My experience was that everyone was interested in knowing the gender, but no one ever had any responses other than happy ones relating to the answer. We ended up with one boy and one girl so there was an opportunity for people to comment positively and negatively for the binary genders. We had a lot of people comment on it being nice that we ended up with 1 boy and 1 girl, but I took that as getting to experience raising both binary genders. Also, everyone was excited to buy baby clothes targeting little girls and little boys. While my daughter has a “girly” side to her, she also wears hand-me-downs from my son whose clothes are not “girly.”

I will say, I have worked hard to keep people in my life who are good people and get away from the rest (e.g., I haven’t talked with my biological mother in 20 years because she drains energy and money from everyone around her). So, that may be why my experience was different. Although, I also experienced this with strangers (e.g., people in the grocery store were happy to chat with my wife about her pregnancy regardless of whether my wife was. At least they were all nice.).