Miss Manners: who can throw a shower?

[cereta]

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My niece has asked me for ideas for a baby shower she wants to give for her expecting daughter. I don't know how to respond without hurting her feelings. How can I gently tell her it's not proper for a mother to give a shower for her own daughter?

GENTLE READER: When you find out, please tell Miss Manners. She has been pointing this out for years, and it doesn't seem to help.

Comments

[cereta]

I am posting this because I genuinely don't get it. When someone can give me a good, logical reason why legal relative throwing the shower is tacky, but someone like, say, the woman I call my sister because that's how we feel about each other is hunky-dorey, I will find a duck to give.

Of course, I also feel the same way about showers for seconed marriages and second babies. Someone's having a baby/getting married! Let's eat cake and buy adorable clothes! Who CARES who throws it? As long as there are no party games. Those are just evil.

[madripoor_rose]

I think it all comes back to family-as-unit and the shower being less a party and more about setting up for a new baby.

If the close relative throws the shower that's a little too close to 'give us stuff' but if a friend does it, that's more 'hey, Laura's gonna need stuff for the baby and we should chip in and help her and Tom out' and so on.

An old cultural taboo that you don't ask for stuff but being given it is okay.

[torachan]

Huh. I've never heard of such a rule and I'm pretty sure all the baby showers I've been to were organised by family members of the expectant mother...

[likeaduck]

In fairness, Miss Manners also disapproved of family members throwing each other birthday parties last I checked, and at this point is as much a humourist as an advisor. Humourous resignation to folks ignoring her advice that underlines the futility of resistance to shifting social conventions is about what I'd expect from her. (I've always had a soft spot and a fascination for the weirdo.)

[havocthecat]

Oh, for fuck's sake, WHO CARES if a mother wants to throw a baby shower for her daughter? I've never understood that particular one.