Grandmother Baby Showers Are My New Favorite Thing To Mock
I never want to hear another baby boomer arglebargle about the entitlement of “kids these days” ever again because guess what guys? Grandma showers are a thing now. The presents kind, not the scrub-a-dub kind. Those have presumably always been a thing.
The evil part of me really hopes these things take off in a big way, because it makes my job a lot easier. This article from the Daily Mail details the finer points of what a “Grandmother Shower” entails:
“In the same way a baby shower provides moms-to-be with plenty of parenting tools, a grandmother baby shower helps grandparents acquire the toys and books they’ll need to look after a new baby. Debbie Holt, 53, who became a first-time grandmother last year, had a ‘Grandma luncheon’ in her honor hosted by ten of her friends, who gifted her with baby bottles, clothes, a car seat and stuffed animals for the future bundle of joy.
She and her guests sipped diet sodas from baby bottles to get into the spirit, and they decorated the table with a sign that read: ‘Cutest Grandma ever'”
This sounds just like a regular baby shower, only way more awful, if that’s even possible. I’m not the biggest fan of baby showers in any of their many terrible forms, but I’m all the way down with celebrating a new mom and shopping for stuff that she’ll need because babies are expensive as hell.
But I can not imagine a sane grandmother doing this. I feel like women expecting grandma showers fall into two categories: Mother-in-law from hell, and Mommie Dearest.
Pretty much anyone that can’t stand the idea of the attention being drawn away from them for even one moment. Someone who sips Diet Coke out of baby bottles. I of course needed to know if this was just a one-off or a legit thing for me to hate, so I chugged some coffee and opened Pinterest. And lo and behold! More horrors await:
I appreciate grandmothers. Many of my friends were raised by their grandmothers, and not in a “taking care of baby for the afternoon” kind of way, but in an “assuming the role of fully custodial parents” kind of way. I will get those Nan-nans all the festive party streamers they want. My own mother-in-law is an amazing mother and grandmother, and I would be all about publicly recognizing that, though I highly doubt she would appreciate baby gear by way of thanks.
As an afterthought, there’s the warning that you might be risking some kind of territorial battle by hosting one of these bad boys:
“But while it’s all well and good celebrating grandmothers-to-be, one thing to be wary of is stepping on an expectant mother’s toes where it might cause friction.
‘It’s really important for mothers to realize that this baby is sometimes the best thing to happen to a grandmother in years,’ explained etiquette expert Lizzie Post.
‘But it’s also important for a grandma and everyone else to recognize if this is a first-time mom, she might really want to own that role of it being first-time and having it be about her.'”
Everything about this quote makes me sad. The idea that becoming a grandmother is all that you and your dusty old vagina have to look forward to after your kids bail followed by the plea for other people to understand that the grandmother might be feeling like “what about meeeee?” followed by the equally irritating mental image of a petulant me-me first time mom.
I don’t know, maybe this could be a really fun way for moms and grandmoms to connect, but instead it just seems like a very effective passive aggressive declaration of war. I can imagine many fights sprouting from the little seed of resentment that is planted during Grandmother showers.
(Image:Photographee.eu/Shutterstock)
