This has been a thing in the DC suburbs for awhile. Now I live in the Midwest, and in the past 4 years I’ve only been to 2 no gift parties. One suggested we donate to a certain cause instead and another invite asked for “7 dollars for 7th birthday” if we’d like to still give a gift. I do wonder what all these people are doing with the gifts with the all grade or all class parties when they have 30 guests.

Before I knew better, I thought mentioning gifts on an invite was rude. The amount of stuff we got was overwhelming!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do no gifts for my kids because we don’t have room for all the random extra stuff + I don’t want that to be a financial barrier for anyone. My kids have zero problem with this. I hate when parties require gifts because we don’t have time for that. We just do gift card, which is fine, but that’s another stop when I’m already hauling my kid to a party place on the weekend.

I really don't think a birthday gift for a child is a financial barrier for most people. Agree with PP that this id haughty virtue signaling.

I wrote the above. How on earth would this be virtue signaling? Signaling to who? I don’t even know most of the kids parents because my son invites whoever he likes from school. My self esteem is not tied up in kid things at all. But for me, if even one kid would like to come but does not because parents can’t afford a gift, then taking that out of the equation is best. I want my kid to be friends with other kids at all income levels. I know from the teachers there are always some in class who can’t afford $10-20 fee for school field trips. To the single mom: I would 100% rather your kid enjoy a trip to Cox than buying my kid something they don’t need. But I also know it would be very hard to be the one kid who shows up without a gift. So we level the playing field for all. And my kids fully understand this and have never complained. They ask, we discuss, they totally get it and support this approach.