Adoptive parents show there's a right way to do a gender reveal party and it'll warm your heart

Gender reveal parties have become a health hazard of late, and while the celebratory event is a recent phenomenon, it is, ironically, outdated. When a child is born, we only know their assigned sex and not the gender they'll choose to identify with as they grow older. Gender reveal parties have caught on quickly, quite like the fire one such party caused in California that eventually led to 22,700 acres being gutted in El Dorado Ranch Park, California. There have been multiple deaths as a result of gender-reveal parties that often involve the use of explosive material.

However, a couple from Canada showed that there was indeed a right way to do a gender reveal. Charlette and Dan Fontaine, a couple hailing from Manitoba, Canada recently adopted a 12-year-old girl after fostering her for four years. They wanted to celebrate after finalizing the adoption of their daughter Bianca. They decided to do a "gender reveal" in the only accepted way, also as a little joke. Charlette and Dan Fontaine shared the video on TikTok and the internet's loving it. The captioned the video, "@charlettefontaine Adoption Day!! We finally got to adopt our beautiful foster daughter after 1240days in care! #adoption #newmom #itsagirl🎀."

The video shows the couple standing next to each other holding a big black balloon. Charlette turns to Dan Fontaine and says, "I wonder what it is?" As the suspense hangs in the air, 12-year-old Bianca walks into the frame and pops the balloon filled with pink confetti. As the confetti falls to the floor, she exclaims, "It's a 12-year-old girl!" Bianca can also be seen holding a placard that read: "It's a girl, a 12-year-old girl." Now, that is an informed decision from a 12-year-old who identifies as a girl, as opposed to parents or doctors labeling children's gender at birth. Not to mention, the added bonus of not using explosives or hurting someone. 

Bianca went to live with Charlette and Dan Fontaine when she was 8. She was finally adopted after being fostered by the couple for four years. In an interview with Buzzfeed, Charlette revealed that she had always associated adoption with babies but she eventually unlearned that. "When we first started this [adoption process], I thought I wanted a baby," said Charlette. "We had to take adoption classes, and what really stuck with me in the adoption class was that sometimes kids over the age of 2 are classified as 'unadoptable' because nobody really wants a child that’s not a baby. And that statement there has stuck with me and it broke my heart," said Charlette.

The journey to adopting Bianca started in 2017 when the couple took a trip to Niagara Falls. They threw a loonie (the Canadian dollar coin) into the falls and said to each other, "If there's a kid that needs us, we'll get a call." As fate would have it, they received the call about fostering Bianca within a day. The couple went the full distance to celebrate adopting Bianca. Charlette, who's a massive Harry Potter fan, nicknamed Bianca the "chosen one." Bianca wore a t-shirt stating so, in the gender reveal video. Charlette and Dan Fontaine themselves wore Harry Potter-themed t-shirts reading, "She's a keeper" and "she's a catch." The couple was lauded for their doing a gender reveal video right, and above all, celebrating without causing any harm to those involved. 

Gender-reveal mishaps

There have been various mishaps from gender reveal parties, often surrounding the use of explosives. In 2017, a gender-reveal party caused the 2017 Sawmill Fire. In September 2019, a plane was tasked with dropping 350 gallons of colored water as part of a reveal, crashed in Turkey, Texas but luckily, there were no casualties. In October 2019, an Iowa woman, who was a guest at the gender-reveal party, was killed by debris from the explosion of a homemade device. In September 2020, a gender-reveal pyrotechnic device caused the El Dorado Fire near Yucaipa, California, causing mass destruction of property, evacuations, and the death of one firefighter. Earlier this year, on February 21, the accidental explosion of an in-development gender reveal device in Liberty, New York killed the father-to-be and injured his younger brother, reported NBC News.