For most of my adult life, I tried to live lightly on the planet. I kept my small apartment uncluttered and generally strove to have less. This approach worked pretty well—until I had kids. Now my twins are 4, and though they’ve finally outgrown all of the bottles, bouncers, sippy cups, and pull-ups, a steady stream of stuff still flows into our home. The dentist offers a toy after every appointment. My mom sends them home with art supplies and bubble wands. Recently, a five-foot inflatable snowman arrived in the mail because my dad thought it would delight his grandkids. It did, and now Frosty is living on our balcony until we can find room for him in our storage closet.
The worst offenders, though, are the goody bags. This year, my kids received them at Valentine’s Day, Ramadan, Easter, Halloween, and many birthday parties. Every time they bring one home, they dump its contents on the living-room floor and pick through their treasures with glee. But soon enough, the tiny fire truck has lost its wheels and a fight has broken out over whose Care Bears keychain is cooler, though neither of my children has ever owned a key.
When I complain about these gifts, I feel like the worst kind of parent: ungrateful, no fun, and critical of other families’ choices. I know that the gifts are a gesture of celebration. But it’s also true that plastic takes at least a century to decompose (and typically far longer) and that the goodies are, as Chip Colwell, an anthropologist and the author of So Much Stuff, told me, commonly the product of extraordinarily cheap labor. That broken fire truck will almost certainly outlive my children, either in a landfill or, worse, in the ocean—all for a few minutes of play.
Still, it’s understandable why so many parents give out goody bags. No one wants to disappoint their child or be seen as ungenerous. Generosity—including doling out tokens of appreciation at the end of a party—is an important way people create reciprocity and show their friends they care. Plus, even the littlest kids seem to love giving: In a 2012 study, researchers reported that toddlers appeared happier when they gave treats to a puppet than when they received a treat themselves. Lara Aknin, a professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University and one of the authors of that study, told me that a growing body of research shows that “kids overwhelmingly prefer to give than receive.”
Goody bags are, in theory, a low-stakes way for children to practice gift-giving. But for kids to gain any of the benefits, they need to at least participate in picking out the items and putting the bags together. Much of the time, parents seem to be the ones doing all the work. Even if kids are involved in the process, the bags still run the risk of feeling more perfunctory than personal, as though the primary goal is to check an item off the to-do list.
I’d like to propose an alternative: Dispense with goody bags, and replace them with other types of party favors. Goody bags full of quick-grab, mass-produced plastic are obviously convenient for harried parents, but they also reinforce the idea that celebrations are about the accumulation of stuff. Small, thoughtfully chosen or homemade favors have the potential to do so much more—to let kids take the lead and learn how, by investing time into their friends, they can actually strengthen their relationships.
The broader world of gift-giving advice suggests what this could look like. And because party favors are small, they offer givers more flexibility to try something unconventional. For example, kids could draw pictures or make treats. When Aknin’s son’s friend was 4 years old, he took this approach, collecting pine cones for all of his guests; now, at age 7, he has graduated to making word-search puzzles (tailored to his friends’ specific interests) and personalized bracelets. But even an invitation to hang out again, perhaps paired with a gift card to a local lunch spot, could do the trick.
My friends had suggestions too. For instance, one friend, Jill, told me that at her daughter Harper’s eighth birthday party, instead of offering goody bags to guests, Harper and her friends filled bags with food, relay-race style, to donate to families struggling with food insecurity. Another friend, Kristin, was inspired by our conversation to turn her 3-year-old’s birthday into a toy swap. My kids traded away a couple of books, and Kristin’s daughter gave them a puzzle they’d enjoyed at her house; the fact that she remembered what they liked to play with made them feel noticed.
Last year, for my kids’ fourth birthday, I told guests that we were having a “no gifts” party, including no goody bags. But I’ve since realized that my children might want the chance to thank their friends for being part of their lives. So this year, I’ll leave it to them to offer a party favor of their choice: maybe handmade cards, maybe the promise to meet up at their favorite ice-cream spot. I’m pretty sure they’ll pick the ice cream. But what matters is that they’re the ones who get to decide.
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