Let them eat cake – America's gender revealing parties

The Americans are continuing to influence the way us Brits approach matters of pregnancy and child birth.

Already this week I have talked about how more British parents are adopting the new American craze to have their children at the birth of their new baby in a bid to prevent sibling rivalry.

Now more British parents are following in the American's wake by holding baby sex-revealing parties. These parties involve, as you might guess, the happy parents-to-be revealing to everyone they know what the sex of their burgeoning baby is. But with an extravagant American twist of course, this is done through the medium of cake.

Innocuous on first glance, this many tiered cake holds a secret inside. At the pinnacle moment of the party, the parents cut the cake to reveal the colour of the sponge inside. Pink sponge denotes the couple are expecting a girl and blue sponges, they are having a boy.

The party is held after the 20 week scan when it is possible for the hospital to tell what the sex of the baby is. Some prospective parents go as far as to surprise themselves with the colour of the sponge. In America, hospitals and bakeries are linking up directly, letting the cake maker know what the sex of the baby is even before the parents are told, so they are as surprised as anyone else when the cake is cut open.

Initially, this idea has a child-like anticipation about it. It would be quite exciting to cut into a cake with no idea just what treats its insides had in store – a bit like delving into your stocking on Christmas morning.

But then I think, hang on, we're not dealing with a subject matter which is at all childish. This bit of coloured sponge is representative of the sex of a little human being who has not even entered into this world yet, and already the parents-to-be are making a pantomime around him, or her.

It is also yet another excuse to have a party. The Americans gave us the baby shower, which saw friends and family lavishing the mum-to-be with gifts before the baby was even born. Now there is yet another reason for people to have a knees-up – and in these cash-strapped time too.

It all seems a little unhealthy to me. Parties of this nature in actual fact sway the focus away from the baby and onto the parents. It is all a bit 'look at me, look at me'.

The fact is, the sex of your baby is really a personal matter. Generally, other people, aside from the closest family members, have little genuine interest in what the sex of the baby is. They may want to know from a purely inquisitive perspective, but it is not going to have any real impact on their own lives.

Of course many parents prefer to opt not to know the sex of the baby before it is born at all. Latest figures show 48 per cent of parents still want to be surprised on the day of the birth.

Me and my husband did find out the sex of our daughter but we kept it to ourselves. It seemed appropriate to do this so it was our little secret. We had heard so many stories of hospitals predicting the baby as one sex and it coming out another, that part of our minds was mentally geared up to having a boy anyway.

That would be a blow indeed if you held a sex-revealing party, cake and all, only for a few months later to find you had revealed the wrong colour sponge.