BirthdayGate: When My Daughter Flew Her Capitalist Flag

As a child growing up in a Midwest evangelical home during the eighties, I was raised in a world of Bible verse drills, fear of hell, predictions of the apocalypse, and staunch Republican politics.

During college, I gradually shed my evangelical skin.

However, I remain in touch and amicable with many of my evangelical friends. Occasionally, something shudder-worthy from my past surfaces—like two years ago, when several Facebook friends lashed out against me for a decision our family made before my daughter’s fifth birthday party.

For Amelia’s party, my husband and I planned a bash at our house complete with a large bouncy house, hot dogs, and a Hello Kitty cake. Between her and my then-six-year-old son, Atticus, this was the eleventh birthday party I had thrown in six years.

I knew the drill by then—clean the house, make the cake, jump around in the bouncy house like a boss. But with each year, I became increasingly bothered by the post-party Mt. Everest-sized pile of toys from loving family and friends. Atticus and Amelia already have too many toys, and they are plagued with first world problems—like Amelia’s Kardashian-worthy pout when Starbucks is out of her favourite chocolate cake pop.

As the birthday approached, my children’s privilege had been on my mind a lot. One of our priests (I’m now Episcopalian) suggested to parents that we talk to our children about giving their birthday toys away to a charity. My husband and I talked to Amelia about the idea, and she decided that because she loves to read, she would ask for new or gently used children’s books to give away after the party to a local family shelter.

The party was a success, and our generous friends brought loads of books.

However, the next day when I bagged up the books to take to the shelter, Amelia sullenly came into the room: “Mama, I don’t want to give away the books. I want to keep them.”

 “Huh?”

“I. Said. I. Want. To. Keep. Them.”

She said it definitely and slowly—like I was a dull-witted doll.

I know I’m her mom, but Amelia is fucking awesome. When she heard the news about the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, she brainstormed a plan to save them that included a telescope, map, and galloping zebra. But like all of us, she has a “dark side.” Amelia’s particular vice is her “no free lunches” attitude, a ruthlessly ambitious, survival-of-the-fittest mentality that would make Ayn Rand proud. But for now, she’s half my size, and I’m the parent, so I can pull rank.

Me, sternly: “Amelia, you agreed to do this ahead of time, so you have to follow through on your promise.”

Amelia: “No.”

I sighed. “Don’t you feel bad for the children who don’t have all the things you do—books, dolls, Netflix?”

Then it came. A nightmare reply for the ears of this liberal mama: “No. Those children can work. They can get jobs to pay for those things if their parents are too poor.”

Was this really my child, delivered via C-section from my very own womb?

After some back and forth, I coerced her to help me finish packing the books into the car and we drove them to the shelter.

That night after Atticus and Amelia went to bed, I put a shortened version of the exchange on Facebook. For me it was just a funny story, and I thought by morning, I would have several “likes” from family and friends. I never in a million years expected that asking for donations instead of gifts might be controversial.

I was wrong.

One alumna from my evangelical university wrote that asking for the book donations was “inappropriate” and that we should have taught her a lesson in “gratitude” instead. Another alumna wrote that our endeavours as parents to teach her generosity were “worthless.”  Somehow our birthday party decision threatened their beloved laissez-faire capitalism, as deep-rooted in some evangelical circles as Jesus fish bumper stickers and purity rings.

To be fair, I had other evangelical friends rush to my defence. Still, it really got to me that some of my friends would consider my birthday party plans “inappropriate” and “worthless.”

Fuming, I decided not to engage with trolls, even Jesus-loving trolls, so I deleted the negative comments.

I get that parents all have different views and political ideas, but I thought that conservative or liberal, we all wish to teach our children charity and generosity. After all, Jesus himself spoke of giving one’s possessions to the poor.

So did my attempt to teach Amelia altruism work?

We drove the books to a local family homeless shelter affiliated with our church. Amelia walked in with me as we gave the books to the shelter’s director. She glowed as the director told her how kind and selfless it was to give away her birthday gifts. We chatted with the volunteers and watched children her age play on the shelter playground.

As we got back in the car to drive home, I turned to Amelia: “Now, didn’t that feel good to give away books to children who don’t have them?”

With her thumb in her mouth, she considered me coolly. “Yeah. Now can I get a treat since I was good and gave the presents away?”

I took a few deep breaths.

We did stop at Starbucks on the way home for her favourite chocolate cake pop. There was no pouting, scowling, or foot-stomping. We went home, and she collapsed on the couch with a book and soon fell asleep. I wondered if she was still thinking at all of her experience at the shelter and her privilege.

Then again, she might have have been merely dreaming about a glass case full of chocolate cake pops.

Amy Carol Reeves is a writer and Assistant Professor of English at Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina. Represented by Jessica Sinsheimer, of the Sarah Jane Freymann Agency, she has published a young adult historical mystery series about the Jack the Ripper murders in Victorian London: Ripper (Flux 2012), Renegade (Flux 2013), and Resurrection (Flux 2014). When not writing or teaching, she likes to spend time with her husband and three children, practice yoga, eat too much chocolate, and daydream about Mr. Darcy.