Giuliana and Bill Rancic reveal sex of baby-to-be. Would you?

Giuliana and Bill Rancic told guests at their baby shower Sunday that their bundle of joy will be a boy.  Americans, it turns out, are split pretty evenly when it comes to finding out the sex of a baby ahead of time. 

|
Evan Agostini/AP
Bill and Giuliana Rancic from the show 'Giuliana & Bill' attend an E! Network upfront event at Gotham Hall on April 30 in New York.

Giuliana and Bill Rancic have spilled the beans about the gender of their soon-to-be baby, on the way, thanks to a gestational carrier.

After months of hush hush, the reality television star couple revealed to guests at their baby shower yesterday that the bundle of joy will be a boy, according to celebrity news reports.

“We’re beyond excited,” Today Entertainment quotes Bill as saying.

Which got us thinking...  how many parents find out the sex of their baby before it is born?

This is a hotly contested topic, of course. And as with pretty much everything about pregnancy, childbirth, and the “right” way to welcome new life into this world, people seem to feel perfectly entitled to offer their opinion about what others should do.

(Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the mass scrutiny of the pregnant Jersey Shore star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi's footwear. The when-will-she-stop-wearing-platforms debate has raged for months now.)

A quick Google search on the “should you find out the gender of your baby” question reveals scores of forums, chat groups and blog posts with impassioned “do” and “don’t” missives.

The reasons against range from “when else will you ever have this big a surprise?” to “don’t let yourself be biased by gender.” The pro camp tends to say that the birth is a big enough surprise as it is, thanks, and that some extra planning info is much appreciated. Besides, it’s easier to pick names, refer to the child as something other than “it,” and start laying down the law to excited grandparents about Disney Princesses and Power Rangers when you know the sex.

And as it turns out, people in the United States are divided about this question. It’s not just the crazy World Wide Web. In 2007, a Gallup Panel poll found that 51 percent of Americans say they would wait until the baby is born to find out the sex, while 47 percent said they would want to know before hand.  (The rest had no opinion.)

The preference shifted within some groups. More than 6 in 10 Americans 18 to 34 years old, for instance, said they would like to find out ahead of time, as did the majority of parents with young children. Meanwhile, older Americans, Americans who frequently attend religious services and Catholics were more likely to wait.

The Rancics, then, are in pretty wide company.  (And our opinion here at Modern Parenthood, for the record, is that people should do whatever they want with this one.)

Baby boy Rancic is due at the end of the summer; given the way celebrity news works, we’ll sure hear more about the little mister before then.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Giuliana and Bill Rancic reveal sex of baby-to-be. Would you?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2012/0618/Giuliana-and-Bill-Rancic-reveal-sex-of-baby-to-be.-Would-you
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe