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The creator of the gender reveal party is ‘horrified’ at what parents are doing now

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by Alix Martichoux - 04/19/26 10:00 AM ET

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by Alix Martichoux - 04/19/26 10:00 AM ET

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(NEXSTAR) – Eighteen years ago, Jenna Karvunidis was expecting her first baby. She got her friends and family together for a party, cut into a cake, revealing pink icing inside. The baby was a girl.

It’s a familiar concept now, but it was novel in 2008. Karvunidis posted about the party to her blog and the idea picked up steam. She was profiled in news articles and the idea spread from there. Today, she’s credited as the inventor of the “gender reveal” party, a public celebration in which expecting parents reveal if they’re having a baby with two X chromosomes or an X and a Y. Pink or blue, girl or boy.

Since Karvunidis’ party in 2008, the concept of a gender reveal has ballooned, morphing into something nearly unrecognizable. For one, her cake made from a Betty Crocker box mix looks pretty amateur compared to the elaborate designs you’d see on Instagram today. (To be fair, Instagram didn’t even exist when Karvunidis had her first gender reveal.)

Jenna Karvunidis made this cake to reveal to her family she was expecting a baby girl in 2008. Now she regrets inventing the concept of a “gender reveal” party. (Photo: Jenna Karvunidis)

People still use cakes, but they also pop giant balloons, explode confetti bombs, or paint each other’s bodies. Meanwhile, the concept has been haunting Karvunidis for years.

On an episode of “Jeopardy!” this month, contestants were given a clue about Karvunidis inventing the gender reveal. As host Ken Jennings read out the answer, he acknowledged that Karvunidis “later said the concept is limiting.”

Today, Karvunidis tells Nexstar her feeling is even stronger. “Now I’m kind of horrified, going ‘Oh no, please don’t associate me with that.'”

Gender reveal parties over the years have led to multiple deaths and the destruction of property. When an elaborate gender reveal involving explosives sparked a 47,000-acre wildfire in Arizona, Karvunidis admits she felt guilty.

“I know that I did not directly cause anything… but you know, in my own way, I felt responsible.”

She took every opportunity to speak out against gender reveal parties. She wrote on Facebook in 2020, “Stop having these stupid parties. For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis. No one cares but you.”

She has since forgiven herself for any imagined culpability for the fire, but still has some regret over inadvertently putting extra emphasis on a binary concept of gender.

“I was really just trying to build a community for my baby,” she says. “I wasn’t even trying to focus so much on the gender. I was just kind of using that as a hook to get everybody excited and to have something to reveal.”

Karvunidis says the idea of blue is for boys and pink is for girls doesn’t fit with her family or family values. When she posted a family photo in 2019 that showed her eldest daughter wearing a suit, Karvunidis says her family was hit with an onslaught of cyberbullying and hateful comments.

“She was in fourth grade or something like that when all this started going viral,” she says. “She’s not transgender, she’s just who she is, she’s always gone by she/her pronouns. … but that was really traumatic for her.

“I would love to tell you, ‘Oh, it’s been a great family story and we just really enjoyed the attention,’ but that’s not true. That’s not true at all. If I could have gone back and never done it I wouldn’t, just for the sole reason of not affecting her childhood. I would have never done it.”

Jenna Karvunidis poses with her three children in a family photo. (Photo: Launa Penza Photography)

Karvunidis made some changes after that first pregnancy in 2008. In each of her subsequent pregnancies, she decided to find out the baby’s sex, but opted to do so privately with just her husband. The gender reveals crafted as a spectacle for social media also don’t resonate with her, and feel far away from the family-oriented, community-minded origin story of the trend.

“It’s become very narcissistic, I guess you could say. … Social media has just become so toxic in my opinion.”

Karvunidis says she ended up taking down the blog that started it all. An attorney by day, she’s channeling her creative energy into launching a new party planning app that’s “radically inclusive,” with options for different dietary restrictions and disabilities.

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