By Jan Stadtherr
There’s something strangely fascinating about baby showers. It’s like opening the gate to parenthood, whereby today, the expectant mother is handed diaper genies and onesies with slogans like “I fought the nap and the nap won” or “Stop texting and change me!” However, if you’ve attended a baby shower recently, which I did in December, you’ve probably noticed a dramatic shift in baby gifting compared to the 1970s and ‘80s (or earlier) when we were raising children.
Back in the day, baby shower gifts were simple and practical. Diapers . . . check. A pack of onesies? Absolutely. A crocheted blanket was given if your aunt had extra tie-dye yarn lying around. Those babies turned out fine! All of our children are successful and they are loving parents.
Fast forward to baby showers today, and they have taken a turn for the more extravagant. The ordinary diaper bag has been replaced by a designer backpack (probably faux, aka fake) that could double as a carry-on when you bring the kids to Disney World. And then there are the baby monitors, which have gone from peeking through the doorway to full-blown surveillance systems with night vision and apps that send detailed reports on your baby’s sleep patterns. Gosh, my CPAP machine gives the same information!
If I could go back to those days, I would have loved to have had a baby monitor. But I just wouldn’t have used it when they were babies, but for the entire time they lived at home! Of course, they would have taped over the camera lens or just taken it down.
A surprising trend is the rise of the “smart” baby products. For example, the over $1,000 smart crib rocks your baby to sleep and tracks their breathing with printed reports. Back in the day, a crib was just a glorified wooden cage to keep your kid contained. If it didn’t collapse under the weight of a jumping, chunky, screaming toddler, it was considered state-of-the-art. But now the smart cribs are so advanced they just may have their own Facebook or Instagram page.
Looking at the visual aspect of today’s baby gifts, gone are the days of bright, primary-colored toys and accessories. Today, everything is in muted shades of beige, gray, or millennial pink or blue. It’s a no-no to have the baby’s high chair clash with the kitchen’s open-concept décor.
When you and I were nurturing our newborns, there were no baby registries. Looking at the online registry for the niece’s baby shower that I attended, there were items such as bottle drying towers, various bottles with a variety of nipple shapes (only one style back in our day), silicone bibs with pockets (great idea!), breast milk coolers to bring to daycare after the mother returns to work, electric nail buffer and clipper kit for baby, and a baby sign language book used before baby begins to speak and what many daycares use today. Finally, there is the “snot-sucker” kit specially designed to remove the gooey slime buggers. What happened to the miniature turkey baster?
No matter if it’s today or the past, babies need love, attention, and someone willing to endure sleepless nights and the occasional diaper explosion. Yes, today’s parents have more gadgets to help them along, but at the end of the day, it’s the same exhausting, beautiful journey it’s always been. We just did it the hard way.
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