A piece of cake with blue or pink dye, balloons filled with little pieces of blue or pink paper: this is what gender reveal parties are supposed to look like. 

Gender reveals have been around for a long time but have gotten increasingly popular over time. 

There’s a simple explanation of why people have a gender reveal: it’s fun. 

Inviting family over or even just having someone learn the gender of the baby and bake a cake with a pink or blue center adds even more excitement to an already exciting time. 

This is especially fun if you already have children or a child. Many times parents have a gender reveal for the second child to add some excitement for the soon to be older sibling. 

As time has gone on, gender reveal parties have become controversial, I know, shocker.

This is because people take the parties or “reveals” too far. 

In October of 2019, a couple went too far with a gender reveal after creating a pipe bomb that they exploded in order to see blue or pink smoke. This resulted in the death of one of their family members according to a New York Times article. 

There have also been other mishaps such as a wildfire in Arizona that was caused by someone shooting a target and it causing an explosion according to People. 

I think the moral of the story here is that people take things too far. It doesn’t matter what it is, someone has or will take it too far. 

Let people have their gender reveal parties, but make sure they know there are consequences when it’s taken too far. 

I don’t think it’s okay to take gender reveal parties away from everyone when only a few people have gone to the extremes with it.