A colleague and her daughter came to see Klara and brought a mountain of gifts and food. When I first saw them, I thought they were moving in, with all the stuff they were carrying.
“Guys, you didn’t have to bring all of this,” I said modestly.
“Yes, we did,” the colleague replied. “Because we are Americans. We bring things.”
You are very lucky in that you have generous friends.
My experience with Americans is that they are exceedingly thrifty and will not spend on anything (or anyone who’s not very close, like family) more than absolutely necessary.
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There’s a lot of regional variation on this as well as an urban/rural divide.
What general part of the country are you in and is it small town, mid-size or large urban area, or university town?
A very big part of the historical American experience (good and bad) is the settler experience, that establishing a new society. Bringing gifts or offers of help at key life events is part of the settler mentality (in which formal state structures were lacking) that tends to linger on in a lot of areas.
In regional terms (in the Garreau 9 nation model) Clarissa is right on the line between the Breadbasket which is the part of NAmerica that has traditionally worked best (in terms of functioning government and high levels of social cohesion) and Dixie (marked by segregation and more hierarchy and various types of dysfunction).
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I am in the Midwest. Lots of Lutherans and Catholics around. They are all very hard working and very, very thrifty.
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“We’re Americans — we throw money at things.” 😏
I’m kidding. Sort of. But it was very nice of them to bring you a bunch of stuff. I have several Facebook friends who have just had babies. I was just wondering if I should get them some stuff. Usually I bring diapers to new parents. Perhaps I should bring food.
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Remember when you were kid, and how thrilled you would have been (not!) to get a bag of socks for your birthday or Christmas (or Hanukkah or whatever)?
Whether you know your Facebook “friends” well enough to want to give them a gift is up to you — but use a little more imagination than diapers as a gift. 🙂
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I have to disagree. I had a baby once and you never have enough diapers and they are expensive. Combine them with a teething ring from the same aisle in the supermarket, or a board book and I think you are set.
The baby gift that made me laugh the most was from a cousin who gave us things to clean messes with: wipes, washcloths, bibs, a package of cloth diapers. I am still using those diapers as rags, eighteen years later, and still grateful to Cousin E.
Whatever, I advise against stuffed animals. I once counted and we had over 50!
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“The baby gift that made me laugh the most was from a cousin who gave us things to clean messes with: wipes, washcloths, bibs, a package of cloth diapers.”
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I was going to say what Cliff said. Midwestern Americans bring things — lots of things. (So do Americans in the Intermountain West, where I had my kid.)
Here in the Southern Highlands, it’s iffy. If you’re locked into a kinship group, you get lots of things. If you’re not — if you’re from outside the kin group — well, it depends.
Other places have other rules.
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Usually, the occasion for gifts is pre-partum, and is known as a baby shower.
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When I moved with my family to a small hamlet of 500 souls in the country, one of the local farmers butchered one of his cattle has a welcoming gift and left the rendered meat in a large pile of bags outside our back door. It pretty much filled our basement freezer.
In Garreau’s nine nations of North America, I lived in the “foundry”.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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