When Tracy Norman's oldest daughter turned 7, she hosted a birthday party at the Vancouver Aquarium. Instead of presents, she asked her friends to bring a toonie as a donation for the seals. The kids watched a presentation about the seal-rescue program, and on their way out received a fish-themed loot bag. It was her daughter's first no-gift birthday party and Ms. Norman was thrilled.
“Birthday parties have become a dime a dozen and it's automatic now to spend $20 on a present you're not sure the kid will like. It's just not special for them,” she says. “I don't remember the actual presents or the act of opening them from my childhood. What I do remember are the activities – the year there was a clown and the special cakes that were made.”
Ms. Norman's daughter, who is now 9, went on to host another no-gift birthday party the following year, in support of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. After the party, she took the money she'd collected to the SPCA, counted the cash out on the counter, and left with stickers and a newsletter detailing the organization's various animal-rescue programs.
But if you ask Ms. Norman about her younger daughter, now 7, she says there's no way a no-gift birthday party would fly. “I suggested a no-gift party to her and she didn't think it was a very good idea at all,” she says. “My two girls are very different. They have different levels of social responsibility.”
With a growing number of parents wanting to curb their kids' exposure to excessive gifting, many are re-examining our birthday rituals, re-evaluating what's important and rewriting the etiquette rules for being a good host and a good guest. It's tricky territory, and it has left parents struggling to know what is right for them and for their kids.
“There are lots of people who just won't do the no-gift thing,” Ms. Norman says. “Some of our close friends and family members, for example, will give the donation and then sneak a gift over.”
For Juliet Ghodsian, mother of two girls aged 4 and 2, no-gift birthday parties have been more trouble than they're worth. When her daughter turned 3, she e-mailed party invitations stipulating no gifts. Within a couple of days, her phone was ringing off the hook. Her friends wanted to know if they could bring something small. Their kids, they told her, would be sad if they couldn't buy a little something. So she relented, and at the party some people brought presents and some didn't.
“When my friends who hadn't brought anything saw that some people had brought presents, it was awkward,” she says.
“I still haven't figured out how I feel about the no-gift birthday party,” Ms. Ghodsian adds. “I think they miss out on some of the fun of birthday parties, without the presents. But I also don't want my house cluttered up with toys that they don't use or that aren't developmentally appropriate. So I'm not sure how to balance depriving kids of the experience of getting gifts and the joy of buying gifts with wanting to reduce the excessive pile of toys in our house.”
Alyson Schäfer, a psychotherapist and parenting expert, says parents are sick of the affluence in their children's lives and the ways birthdays have got out of hand. “But the no-gift trend does smack of keeping up with the ethical Joneses,” she says. “There are all these new rules, and it causes lots of tension among parents.”
