Push Presents
Dec 16th, 2007 at 3:13 pm by Susie
I can’t figure out exactly what it is that I find so utterly offensive about this trend. You demand an expensive piece of jewelry for giving birth?
Maybe it’s the transactional, quid pro quo disconnectedness of it. Who knew? Apparently giving life to your child is like working a lot of overtime, and as a result you expect a big, fat Christmas bonus.
Or maybe it’s the implicit notion that Mom is a subcontractor, hired to bring the project in on time and in good condition. Or is it the subtext that the parents are not partners in the birth?
It seems to me this practice (and by that, I mean the practice of giving these gifts as a result of rigid cultural pressure, and not the goodness of your heart) infantilizes women. It reduces motherhood to institutionalized extortion, and it makes women into children who are offered a lollipop after they get a shot.
Is it just me?
The children of these petit bourgois can eat those diamond earings. Or else cash them in to pay for health care at some indeterminate future time.
No it’s not just you. But it’s not me. For some of us it is cultural. It wasn’t a tradition in my family but it was in my husband’s. Its a gift acknowledging me and celebrating the new baby. These four pieces of jewelry (and they aren’t diamonds) are my favorite and my children respond when i wear what was meant to commemorate their birth. It’s really that simple. It’s a nice gift to remember a special time by. I think you are making it more complicated than it is.
Argh. I agree that in the right hands, it probably is a meaningful and wonderful tradition. I seem to remember it in “Kristen Lavransdatter,” that she had gotten a ring at the birth of each of her children.
It’s the tone in the article, as if the diamond earrings were more wonderful, more brilliant, more special than the birth of a human. I remember clearly the tulips my husband gave me when I was in the hospital (Emperor, pink center and green tips), and how hurt I was when he gave them to the nurses.
““It’s more and more an expectation of moms these days that they deserve something for bearing the burden for nine months, getting sick, ruining their body,” said Linda Murray, executive editor of BabyCenter.com. “The guilt really gets piled on.””
Ick. Babies as inconvenience, as work. Ick ick ick. Is this more of the commodification of the human experience?