Comment by Thriptic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Thriptic | Hacker News Reader

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I categorically disagree with this, but let's run with the logic. If we are talking about financial commitment and signaling to a partner, why not gift a house, a car, a long term bond, cash, expensive clothing, a watch, literally any other piece of jewelry, etc? Why does it have to be a diamond which is literally the worst possible use of the money short of burning it? Why does it have to be publicly displayed on a ring if the intention is personal signaling? Why does it have to be the guy that does it; shouldn't the wife also signal equal levels of commitment or is she incapable of that?

Also, we can bypass this kind of thing and did up until the last century. Further, certain couples bypass this type of thing all the time routinely. You don't see gay male couples giving each other diamond engagement rings and yet their marriages aren't exploding in spectacular fashion.

It doesn't even make sense from a financial penalty standpoint. Anyone who is on an upward trajectory would be able to bounce back from losing a month or two of salary relatively quickly in which case it's not really forcing long term commitment.

There is no real point to this ritual other than showing off. The guy gets to show off how much cash he has and the woman gets to show off to everyone else that she has a guy with a lot of financial resources. It is completely arbitrary and we have arbitrarily converged on a diamond as a mechanism to do this. Sure giving rings makes people feel good; receiving and gifting any present makes people feel good; but it's absolutely not a necessary requirement for a healthy relationship.

>It is completely arbitrary and we have arbitrarily converged on a diamond as a mechanism to do this.

This isn't quite true.

1) Who's "we"? Outside the US, no one really cares that much about diamonds. Outside the US, western Europe, and Japan, no one does. It's largely an American phenomenon.

2) People didn't just "arbitrarily coverge" on diamonds; this was engineered by DeBeers almost a century ago, in what's probably the most successful marketing campaign in human history.

>If we are talking about financial commitment and signaling to a partner, why not gift a house, a car, a long term bond, cash, expensive clothing, a watch, literally any other piece of jewelry, etc?

This is literally what's done in other cultures, and has been for ages. Though usually, it's the bride's family who has to pony up all this largesse, in what's called a "dowry".

>Why does it have to be the guy that does it; shouldn't the wife also signal equal levels of commitment or is she incapable of that?

This is a very good question, because again, in other cultures, it has traditionally been the bride (or rather, her family) who had to provide a dowry to get a decent man to marry her. This of course has, in more recent times, driven families to abort their unborn female children in favor of male children.

> usually, it's the bride's family who has to pony up all this largesse, in what's called a "dowry".

Pedant here. Hello everybody!

There is a difference between dowry and bride price. Traditionally the dowry in culture with custom of primogeniture was the portion of inheritance the bride brought with her. It's a bribe to the groom's family not to contest the rest of the inheritance when his father-in-law dies, not to put a fine point on it.

Following Anglo-Saxon customs (which was heavily influenced by the Vikings) brides were given morgangifu, literally morning gift, from her husband the morning after the wedding. This is hers to take with her and her children, after a divorce or death of the husband. See also morganastic marriage, where a woman and her children get nothing except the morning gift, that is, she and the kids don't get the traditional inheritance (crown, title, land, such). It's a payoff to the bride's family to not contest what's regarded as the groom's family's property, not to put a fine point on it.

The bride price is the cost paid by the groom to the bride's family, this practice was more common in Asia and the tribal Middle East. Women were regarded as property, her leaving the family home and joining the family of her husband is regarded as a loss to her clan. In ancient Chinese text, lesser wives not just concubines were bought, literally.

The GP seems to be referring to the (today illegal) practice from South Asia wherein the bride's family is required to provide a payment to the groom's family as part of a marriage contract, a practice which was is itself a reflection of the traditional state of disempowerment of women.

The British colonists, upon observing the similarities of this custom to their own, applied the English term "dowry" to it. The practice, while largely extinct in mainstream British society, has held on in parts in South Asia (though many modern South Asians consider it abhorrent), and therefore its modern colloquial use is more connected to the South Asian custom.

There is a separate practice of the bride's parents gifting her with items of jewelry which are intended to be her sole property - a sort of insurance policy against an unreliable husband - and not that of the groom or his family. Whether that was honored or not obviously depended a lot on the situation. This practice has actually continued relatively unabated, and it is partially responsible for the high demand for gold in South Asia during wedding seasons.

We have or had in Europe something else under the meqning of "dowry". The groom asking in mariage a bride had to prove that he had the means to provide and usually had to have a household (or at least land, in case of peasantry) ready for the future family. The inner items of a house however, had to be provided by bride's family, usually with the pitched idea that the (textile) items done manually were a demonstration of bride's skills and a proof of her ability to contribute to her future family.

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