expectations
It’s easy for expectant parents to develop expectations for their kids before they’re even born. Knowing their gender can accelerate these expectations, whether it’s hopes of exceptional athletic performance in the minds of men or women looking forward to raising a best friend. It’s important to keep these and other hopes and dreams at arm’s length in order to have an open mind regarding the relationship you’ll have with your child.
Once considered one of the greatest mysteries of nature, the gender of an unborn child is a relatively easy thing to know for parents who wish to learn. Such knowledge provides many benefits, but it can also lead to unintended consequences for some parents. Whether or not you wish to know your baby’s gender is a decision expectant parents make together, and one which will prove to be the first of many important choices they make as a team.
A professional writer with over a decade of incessant writing skills. Her topics of interest and expertise range from health, nutrition and psychology.
