Venita can't take any more. She turns to the fellow on her left and confides, "It's all just a little too much." A visitor to the store chimes in. "Yeah. What are they going to give her when she's 8 — a car?"
Barr agrees that monster parties can get out of hand but says the trend may die off. "More of the well-off moms are eschewing the whole big party thing because they don't want to raise kids who've had everything by the age of 10 and won't have anything to look forward to."
Giulio Sciorio
Jackie Mercandetti
This is your birthday. This is your birthday on Final Net.
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Nicol Eilers is among those party planners who'll be ready to fill the gap left if these super-duper parties fall out of favor. Eilers, a former television production assistant, owns Star of My Party, a Scottsdale-based company whose tagline is "Tired of the same old birthday routine?" She'll come to your home with a movie crew to film your star or starlet and up to 12 little friends in a spy thriller, a fairy tale, or a wizard-themed movie.
Movie packages start at $450, not including the "deluxe editing package," cast photos or extra copies of the DVD. If the company's sample reel is any indication, the finished film is something only a mother could love, full of mumbled line readings, audible offstage prompting, and the kind of self-conscious "acting" from kids who look like they'd rather be riding an inflatable slide.
"At least making a movie doesn't take two months to prepare and won't take away time spent with your kid," says Fichman, who's eager for this trend in big birthday parties to pass. It's a craze that's sprung up out of what social scientists are calling "the super-sizing" of everything in contemporary culture, a notion born of and kept aloft by a generation of parents who are determined that their kids feel special, regardless of their achievements.
"This is the first generation of parents in history to consider the psychology of parenting," says Doherty, who recently paired up with parents to launch a national campaign called Birthdays without Pressure (www.birthdayswithoutpressure.org), designed to stop overindulging brats and to give parents some peace. "Previous generations of parents were pre-psychological," Doherty says. "They didn't read about child psychology, didn't brood about their child's self-esteem, because they'd never heard of such a thing."
The result, Doherty believes, is a generation of parents who lack confident leadership and who obsess about whether their kid will like them, which leads to overindulgence, which leads to parties that cost $3,000 and require a professional photographer, a gift registry, and a coffee bar for the adults. Parents used to gift a princess-obsessed 5-year-old with a Sleeping Beauty doll. Today, they give her a princess-themed blowout replete with horse-driven carriage, a tuxedoed "consort," and a paste-jeweled tiara. The irony is that she'd probably just as soon have the doll.
"Throwing a giant party for your 2-year-old is the modern choice," Fichman says. "But I'm hoping the postmodern choice will be about something that includes your kid a little bit more, so that the party isn't about you showing off what a good parent you hope you are."
Prendergast wants to disagree but is not sure she can. "My son grew up seeing all these huge kid parties his mom builds for other people," she says, laughing. "But when it was his birthday, all he wanted to do was go to Bill Johnson's Big Apple with two friends for dinner. That's it. His big thing was they were going to a restaurant where they got to throw their peanut shells on the floor."
Daphne Kurtz's party is winding down. They never did get the cotton candy machine to work, and too many moms left before Donna got around to cutting the giant, multicolored balloon cake, which has her pretty peeved. She stands at the door, waving goodbye to guests and their moms, while Daphne is out back having her fourth meltdown of the day. As they leave, each child is given a gift bag filled with candy and pencils and other birthday landfill, itty-bitty items that traveled all the way from China on a barge, just to wind up ignored or tossed out or left at the bottom of the Kurtz's driveway with a half-eaten caramel apple stuck to it.
As she's getting ready to leave, Donna's sister-in-law asks if there's anything she can do to help. "Yes!" Donna whispers. "Come back in an hour with a bottle of gin!"
Then she returns to her farewells, graciously accepting congratulations on a job well done. "Well," she tells one of the moms, "There's still a couple of glitches to iron out. But I'll get it right next year!"
