(no subject)
I went to a baby shower today. Oddly, I think the shower wasn't so much for the guest of honor as it was for her mother and aunts. She also had a bridal shower that seemed similar.
If one steps back, it's an interesting custom. Why do these older females relatives so want a bridal shower and baby shower? What does it mean to them? It must, for them them, mark the occasion in a way that the wedding itself or the birth the baby doesn't? I wonder, too, how the gift giving plays in. I sense that it's not "Oh, shoot, I need to find a gift for X's baby shower", but rather that giving of a gift is an important part of the ritual. When you're a kid, your aunt may give you money for ice cream, but you never (or rarely) do that for your aunt. Maybe the shower gifts are, in some sense, a way of continuing "parenting" when parenting is really not going to be possible any longer? A sort of last chance to be the grown up before X enters the world of "adults"?
Anyway, I had a nice time, and Helen was much admired and called a "good baby". She was pretty good until the opening presents, by which time she was hungry and tired, but found everything too exciting to nurse to sleep.
If one steps back, it's an interesting custom. Why do these older females relatives so want a bridal shower and baby shower? What does it mean to them? It must, for them them, mark the occasion in a way that the wedding itself or the birth the baby doesn't? I wonder, too, how the gift giving plays in. I sense that it's not "Oh, shoot, I need to find a gift for X's baby shower", but rather that giving of a gift is an important part of the ritual. When you're a kid, your aunt may give you money for ice cream, but you never (or rarely) do that for your aunt. Maybe the shower gifts are, in some sense, a way of continuing "parenting" when parenting is really not going to be possible any longer? A sort of last chance to be the grown up before X enters the world of "adults"?
Anyway, I had a nice time, and Helen was much admired and called a "good baby". She was pretty good until the opening presents, by which time she was hungry and tired, but found everything too exciting to nurse to sleep.