Focus on the Family wants to ruin your child's birthday party

[Ian David]

Focus on the Family's New Target

Category:
Posted on: January 30, 2007 9:53 AM, by Ed Brayton

Focus on the {Anal Sex} Family apparently has so much time on their hands that, according to this article on a Christian news service, they're now targeting the epidemic of pressure on parents to throw elaborate birthday parties for kids.
http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/01/website_helping_families_stung_by_elaborate_birthdays.php

Seriously.

They must have heard about some party where a gay person was invited.

More:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/01/focus_on_the_familys_new_targe.php

[no_hypocrisy]

1. OTOH, consider how few reciprocal birthday parties your kid

will be invited to when you throw a "simple" party of cake, pop, and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and charades. Yep, your kid's gonna be real popular . . . (IMO, the parents retaliate against the "cheap" parents as the simple party was an insult to their kids.)

[LiberalEsto]

16. Actually, the reverse was true for us

Kids couldn't wait to come to my daughters' homemade birthday parties. My kids are now 20 and 23.

We did craft projects, had all sorts of games and relays, and had a lot of fun. My husband was the GamesMeister. Because the girls were both October babies, we usually had a Halloween theme and a costume parade through the neighborhood. Once we did a sock hop theme. When they were a bit older there were sleepovers. I always baked a cake and decorated it according to what they wanted. At one spooky-themed birthday I made a cake with black frosting, with a knife sticking out the side and blood (red frosting) oozing out. The girls adored it. We served cut-up vegetables and dip, popcorn, and milk and juice with the cake.

The other kids had canned parties at McDonald's, Chuck E Cheese, the indoor pool, roller rink, etc. The mother would bring in a tasteless sheet cake from the supermarket and soda, which left kids buzzing with a sugar high when the usual two hours were up.

[MissB]

23. Yep.

I throw elaborate home parties. We've done a knight and princess party, a harry potter party, a dragon party - all it takes is a little extra time and some imagination.

The kids all love them.

[Mz Pip]

2. Someone spent 10 million on

a birthday party? That really is obscene.

THis stuff started when my kids were little. Must have escalated exponentially in the last 2 decades.

We had swim parties and Chuckie Cheese parties for our kids which were hardly over the top.

A broken clock is right twice a day. Maybe this is one of the time FOTF isn't that far off base.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[verse18]

3. FOF should never watch MTVs

My Super Sweet Sixteen. A thirty minute show about rich brats, spoiled rotten by their parents who spend thousands of dollars on a sweet 16 party. I've never had the urge to punch a child in face until I watched a 15yo say she would never speak to her parents again if they didn't buy her a Range Rover as a gift.

[Ian David]

4. You know what that reminds me of...

I want it now! I want the whole world!

But it's none of Focus on The Family's damn business!

[HockeyMom]

5. My kids grew up in the 80s

Even back then we didn't have pin the tail on the donkey. I did that for MY birthday parties --- in the 1950s.

No, I don't want to relive the 1950s.

[Ian David]

7. My birthday parties weren't spectacular, but I had one hell of a Bar Mitzvah

The theme was Dungeons and Dragons.

Was it expensive? Yes.

Did my grandfather also invite a whole lot of his business clients? Yes.

Big parties can also be an investment.

But I can't possibly see justifying having a giant party every single year.

[jackster]

6. and of course this is largely

a REPUBLICAN phenomena, so of course, FOF has to address it

[Ian David]

8. FoF has discovered that many Event Planners are (whispering) gay.

Not to mention the caterers, flower designers, musicians...

This is nothing more than a back-door attack against gays (again).

[TlalocW]

9. I'm of two minds about this

One, as a childfree person, I've long recognized that America seems to be in the middle of the era of the cult of the child/cult of the stupid parent, where parents feel that they should be their kids' best friends and think that they don't need to change their lives after having kids - by taking kids (who are too young to be out late anyway) to fancy restaurants, etc. and letting them run wild in stores, restaurants, etc. In restaurants, small kids have run into me from behind when I couldn't see them and got bounced on their butts, and of course, it's my fault when the kid starts crying - not the parents who were ignoring the child. I've gone to midnight showings of horror movies on weekdays and counted 10 kids under 8 in the theater. I've seen parents bring in babies in those little car seat/baby carriers with the handle into movies like, "The Incredible Hulk," and sit right up front next to the speakers. Those kids will have permanent hearing damage (Hulk was a very loud - and bad - movie).

On the other hand, when I recognized this current characteristic of our nation, I had started balloon twisting as a hobby and am now one of the better balloon twisters/birthday magicians in my area and have capitalized on parents willing to pay out the nose to have these crazy parties (and have paid off several debts from the money earned). Some of it is cultural - I've done several parties for Mexican immigrants who rent a hotel ballroom, hire a dj or band, provide food for everyone, and then hire me to entertain, and the birthday boy is only 1-year-old, but it's kind of an introduction of the son (it's only been sons so far - no big parties for 1-year-old daughters yet) to society. I've also entertained for a very wealthy woman who not only hired me but a guy who has an animal rescue place who will bring snakes, turtles, parrots, and other animals to places and put on an educational show, rented a Jupiter Jump, hired a bartender and server (for the adults), etc. Another magician I know was hired to perform at a party and thought it was going to be kids five-years and up, but they were all under two, and the parents basically used him as a baby-sitter - while they went into another room to talk, he just sat down and read them stories and let them pet his rabbit that he uses in the act.

TlalocW

[piedmont]

10. Well for once I (sorta) agree with them

The spoiling of rich kids seems to be trickling down, contributing to our "more, more more!" society. Dunno how to stop it other than to point at it and laugh, though.
But from watching the kids on that "sweet 16" show, I kinda wonder how these rich kids will stay rich. Many of them are being raised without a sense of ethics or how to wisely handle money. And many of them appear to be dumb as stumps.

[Ian David]

11. Even if they're right, it's none of THEIR damn business.

They're ONLY doing this to attack the catering and party planning industry that they see as being majorly gay owned-and-operated.

Period.

[qwlauren35]

14. Um... Why Can't They Choose Their Battles????

We certainly choose ours...

Whose business is it that I own a gas-guzzling car??? Should there be articles about it? I think so. Does it harm the car industry? Yeah...

Whose business is it that I smoke? Should there be articles about it? I think so. Does it harm the cigarette industry? Yeah...

Whose business is it that we have Americans with major debt problems? Should there be articles about it? I think so. Does it harm the credit industry? Yeah...

Margaret Sanger had "ulterior motives" for starting Planned Parenthood. She wanted to reduce the numbers of non-white births. But I don't hate Planned Parenthood... in fact, i don't even waste my energy hating Margaret Sanger...

I just don't think this merits cussin' about.

[Ian David]

20. Yeah, good point. n/t

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

12. They're just trying to stamp out evil

and what's more evil than a birthday party clown?

[blondeatlast]

13. Still waiting for them to take on Miss America--and I agree, it's a stealth gay-bash.

If they had any guts, they'd take on the beauty pageant world, but then they'd offend the supporters they most covet.

[mondo joe]

15. I should've known it was those dumb fucks behind this. GET A BOUNDARY!

If you want a small scale birthday party, have one.

If you want to rent a limo, rent it.

Take some mother fucking responsibility for making your own god damn choices.

Please.

[saltpoint]

17. Limiting the range and fuss over kids' birthdays -- that's just

exactly what's needed.

In fact, from this point forward I think the only guest who should be in attendance at kids' birthdays is Rick Santorum.

The kid's parents and siblings, the kid, and Rick Santorum.

Saves on cupcake mix, too.

[blondeatlast]

18. Pretty much ensures that things won't get out of hand.

Unless, of course, there are dogs around.

[saltpoint]

19. LOL! O my god that is too much. Terrific line.

And Santorum brings these things on himself. We're not piling on from just nowhere; he said those things out of his own mouth.

And thank god he's no longer a U.S. Senator.

[Edweird]

21. And if you don't like it...

Blackwater thugs will come and blow your house up!

[Plaid Adder]

22. The article is not well written, but I THINK it's saying something different.

The gist of this report, as I read it, is that FoF has decided that the people out there who are ALREADY criticizing the trend toward elaborate birthday parties are not going "deep enough" to get to the root of the problem. In other words, FoF is not speaking out against kids' parties, but speaking out against people who speak out against kids' parties. Not because they support kids' parties, but because they want anyone who does anything that affects families to be doing it from a "Christian" perspective--even if it's just a website trying to end the birthday party madness so parents can have some peace and kids don't grow up into spoiled insane loot-grabbing monsters.

Essentially this press release (that's basically what it is) is saying that a non-FoF related website, Birthdays Without Pressure, is an inadequate and potentially dangerous resource for parents because it's NOT critiquing this trend from a "Christian perspective." Why do they feel a need to do that? Presumably because some of FoF's target audience has been checking out Birthdays Without Pressure because they're at their wits' end with this elaborate-parties problem, and FoF doesn't like parents getting their advice from anyone but FoF.

As for the "attacking kids' parties" part: Birthdays Without Pressure isn't trying to end birthday partying. They're arguing that it's better for everyone if the parents don't drive themselves nuts trying to outdo each other by spending more on their kid's birthday party. If you are not around people with kids, you might not get what they're talking about; but let me tell you, it has become insane. When I was a kid, you know, a birthday party was you get a bunch of kids over to your house, you eat cake, you play pin the tail on the donkey, you go home. Nowadays, the expectation seems to be that any parent throwing a kid's birthday party will 1) hire outside talent to entertain the kids; 2) rent some sort of impressive venue; 3) provide expensive gifts to the kids who attend; and 4) invite all the parents of all the kids who are coming so they can enjoy the lavish party too.

I personally think this is madness. It makes the whole exercise about the parents' competitive conspicuous consumption rather than about celebrating the kid's existence. And most of these parents probably don't even really want to do this; they're just afraid that if their kid gets a less exciting birthday party than all their friends get, the kid will be sad. It's like the arms race. Everyone's real tired of spending the money; but nobody wants to be the first to stop.

I for one hope that Birthdays Without Pressure becomes a national trend and ends this scourge before any kids we may have get old enough to have birthday parties, and I applaud their good work. Focus on the Family can still piss up a rope. I'm sure they're against this too, but that's only because a blind pig can occasionally find an acorn.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[Pithlet]

24. Phew. Thank you.

I avoid FOF as much as possible, and so I didn't want to delve too deeply. I was afraid I might actually agree with them on an issue. Your post made me feel much better. Children's birthday parties in some communities have become just insane, and I hope it's a short lived trend. My older son recently went to his first birthday party and thankfully it was pretty down to earth, like the parties I remember from my childhood. Everyone had a blast. His birthday is coming up, so I'm glad the bar wasn't raised. There's still pockets of sanity it seems.