Mum Emily Oster sparks debate after sharing why she will decline her kids’ birthday party invites

One mum has sparked a parenting debate after sharing that she will sometimes decline her kids’ birthday party invites to prioritise family time.

The debate came as she shared her view in a recent podcast episode and has now defended it in a new chat with Good Morning America.

In an appearance on the We Met At Acme podcast, The Family Firm author Emily Oster said she and her husband prioritise family time and will sometimes RSVP “no” to other kids’ birthday parties.

Watch the video above.

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“You have to decide for your family, what are the things that are important? And one way to do that is to think big picture, like, ‘What are our values?’ and so on, and another is just to be like, ‘What do we want our days and weekends to look like?'” Oster explained in the podcast.

“For our family, this idea of prioritising some time that the four of us can spend together that is family time [is] very central. And that’s not everybody’s thing, but that’s our thing and once we have that it sort of rules out many other things.

“So it’s not that I’m, like, categorically opposed to the concept of a birthday party, and if there were a Sunday afternoon birthday party which is a time in which we don’t generally do things as a family, I would be happy to let my kid go if they wanted.

“But if the birthday party is Sunday morning, which is a time that we like to go hiking or do other stuff together, it’s just ‘no’.

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“I think for me like that kind of simplicity is so important. It’s just like we decided a thing that was important and this other thing is less important”

A snippet of Oster’s conversation was shared to TikTok and hundreds have weighed in on the conversation in the comment section. Some agreed with her sentiment while others strongly opposed her birthday party stance.

“I completely agree with her. We live in Manhattan and my husband works all week long, the weekend are the only time we have together as a family,” one person commented.

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”Agree 100 per cent. We are getting two or three invitations a month. Weekends are family time, especially because I’m divorced and kiddos only have two weekends each month with each parent,” commented another.

Others in the comment however shared that they felt this approach was too rigid.

”But I want my kids to value friendship, community, showing up for people and I have to teach them that by example,” one TikTok user commented.

Another commenter who said she is a teacher shared that, “kids talk about their birthday parties all week and after the weekend [at school]”.

“You’re excluding your child not just from the party but from the whole experience around it. It’s isolating,” she continued.

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In a recent interview with Good Morning America, Oster defended her comments sharing that it was a simple example of how a family might prioritise family time.

“If you just said, ‘My family likes to spend time together on Sunday morning,’ I don’t think that’s a very controversial statement,” Oster told the publication.

“My kids go to birthday parties. My kids spend time with other students [and] kids. We have play dates, etc. It is just about, in this particular example, a way in which a family might prioritize or think about their time,” she added.

She shared that she and her partner have kept this family time commitment with their two kids “for a long time” which is one of her family’s “core values”.

She continued that she doesn’t expect other families to follow her lead but that it is a priority for her family.

”It’s really valuable to think about the choices that you make and that the choices that are right for you might not be the same choices that are right for everybody,” she said.

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