I understand why a lot of people don't like registries, they feel contrary to the heartfelt aspect of gift-giving, but I totally understand their purpose now. Relative to the cost of other goods, most manufactures (clothes, toys, baby stuff, kitchen stuff) has fallen in cost but land/housing in cities has risen. The worry isn't "I don't have toys for my kids", it's "my house is full of stuff I don't need and I am always cleaning it up". Between wedding gifts, stuff from grandparents, hand-me-downs from older parents, birthday parties etc. you just accrue lots of stuff. Giving us random stuff we don't need (but which I will feel guilty throwing immediately in the garbage) is a net negative. The registry in other words isn't about getting stuff you want, it's about avoiding getting random stuff you don't need.
When I got married, my father's eccentric (and wealthy) client told me "I give what I LIKE at weddings". It was an extravagant china place setting for two, for romantic dinners. I actually loved the pattern and considered keeping it, but in the end returned it for cash, because you could do that back then.
As long as a gift off the registry is something you can return vs a random item that has been regifted/cheaply made, I really don't have a problem with it. Something handmade or heirloom that the giftee will appreciate is also fine imo. The issue is that the people who don't want to give from the registry are usually looking to not spend money, and use the "I'm a rebel who doesn't follow the registry" as an excuse.
I suppose it all depends who's in your social circle. Most of the people who've gone off-registry in my experience believe they have a brilliant idea of how to please the recipients that the recipients themselves didn't think of, and that's why they went off registry. Sometimes they are wrong (it is true that I have never used the truly enormous wine opener that my grandparents' friends gave me for my wedding, nor the shopping cart seat cover we got from my husband's aunt for our baby), but the impulse is generally very earnest. This is what I believe when I go off-registry- for example, no one would register for a small landscape painting of their hometown beach, because how would you, but that's what I got for my cousin's wedding.
Same! I got some really good off registry gifts at my first baby shower from a mom of 8 kids who clearly knew way more about what I would need than I did lolol
So in India, you really can’t send people links to registries when you get married. It just isn’t done and would be considered rude. But everyone wants to give you a gift. Result: lots and lots of terrible tchotchkes and knickknacks. I really wished for a registry.
Yes. Also it helps guests coordinate and avoid colliding on gifts. Would be very frustrating as a parent to get e.g. two cribs and no bedding. How am I supposed to dispose of one crib without the person who gave that one feeling snubbed? Now I have to go shopping for the things I didn't get?
I will add to this, lest people worry I'm some heartless homo economicus, that after we had kids some friends set up a meal train for us. Having people bring over food, and sometimes have dinner with us, was at least as heartfelt as getting a Lamaze Freddie Firefly and much nicer for us. Not saying meal trains are for everyone but we liked it.
They’re also great for giving people the option to make non-stuff gifts. A friend’s registry had ways to contribute to trips for the new couple to see each other (they had to go long distance for a bit). I bought a plane ticket which went a longer way towards the couple’s happiness than something off Amazon.
One thing you may have missed, since it’s a bit outside your bailiwick, is the story of the Italian falconer who got fired because he posted a picture of the results of his penis enhancement surgery on social media.
I feel like a key part of penis enhancement surgery is not broadcasting the news that you had it done, but maybe that's just me. Also, is enhancement different from enlargement? Is enhancement vajazzling for peen? Peensnazzling?
Per the registry discourse- can I add that THIS is why older generations followed strict etiquette guidelines. The intense bickering proves that they were correct in doing so!
You can’t believe that the etiquette rules that benefit you are good and the ones that don’t are outdated. If everyone does that then everyone is offended (we are here).
A lot of this is downstream of advertising leading to rising expectations. Ofc Babylist says it’s kosher to have a “sprinkle” for your 2nd kid. Of course The Knot thinks you should register for your “vow renewal”.
And what was once a potluck thrown by friends is now an ~event~ in a venue with associated costs and people expect to recoup their money. High expectations lead to disappointment news at 11.
I am pro gifts, pro registry, pro shower, but the unspoken inanity of this discourse is that baby stuff is “expensive” but a lot of it is also actually free. People use it for a few months or years and then are desperate to get rid of it. Even the good stuff. If you didn’t make out with everything on your registry you can likely find it for free. The end.
I was so appalled when people asked me whether I was having a sprinkle for my second, who's due in a couple weeks. My oldest isn't even 2 yet, why would I need anything new when all the stuff is still in the attic? A sprinkle is for a "surprise" baby that happened way after their siblings and therefore the parents have already gotten rid of the baby stuff. Even then, it's of questionable taste.
I also think vow renewals are tacky in and of themselves. What happened to good, old fashioned anniversary parties?
Oh I know that feeling. Baby showers luckily haven't changed that much over the years, but I'm really glad I did some old wedding traditions rather than what everyone else does (like that the newlyweds leave the wedding first, not last).
The Victorian takes is the kind of Twitter material that made that app so fun 5+ years ago. Now it's too infrequent between the Nazi/conspiracy tirades for it to be worth it.
I feel like there might be *some* way to pick out pregnant women other than whether or not they park in the “expectant mother” spot at Kroger, but I can’t quite put my finger on what that might be…
With the baby registry -- I think it's often seen as tacky to make gift exchange explicitly transactional.
Like "you get an invite but you must buy me a present" violates the gift exchange norm of "we all pretend I'm giving a gift out of the goodness of my heart unrelated to the party invite which was out of the goodness of your heart".
I don’t really get this. It’s a baby shower. The entire point of it is to shower the baby with gifts. It is not just a party celebrating a pregnancy and future baby, it’s a gift-giving ritual. So people’s anger at being asked to participate in the gift-giving ritual by ensuring their gift aligns with the parents’ needs just reads as arrogant and completely missing the point of the whole thing.
"here's a registry but we'd love you to attend regardless of whether you get us a gift" is different from "you must get us a gift to attend, here's the registry"
I'm not saying gift exchange as a norm makes sense, but it's a real thing
Wedding and baby shower gifts kinda *are* supposed to be “transactional”, or rather, practical. They are setting up your household for married/baby life.
The whole idea of a shower is that a friend or friends spend time, money, and effort to give a lovely party - and yes, actually, you are SUPPOSED to bring a gift. Certainly there would be exceptions but it is most certainly a transactional event. Always has been. Which is why - my pet peeve - not SUPPOSED to be given by mom of the mom - or by the one receiving the gifts. Then it IS just a bit too raw and transactional/tacky. But apparently down all the time now.
Maybe this is a generational thing, but “expect someone else to plan and host a party for me” sounds tackier and more entitled than “host the party myself”. Hosting a party is a lot of work and expense!
From a guest perspective, going to a party and bringing gifts is fun! I’m not going to get all offended if the “official” hostess is mom- or grandma-to-be instead of Aunt Susan or Jenny the former roommate from college.
Traditionally weddings were always hosted by the bride’s family, but that’s evolved too. No one calls it “tacky” if the wedding planner is hired by the couple getting married.
It may be intended to read "please buy from the registry if you're intending to buy a gift", not "buy a gift as a conditon of coming". Terse language on an invitation can be interpreted either way, but from what I've seen as a new mom, most mothers intend the first.
That’s certainly how I would have interpreted it. People can be pretty particular about baby stuff and there are so many options. A surprise is fun for an outfit or a toy, but there are certain car seats, cribs, etc. that will fit the parents’ needs much better than other.
I generally favor clear communications, so as long as you aren’t going all Momzilla about demanding a certain dollar value gift to get through the door, or screaming at people for going off-list, registries are a great way to communicate preferences and coordinate among gift givers. Plus a lot of places will give you nice goodie bags for opening a registry with them!
It may be that we're at such a point of material riches that it's time to stop rote gift giving traditions, and save gifts for small, thoughtful gestures unassociated with any particular holiday or life event.
It's not a rote tradition. People really love buying stuff for new parents because they want to help and remember all the things that helped them manage their own transition into parenthood. New parents also really do need a ton of stuff in a short time (diapers, wipes, clothes, and a zillion other things).
It is very sensible to align the supply and demand for gifts with a baby shower and baby registry.
The question is just protocol -- how do I tell people "buy me 3 of X, 2 of Y and 1 of Z" while still maintaining the positive vibes of gift-giving? And the positive vibes are maintained in part by the pretending the registry is a friendly suggestion.
I certainly did not have a few thousand dollars to spend on what were even the most basic necessities. A place for baby to sleep when I’m not co-sleeping, a place for baby to sit in the car (you cannot be discharged from the hospital without a car seat in many states), a place for baby to sit when you’re out and about (stroller), clothes and diapers, reusable or not. I purchased secondhand where I could, I didn’t buy anything I thought I didn’t need (lol @ late night amazon shopping in the newborn phase), and these things still cost hundreds.
In the US most people do not have parental leave, and in my case, we were about to lose 1/3 of our income as my spouse quit his job to be a stay at home parent, so we were saving money for postpartum.
Having babies are expensive - whether or not you have an increase in living standards as CHH has written about, and even those who have good stable jobs often need help for the first baby. This is to be expected.
“Pregnant parking spaces facilitate DIY c-sectioned fetal trafficking” is giving a very similar tone to a lot of posts from TikTok refugees on politics tbh
I feel like I haven’t noticed how absolutely widespread this stuff was bc it just doesn’t come up in my social circle. It’s a dark matter of kookiness
OMG the offence is not the registry or even pointing out that there is a registry. It's in specifically ASKING people to buy from the registry. That's tantamount to saying "I don't want the piece of shit gift I know you will buy me if I don't tell you what to get." Registries are there to help people who otherwise might not have a gift idea and to help people to not buy duplicates of common gifts. If someone has a thought for something they'd like to get you, you should just appreciate that and accept it in the spirit it's given. Saying it has to be from the registry smacks of a naked lust to acquire stuff and suggests that's the only reason people are being invited.
I think rather than smacking of greed, it just smacks of assuming your guests can't possibly have better gift ideas than you, which seems pretty insulting.
Either way, the focus is on what the gift is. That's not supposed to be the point. The point is that someone is giving a gift to express their support and you're supposed to appreciate the gesture, not the material object.
I don't feel as extremely as the baby registry lady about being ordered to buy only registry items, but I do get where she's coming from. My favorite wedding and baby presents were off-registry because they couldn't possibly be registered for- the nineteenth century Wedgewood tea set my great-aunt got me, a needlepoint of a tiger in space that now watches over my son's crib, the cradle that my dad's ex-wife used as a baby herself and that both my sisters used... and also, some useful items that I didn't know I needed because I'd never had a baby before, like the folding bassinet that was really nice for just moving around the house because it was so light.
I suppose my overall opinion is that it makes sense to provide a registry, but people should be open to off-registry gifts because the best gifts really are the ones you didn't know you needed. I think it's a bit arrogant to demand that no one go off your registry because it suggests a lack of belief in the judgment of your friends and family.
There was a clear generational divide at my baby shower. Everyone under 40 bought from the registry, everyone over 40 did not.
I didn’t include specific clothes on the registry and told my mom to let her friends who asked know that we’d love any baby girl clothes they bought. Old people want to fuss over the cute baby clothes at target! They want to pull out the baby stuff they saved and reminisce!
I got a cute (but extremely leaded) antique sippy cup from a friend of my mom. I gushed about how cute it was and then hid it in the back of my closet without telling a soul.
Haha this is very relatable. I didn't have quite that divide, but I personally think the really great gifts are worth the ones that get shoved away in a closet or donated immediately to Goodwill.
Thank you!!! I of course feel that OP's reaction was way over the top, but I didn't like the side of this discourse that was acting like going off registry is a violation of the mother-to-be's human rights. Some of my best gifts were also off-registry, especially the ones I got from seasoned moms at my church. We keep talking about wanting a village, but having older women who know what you need better than you yourself is a major part of the village!
The expecting moms parking spot discourse made me think of the moms Facebook group I was in for the city I used to live in. There were sooo many trafficking related posts - moms talking about how they were almost abducted out of a grocery store parking lot or Costco. It was usually the same moms posting repeat stories and it made me feel bad that they appeared to live in such a state of hyper vigilance when we were all in a fairly low crime suburb.
Adding on to say that I can absolutely understand how that happens: a horrific baby stealing story actually happened in my state when I was pregnant and it definitely impacted how I moved through life at the time. I made my husband do any Facebook marketplace pickups for me whereas before I would have been comfortable doing that on my own in a public space, etc.
I love baby showers, but I rarely buy from people’s baby registries. I always manage to screw up “checking off” what I bought on the registry, and because the only showers I get invited to are for cousins and cousins-in-law, I know that the parents-to-be are upper-middle-class with lots of relatives and there’s no chance they’ll actually miss out on owning an item if I don’t buy it for them. I do look at the registries, though, to get a general sense of what they want. Most of the time, I end up buying board books and clothes that are sized nine months and above. People have really liked that in the past, especially the clothes, because everyone overloads them with clothes for newborns through six months.
Haha yeah good call for the larger sized clothes. Arguably that takes more thought and effort than buying from the registry bc then you also have to get clothes that are the right season for the size (e.g. 9mo clothes have to be winter if the baby was born in March), and for some reason I at least always have a hard time finding clothes that aren't for the current season.
For clothes that aren’t for the current season, I go to Once Upon A Child and look for clothes that still have their original tags. (Any Minnesotans in the Twin Cities suburbs here? Two of the best ones for this are St. Louis Park and Shakopee. St. Louis Park gets Target’s unsold baby clothes.) I also occasionally look at clearance at TJMaxx and Carter’s and buy anything super-cheap just to have it on hand. (My husband and I both have loads of cousins and he’s the oldest one on one side of his family, so his cousins are having babies all over the place.) Sometimes I manage to do stuff like buy a 12-month-size winter coat for nine bucks. BIG hit with the baby’s mom. 😁
Thanks for acknowledging the effort that goes into this!
Funny story -- I avoided pregnant lady parking spots during my 2 pregnancies not due to fear of being kidnapped and cut open but rather because because I would take umbrage at the implication (made by the sign, I guess?) that I can't walk into the store from a normal distance. One of my pregnancy symptoms is getting a huge chip on my shoulder lol.
I was in a bar in Tokyo last week, told a Japanese woman I was British, and she did the bottle of water thing to me. I was so surprised I forgot to ask where she got it from.
My favorite part of the LinkedIn Spousal Disparagement item was that ostensibly, it was a comment on how she’s always piling up merit badges and should be more like her husband. And instead, it focuses entirely on his lack of “accomplishments” for the year. She missed her own point.
I understand why a lot of people don't like registries, they feel contrary to the heartfelt aspect of gift-giving, but I totally understand their purpose now. Relative to the cost of other goods, most manufactures (clothes, toys, baby stuff, kitchen stuff) has fallen in cost but land/housing in cities has risen. The worry isn't "I don't have toys for my kids", it's "my house is full of stuff I don't need and I am always cleaning it up". Between wedding gifts, stuff from grandparents, hand-me-downs from older parents, birthday parties etc. you just accrue lots of stuff. Giving us random stuff we don't need (but which I will feel guilty throwing immediately in the garbage) is a net negative. The registry in other words isn't about getting stuff you want, it's about avoiding getting random stuff you don't need.
When I got married, my father's eccentric (and wealthy) client told me "I give what I LIKE at weddings". It was an extravagant china place setting for two, for romantic dinners. I actually loved the pattern and considered keeping it, but in the end returned it for cash, because you could do that back then.
As long as a gift off the registry is something you can return vs a random item that has been regifted/cheaply made, I really don't have a problem with it. Something handmade or heirloom that the giftee will appreciate is also fine imo. The issue is that the people who don't want to give from the registry are usually looking to not spend money, and use the "I'm a rebel who doesn't follow the registry" as an excuse.
I suppose it all depends who's in your social circle. Most of the people who've gone off-registry in my experience believe they have a brilliant idea of how to please the recipients that the recipients themselves didn't think of, and that's why they went off registry. Sometimes they are wrong (it is true that I have never used the truly enormous wine opener that my grandparents' friends gave me for my wedding, nor the shopping cart seat cover we got from my husband's aunt for our baby), but the impulse is generally very earnest. This is what I believe when I go off-registry- for example, no one would register for a small landscape painting of their hometown beach, because how would you, but that's what I got for my cousin's wedding.
Same! I got some really good off registry gifts at my first baby shower from a mom of 8 kids who clearly knew way more about what I would need than I did lolol
So in India, you really can’t send people links to registries when you get married. It just isn’t done and would be considered rude. But everyone wants to give you a gift. Result: lots and lots of terrible tchotchkes and knickknacks. I really wished for a registry.
Yes. Also it helps guests coordinate and avoid colliding on gifts. Would be very frustrating as a parent to get e.g. two cribs and no bedding. How am I supposed to dispose of one crib without the person who gave that one feeling snubbed? Now I have to go shopping for the things I didn't get?
Even with our registry, this happened to us. It was indeed a huge pain to return the duplicate crib.
I will add to this, lest people worry I'm some heartless homo economicus, that after we had kids some friends set up a meal train for us. Having people bring over food, and sometimes have dinner with us, was at least as heartfelt as getting a Lamaze Freddie Firefly and much nicer for us. Not saying meal trains are for everyone but we liked it.
Had this same experience with our 1st child. 2nd one...crickets.
They’re also great for giving people the option to make non-stuff gifts. A friend’s registry had ways to contribute to trips for the new couple to see each other (they had to go long distance for a bit). I bought a plane ticket which went a longer way towards the couple’s happiness than something off Amazon.
This is a solid take
One thing you may have missed, since it’s a bit outside your bailiwick, is the story of the Italian falconer who got fired because he posted a picture of the results of his penis enhancement surgery on social media.
Uhhhh yeah this feels so important that it should be included next week.
I feel like a key part of penis enhancement surgery is not broadcasting the news that you had it done, but maybe that's just me. Also, is enhancement different from enlargement? Is enhancement vajazzling for peen? Peensnazzling?
“No no I’m happy with the size, I’m just wondering if there’s anything you can do to make it shinier?”
I have heard of people adding "beads for her pleasure" to their members.
Ow ow ow ow ow ow
Did the falconer need something additional for the birds to perch on??
Per the registry discourse- can I add that THIS is why older generations followed strict etiquette guidelines. The intense bickering proves that they were correct in doing so!
You can’t believe that the etiquette rules that benefit you are good and the ones that don’t are outdated. If everyone does that then everyone is offended (we are here).
A lot of this is downstream of advertising leading to rising expectations. Ofc Babylist says it’s kosher to have a “sprinkle” for your 2nd kid. Of course The Knot thinks you should register for your “vow renewal”.
And what was once a potluck thrown by friends is now an ~event~ in a venue with associated costs and people expect to recoup their money. High expectations lead to disappointment news at 11.
I am pro gifts, pro registry, pro shower, but the unspoken inanity of this discourse is that baby stuff is “expensive” but a lot of it is also actually free. People use it for a few months or years and then are desperate to get rid of it. Even the good stuff. If you didn’t make out with everything on your registry you can likely find it for free. The end.
I was so appalled when people asked me whether I was having a sprinkle for my second, who's due in a couple weeks. My oldest isn't even 2 yet, why would I need anything new when all the stuff is still in the attic? A sprinkle is for a "surprise" baby that happened way after their siblings and therefore the parents have already gotten rid of the baby stuff. Even then, it's of questionable taste.
I also think vow renewals are tacky in and of themselves. What happened to good, old fashioned anniversary parties?
Aw, congratulations on the near arrival!
It’s nice to hear from a kindred spirit because my manners preclude me from dishing about this to anyone but my husband and mom lol.
Oh I know that feeling. Baby showers luckily haven't changed that much over the years, but I'm really glad I did some old wedding traditions rather than what everyone else does (like that the newlyweds leave the wedding first, not last).
The Victorian takes is the kind of Twitter material that made that app so fun 5+ years ago. Now it's too infrequent between the Nazi/conspiracy tirades for it to be worth it.
Right? Thank god have CHH to sift through the rough and find diamonds for us.
CHH, I salute you 🫡
I feel like there might be *some* way to pick out pregnant women other than whether or not they park in the “expectant mother” spot at Kroger, but I can’t quite put my finger on what that might be…
With the baby registry -- I think it's often seen as tacky to make gift exchange explicitly transactional.
Like "you get an invite but you must buy me a present" violates the gift exchange norm of "we all pretend I'm giving a gift out of the goodness of my heart unrelated to the party invite which was out of the goodness of your heart".
I don’t really get this. It’s a baby shower. The entire point of it is to shower the baby with gifts. It is not just a party celebrating a pregnancy and future baby, it’s a gift-giving ritual. So people’s anger at being asked to participate in the gift-giving ritual by ensuring their gift aligns with the parents’ needs just reads as arrogant and completely missing the point of the whole thing.
"here's a registry but we'd love you to attend regardless of whether you get us a gift" is different from "you must get us a gift to attend, here's the registry"
I'm not saying gift exchange as a norm makes sense, but it's a real thing
Wedding and baby shower gifts kinda *are* supposed to be “transactional”, or rather, practical. They are setting up your household for married/baby life.
The whole idea of a shower is that a friend or friends spend time, money, and effort to give a lovely party - and yes, actually, you are SUPPOSED to bring a gift. Certainly there would be exceptions but it is most certainly a transactional event. Always has been. Which is why - my pet peeve - not SUPPOSED to be given by mom of the mom - or by the one receiving the gifts. Then it IS just a bit too raw and transactional/tacky. But apparently down all the time now.
Maybe this is a generational thing, but “expect someone else to plan and host a party for me” sounds tackier and more entitled than “host the party myself”. Hosting a party is a lot of work and expense!
From a guest perspective, going to a party and bringing gifts is fun! I’m not going to get all offended if the “official” hostess is mom- or grandma-to-be instead of Aunt Susan or Jenny the former roommate from college.
Traditionally weddings were always hosted by the bride’s family, but that’s evolved too. No one calls it “tacky” if the wedding planner is hired by the couple getting married.
It may be intended to read "please buy from the registry if you're intending to buy a gift", not "buy a gift as a conditon of coming". Terse language on an invitation can be interpreted either way, but from what I've seen as a new mom, most mothers intend the first.
That’s certainly how I would have interpreted it. People can be pretty particular about baby stuff and there are so many options. A surprise is fun for an outfit or a toy, but there are certain car seats, cribs, etc. that will fit the parents’ needs much better than other.
I generally favor clear communications, so as long as you aren’t going all Momzilla about demanding a certain dollar value gift to get through the door, or screaming at people for going off-list, registries are a great way to communicate preferences and coordinate among gift givers. Plus a lot of places will give you nice goodie bags for opening a registry with them!
It may be that we're at such a point of material riches that it's time to stop rote gift giving traditions, and save gifts for small, thoughtful gestures unassociated with any particular holiday or life event.
It's not a rote tradition. People really love buying stuff for new parents because they want to help and remember all the things that helped them manage their own transition into parenthood. New parents also really do need a ton of stuff in a short time (diapers, wipes, clothes, and a zillion other things).
It is very sensible to align the supply and demand for gifts with a baby shower and baby registry.
The question is just protocol -- how do I tell people "buy me 3 of X, 2 of Y and 1 of Z" while still maintaining the positive vibes of gift-giving? And the positive vibes are maintained in part by the pretending the registry is a friendly suggestion.
Who is “at such a point in material riches?”
I certainly did not have a few thousand dollars to spend on what were even the most basic necessities. A place for baby to sleep when I’m not co-sleeping, a place for baby to sit in the car (you cannot be discharged from the hospital without a car seat in many states), a place for baby to sit when you’re out and about (stroller), clothes and diapers, reusable or not. I purchased secondhand where I could, I didn’t buy anything I thought I didn’t need (lol @ late night amazon shopping in the newborn phase), and these things still cost hundreds.
In the US most people do not have parental leave, and in my case, we were about to lose 1/3 of our income as my spouse quit his job to be a stay at home parent, so we were saving money for postpartum.
Having babies are expensive - whether or not you have an increase in living standards as CHH has written about, and even those who have good stable jobs often need help for the first baby. This is to be expected.
“Pregnant parking spaces facilitate DIY c-sectioned fetal trafficking” is giving a very similar tone to a lot of posts from TikTok refugees on politics tbh
I feel like I haven’t noticed how absolutely widespread this stuff was bc it just doesn’t come up in my social circle. It’s a dark matter of kookiness
OMG the offence is not the registry or even pointing out that there is a registry. It's in specifically ASKING people to buy from the registry. That's tantamount to saying "I don't want the piece of shit gift I know you will buy me if I don't tell you what to get." Registries are there to help people who otherwise might not have a gift idea and to help people to not buy duplicates of common gifts. If someone has a thought for something they'd like to get you, you should just appreciate that and accept it in the spirit it's given. Saying it has to be from the registry smacks of a naked lust to acquire stuff and suggests that's the only reason people are being invited.
I think rather than smacking of greed, it just smacks of assuming your guests can't possibly have better gift ideas than you, which seems pretty insulting.
Either way, the focus is on what the gift is. That's not supposed to be the point. The point is that someone is giving a gift to express their support and you're supposed to appreciate the gesture, not the material object.
I don't feel as extremely as the baby registry lady about being ordered to buy only registry items, but I do get where she's coming from. My favorite wedding and baby presents were off-registry because they couldn't possibly be registered for- the nineteenth century Wedgewood tea set my great-aunt got me, a needlepoint of a tiger in space that now watches over my son's crib, the cradle that my dad's ex-wife used as a baby herself and that both my sisters used... and also, some useful items that I didn't know I needed because I'd never had a baby before, like the folding bassinet that was really nice for just moving around the house because it was so light.
I suppose my overall opinion is that it makes sense to provide a registry, but people should be open to off-registry gifts because the best gifts really are the ones you didn't know you needed. I think it's a bit arrogant to demand that no one go off your registry because it suggests a lack of belief in the judgment of your friends and family.
There was a clear generational divide at my baby shower. Everyone under 40 bought from the registry, everyone over 40 did not.
I didn’t include specific clothes on the registry and told my mom to let her friends who asked know that we’d love any baby girl clothes they bought. Old people want to fuss over the cute baby clothes at target! They want to pull out the baby stuff they saved and reminisce!
I got a cute (but extremely leaded) antique sippy cup from a friend of my mom. I gushed about how cute it was and then hid it in the back of my closet without telling a soul.
Haha this is very relatable. I didn't have quite that divide, but I personally think the really great gifts are worth the ones that get shoved away in a closet or donated immediately to Goodwill.
Thank you!!! I of course feel that OP's reaction was way over the top, but I didn't like the side of this discourse that was acting like going off registry is a violation of the mother-to-be's human rights. Some of my best gifts were also off-registry, especially the ones I got from seasoned moms at my church. We keep talking about wanting a village, but having older women who know what you need better than you yourself is a major part of the village!
The expecting moms parking spot discourse made me think of the moms Facebook group I was in for the city I used to live in. There were sooo many trafficking related posts - moms talking about how they were almost abducted out of a grocery store parking lot or Costco. It was usually the same moms posting repeat stories and it made me feel bad that they appeared to live in such a state of hyper vigilance when we were all in a fairly low crime suburb.
Adding on to say that I can absolutely understand how that happens: a horrific baby stealing story actually happened in my state when I was pregnant and it definitely impacted how I moved through life at the time. I made my husband do any Facebook marketplace pickups for me whereas before I would have been comfortable doing that on my own in a public space, etc.
I love baby showers, but I rarely buy from people’s baby registries. I always manage to screw up “checking off” what I bought on the registry, and because the only showers I get invited to are for cousins and cousins-in-law, I know that the parents-to-be are upper-middle-class with lots of relatives and there’s no chance they’ll actually miss out on owning an item if I don’t buy it for them. I do look at the registries, though, to get a general sense of what they want. Most of the time, I end up buying board books and clothes that are sized nine months and above. People have really liked that in the past, especially the clothes, because everyone overloads them with clothes for newborns through six months.
Haha yeah good call for the larger sized clothes. Arguably that takes more thought and effort than buying from the registry bc then you also have to get clothes that are the right season for the size (e.g. 9mo clothes have to be winter if the baby was born in March), and for some reason I at least always have a hard time finding clothes that aren't for the current season.
For clothes that aren’t for the current season, I go to Once Upon A Child and look for clothes that still have their original tags. (Any Minnesotans in the Twin Cities suburbs here? Two of the best ones for this are St. Louis Park and Shakopee. St. Louis Park gets Target’s unsold baby clothes.) I also occasionally look at clearance at TJMaxx and Carter’s and buy anything super-cheap just to have it on hand. (My husband and I both have loads of cousins and he’s the oldest one on one side of his family, so his cousins are having babies all over the place.) Sometimes I manage to do stuff like buy a 12-month-size winter coat for nine bucks. BIG hit with the baby’s mom. 😁
Thanks for acknowledging the effort that goes into this!
Thanks for the tips!
I’m just glad that someone crunched the numbers of fetal abductions instead of just saying “many such cases”
Funny story -- I avoided pregnant lady parking spots during my 2 pregnancies not due to fear of being kidnapped and cut open but rather because because I would take umbrage at the implication (made by the sign, I guess?) that I can't walk into the store from a normal distance. One of my pregnancy symptoms is getting a huge chip on my shoulder lol.
> Now we get to see amazing things like this:
I was in a bar in Tokyo last week, told a Japanese woman I was British, and she did the bottle of water thing to me. I was so surprised I forgot to ask where she got it from.
My favorite part of the LinkedIn Spousal Disparagement item was that ostensibly, it was a comment on how she’s always piling up merit badges and should be more like her husband. And instead, it focuses entirely on his lack of “accomplishments” for the year. She missed her own point.
Spoiler alert: absinthe never left.
They took the good stuff (wormwood) out of it for a while, at least here in the US.
Well, loosen my stays...
* sips Sazerac * ...