‘No crap parties’: One mum’s biggest parenting regret
Influencer Bec Judd has banned lolly bags in her house, now Angela Mollard reveals her biggest parenting regret about kids’ birthday parties.
Looking back over their childhoods there was only one gift that stood out.
A pink fairy dress, with wings and a twirly skirt and a matching crown.
I still remember her delight on waking to see it hanging on her wardrobe door. The thrill, the trembling as she rushed to put it on and then the magic as she truly believed, as only a three-year-old can, that she was a real fairy.
My daughter Lilibelle wore that dress for years, the hem creeping up as she did. That dress was a portal into imaginary worlds where she would boss around other fairies or make flower circles in the garden or pair with gumboots in midwinter because fantasy has no sense of seasons.
When I look at pictures of my now 21-year-old in that dress I note that virtually every other gift she received in her childhood was forgettable. Yet a mountain of presents passed through our house, causing stress for friends, family and us. Likewise, I spent thousands on gifts for other kids which I now know set them up for the shallow consumerism which sees so many in credit card debt. Or addicted to After Pay because if creates a false sense of economy.
My greatest parenting regret is that I didn’t stick to my instincts on gifts. I should’ve started a revolution, a quiet suburban uprising where I was brave enough to say: “Hey, how about we don’t all bring each other’s kids piles of crap they don’t want or need.” I could’ve used Facebook to begin a Parents against Presents support group.
But I didn’t. Instead, I stressed every time a party invitation would arrive, not only because gifts are not my love language but because if I was feeling the cost, how about the mum who’d just separated or the dad who I knew had been made redundant.
Occasionally both my kids would have two friends’ parties over a weekend which at $30 a gift was setting me back $120. A friend with a 14-year-old daughter tells me I got off lucky: she’s paying up to $70 for beauty products every time her teen is invited to a party. “But I can’t not do it,” she says. “My daughter would be mortified if I didn’t provide a decent gift.”
I know it’s hypocritical to start preaching now but you only have to look at “haul” culture where young women unwrap gifts for social media to know my generation got it horribly wrong. “It’s only a bit of fun,” you might say. “Lighten up – don’t be a grinch”.
But we parents are complicit in raising kids addicted to dopamine hits, overconsumption, materialism and wastefulness. Have you been to a Salvos store lately? The place is full of toys barely played with because, except for stand-out classics such as Lego, so much of what we buy is boring disposable tat.
Parents spend an average of $233 for their own child’s birthday presents and $320 on their party according to research from Choosi published in 2023. Gifts for their children’s friends’ birthdays apparently cost parents $67 annually which, after consulting friends, seems ridiculously low. As one organised mum-of-three told me, she buys gifts in the sales but still spends over $500 a year on presents for other children.
Kids don’t invent this cycle. Rather, they are the victims of our need to feel liked, to fit in, to do the right thing even though so many of us are quietly sickened by a lurching gift pile, all wrapped in single-use paper and often accompanied by $6 cards (mine had to make their own). We know in our hearts we’re indoctrinating them in consumerism and an expectation that a celebration is only worthy if it comes wrapped and ribboned.
Which is why I’m championing a mum in the UK who came up with a solid solution for her daughter’s fourth birthday. Charlotte Curl’s unconventional request was to ask parents to bring a wrapped, pre-loved book which she gave as a going-home present instead of party bags.
The guests apparently loved it. “They were relieved to be off the hook,” she told The Times. “It was like, finally someone is doing something about it.”
Her daughter was unfazed; as Curl pointed out, she’d got in early before her daughter had developed expectations.
So the mum-of-two took it further – she did what I wish I’d done 15 years ago. She started a campaign called No Crap Parties with an accompanying Instagram where she surveyed fellow parents.
Turns out plenty felt the same way but were continuing to give gifts because they didn’t want to stand out. So she created a parent pact, asking them to pledge that they would either give preloved, homemade or sustainable gifts and give guidance if it was their own child’s birthday. Those that signed are then given the option of sharing their pledge on their own social media.
As she says, she’s given parents’ permission to address what is an awkward issue. Oh that I had been so brave.
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Originally published as ‘No crap parties’: One mum’s biggest parenting regret
