Birthday parties are fun. Where one enjoys food, yummy cake, music and most importantly seeing children happy. In this story a mother had a difference of opinion on what her child got as a return gift. Read the story and tell us whose side you are on.
Source: Reddit
I (29F) have a daughter, Evie. Evie recently turned 6 so we invited her friends over for a birthday party. I found these cute lunch sets that came with a lunchbox and water bottle on sale, so instead of having plates of food set out and the kids grabbing stuff, I thought it’d be fun if each kid got a lunchbox filled with food and juice in the bottle, and they could take the box/bottle home (also easier for me to clean up, and there was extra food and drinks if the food in the box wasn’t enough).
I bought frozen lunchboxes for the girls and spider man for the boys. The day came, all the kids had a blast and when it was time for lunch I gave them the lunch sets. I did grab a couple extras in case the kids wanted the other lunchbox (so if a girl wanted spider man, vice versa) but no one said anything and they all seemed over the moon with it.
The issue started when one of the kid’s mum came and saw that the girls had frozen lunchboxes and the boys spider man. She asked me if I did that on purpose, to which I replied that yes, I bought frozen for girls and spider man for boys because I thought it’d be cute.
She went on to say that I was “enforcing gender norms on impressionable young children” and “stuck in the 1900s”. At this point I was a bit baffled and said that it was not my intention at all, and if her daughter wanted the spider man set I would be more than happy to give it to her since I had extras. She said that’s not the point and I shouldn’t have been giving out things based on gender in the first place. I just told her that it’s not really that deep, to which she huffed and took off. I thought about it and am wondering if it was a bad idea to have ‘gendered’ lunch sets and giving stereotypical girl things to the girls and stereotypical boy things to the boys. Do you think the post author did the right thing or should she apologize?
How would you react after hearing such accusations? Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
