This article is taken from the August-September 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

Please, can we talk about presents? I know, not Christmas. But I am genuinely being bankrupted by gift demands. Truly, if you were to tot up my monthly spending, I swear the majority goes on tween presents, birthday cards, Emma Bridgewater wrapping paper and donations.

And I’m not even talking about my own kids! Or teacher/tutor bribes, or Will’s friends and their interminable triathalons for random charities. Seriously, when did it become normal, when hosting a child’s birthday party, to request that guests transfer cash to the host parents so that their child ends up with “something they really want”?

Yup. Apparently, everyone at private school.

Only my friend Saskia, who does performative state school, was surprised. And then, in an equally annoying way, began bragging about how the norm at her kids’ school is to request “NO presents” and instead a drawing by your own child.

Imagine thirty designer/architect/journalist parents vying for best DIY card

Which, on reflection, might be even worse than the cash requests. Imagine thirty designer/architect/journalist parents in Stoke Newington vying for best DIY card.

Anyway. I’m still shocked by my other friends’ ennui about the whole thing. Obviously, you expect no class from the “international” parents at any private school. But when I put the new gifting normal to my oldest St Paul’s and Oxford friends, there was basically a collective shrug. One even said bank transfers were “easier”.

Another reminded me of a party where the mother asked everyone to contribute to a drone that her seven-year-old had requested. A drone! FFS. Buy your own bloody drone! It’s not like you can’t afford it. Or like little Ulysse won’t crash it in minutes.

Also, what happens to the inevitable surplus? Are we just topping up these kids’ junior ISAs? Or their mother’s next A.P.C. bag? And how much to transfer? How much does everyone else give?

Does a subpar donation, or going off list, result in no future invitations? Another request I keep getting is “no books”. Not that I’d ever give a book (looks smug as well as tight). But still.

A further downside of the “cash only” thing is that I now have nowhere to palm off all the crap the kids have previously received over the years, which I stash in the spare room cupboard. What is to become of the great re-gifting cycle?

Worse, Minnie and Lyra have noted the new standard and are whining that they deserve the same. I told them this was out of the question, and also that I would disinherit them if they were ever to ask for “a donation” to their honeymoon.

Will overheard and asked in new “evolved” tone why I was talking to our daughters about their weddings, and questioned whether I would do the same to Hector. Completely irrelevantly!

I pointed out that Hector has taken no interest in gifting politics and only wants to know where his next Haribo is coming from, which led to accusations from Minnie that I am a “boy mom”.

Had to look this up, resulting in a 1am TikTok deep dive. Let me spare you the same. A boy mom is basically the kind of American psycho who actively prefers her son to her daughters, and also believes he is a kind of idiot deity, who only needs to be exercised like a dog.

I wish! Hector continues to be shit at cricket, a complete loser at rugby and basically only interested in his Nintendo Switch (and aforementioned Haribo). I did, however, enjoy sending some passive aggressive memes to various actual boy moms I know. Including the drone requester.