Push Presents: When Creating Life Just Isn't Enough
While not about gadgets, this article in the Times, "A Bundle of Joy Isn’t Enough?" about gifts given to mothers to commemorate the birth of their babies, is reflective of the vile priorities we've cultivated in this consumer society.
In a more innocent age, new mothers generally considered their babies to be the greatest gift imaginable. Today, they are likely to want some sort of tangible bonus as well.Having a child is the single most important decision a couple can make, a tacit acknowledgement that the world to which you're introducing an unnecessary life will be improved by the addition. And hopefully that you've done your part to make it a better place. Instead, these self-involved twats have sent a clear message to their newborns: nothing you do in life will ever be as important as the things you own.This bonus goes by various names. Some call it the “baby mama gift.” Others refer to it as the “baby bauble.” But it’s most popularly known as the “push present.”
...
Michael Toback, a jewelry supplier in Manhattan’s diamond district, traces the practice to a new posture of assertiveness by women. “You know, ‘Honey, you wanted this child as much as I did. So I want this,’” he said.
...
In the recovery room, her husband, Paul, presented her with a pair of diamond earrings. “I was on cloud nine,” Ms. Slosberg said. “It was the perfect present to make a frazzled, sleep-deprived, first-time mommy feel absolutely glamorous.”
She added, “I wonder what 17 hours of labor will get me next time?”
A Bundle of Joy Isn’t Enough? [NYTimes.com]
the latest
latest episodes
Well, that was a bit of pretentious moralizing, Joel, unless you're going to attack our "consumerist" habit of giving expensive gifts to mark any number of other occasions. Does buying an expensive wedding ring denote that whatever else the husband does for his wife, that it won't be as important as that ring? Give me a break.
Moralizing, yes. Pretentious, possibly. But giving expensive gifts to your wife to commemorate the birth of a child seems interminably tacky to me. (And yes, I also think expensive wedding rings are gauche!)
FYI, "Consumerist" usually denotes consumer advocacy, not the act of consuming.
Yeah, I guess if they were part of the BB crowd it would have been something like a DVD copy of 2 Girls One, Cup! Seriously, I asked my wife and its not something either her or I would have been comfortable with, but if it makes these people happy, more power to them.
I also want to know where the gift for the men is. You know, insemination is tough work -- I could use a new graphics card!
Joel, thank you for speaking out strongly about this sort of behaviour.
I think there are cool gifts that do things -- a computer, a bread-maker, a college fund for the child's education -- but jewelry is just for establishing social status. In a world where a child dies every five seconds because we don't ship enough food everywhere, spending money on status symbols cannot be criticized too thoroughly.
Thank you for standing up and speaking straight.
Amen. I anticipate adding some unnecessary life to the globe some day, and the whole concept of "Push Presents", make me want to barf, starting with the horrible phonaesthetics and ending with the message they send that a child is something for which a woman should be compensated. In terms of feminism, rewarding a woman for a job well done in this instance seems practically medieval.
This is not to say that new fathers don't kind of owe it to their partners to make them feel less as if they've been turned inside out. I've seen pregnancy almost kill a few of my friends (no exaggeration) and having a partner who recognizes that women experience things that are painful, dangerous and scary during pregnancy makes a big difference.
Push presents (gak) seem as though they are designed to let dads off the hook for all of the real things they could be doing after a birth, such as cleaning baby poop off of everything they own, or caring for older children, or preparing dinner, or fending off relatives, etc.
"Here, woman. Thanks for the healthy calf. Your reward for continuing my bloodline is this sparkling rock and bit of metal." It wouldn't surprise me if the husband expected the gift back should the baby die. If I were the woman I'd backhand the guy.
Sadly, I still know people whose primary reason for having children is to continue their family stock, so this crass animal husbandry interpretation might not be too far off in some cases.
Somebody has to alert the Scobles, stat!
I get that there are potential feminist issues with this, depending upon the giver's attitude. It's been examined in depth at a few feminist blogs I read already. And the article obviously focuses exclusively on people who come across as ostentatiously well off. But I do have to point out one thing:
It's not a bad thing to give a woman something that's just for her, after she's gone through an exhausting and painful (and, yes, usually exceptionally joyful) experience, when everything and everyone else is focused solely on the baby. It's just not. It's not going to be something everyone's comfortable with, and calling it a "push present" is cutesy and condescending, but there's nothing at all wrong with the idea itself.
It's also hardly some sort of new trend. But that's the Times style section for you.
Geno, jewelry isn't just for establishing social status, though I must admit that seems to be the main rationale for diamond solitaires. Jewelry is an art form. There are a lot of different things it can say.
Joel, going on about giving women costly presents when they birth a child looks to me like barely camouflaged snobbery. Having a child is expensive. It's like they're saying, "Look! We have a brand-new baby, we haven't even begun to pay the medical bills, we're looking forward to eighteen to twenty-five years of constantly escalating expenses, and yet we can afford diamond earrings!"
It strikes me as the same sort of gesture the upper class used to make by indulging in casual high-stakes gambling: it shows you're so well-off that an expense that would put a dent in other households' budgets doesn't affect yours at all.
On the other hand, the whole article could just be a put-up job by De Beers. It would hardly be the first time they've done that.
Geesh, whenever my wife and I had a kid, we were too broke from having the baby to even consider anything as frivolous as a special gift for her. And besides, the miracle of a newborn child was so overwhelming, I'm not sure jewelry would've had much of a sentimental impact.
Then again, I had an argument with one of those bundles of joy just this morning about why I wouldn't break the cell phone contract just so she can get a new phone, so I guess I'm just a cheapskate.
@ALAN
there's plenty of unlocked cell phones on amazon and other places, many of them models not typically seen in the USA (such as the Nokia 5200 or Nokia 7370)
Every human society indulges in some form of conspicuously wasteful consumption. The moral question is: what are the consequences of that consumption? One could as easily announce one's status by giving the money to charity or making a micro-loan investment as buying a gewgaw.
For the price of one of these bits of pretty rock you could feed an African village for a month, and who wouldn't feel an incredible pleasure knowing that in some miserable place life has been made a little bit easier in celebration of your new child?
"I think there are cool gifts that do things -- a computer, a bread-maker, a college fund for the child's education -- but jewelry is just for establishing social status."
Exactly, total f'ing snobbery here and in Joel's post.
Expensive gadgets -- good.
Expensive jewelry -- example of consumerism run amok.
I mean, no offense to the designer, but what exactly is a $120 *limited edition* (ooh) BB-branded jacket if not conspicuous consumption run amok!! http://www.gama-go.com/product.php?productid=16467&cat=260&page=1
I just think its a bit silly and self-righteous to go on about how wasteful and cynical, then, buying jewelry as a gift for a mother explicitly tied to said motherhood. Its like the attack of the geek fundies -- *our* consumption is okay because it fits our values, but *your* consumption is not because it doesn't fit well into our norms.
@Tom wrote:
"For the price of one of these bits of pretty rock you could feed an African village for a month, and who wouldn't feel an incredible pleasure knowing that in some miserable place life has been made a little bit easier in celebration of your new child?"
Yeah...and for the cost of one high end computer, you could probably do the same. Yet I don't seem to remember jeremiads against $4,000 computers. For that matter, why do you ever see a movie or do anything that is not absolutely necessary when people are starving somewhere in the world?
@ Not a Doktor-
Thanks, but the point was those babies will keep needing money for a long long time and will manage to come up with their own ridiculous ways to spend it.
@#13: Oh, come on. If you can't see the difference between buying something expensive to commemorate the creation of the one thing that is supposed to transcend all materialism and an expensive hoodie you're being willfully obtuse. It's not buying things that is the specific issue here—and I think you know that—but buying something that is supposed to symbolize an experience when the very thing being memorialized is sitting squalling in a bassinet.
The price is obviously a factor; I'm not saying mothers shouldn't get presents. But big gifts say "Sure, anyone can have a baby, but can anyone have a baby and afford this custom art?" It takes the focus off of the creation of a new life by its ostentatiousness.
Point is, Brian, that not all consumption is good or the same. I'm a capitalist, at least until we come up with something better, but I'm not so naive as to think that just because someone can afford to buy something doesn't mean they should.
i can't wait to see the de beers ad for this one!
@Brian: "For that matter, why do you ever see a movie or do anything that is not absolutely necessary when people are starving somewhere in the world?"
For the same reason you don't rush out and buy a pretty rock every time you have a few bucks to spare.
@Brian: "Jeremiad." Good word.
My mom had a ring that incorporated the birthstones of all seven of her children in it, but it wasn't a bauble that my dad got her to somehow compensate for hours of labor, it was something that she wore to honor her children. (For that matter, the stones were tiny and probably pretty inexpensive.)
> Yet I don't seem to remember jeremiads against
> $4,000 computers.... why do you ever see a movie
> or do anything that is not absolutely necessary
> when people are starving somewhere in the world?
Computers DO something. Movies TELL STORIES. Unless you're a member of the Green Lantern Corps, jewelry is absolutely worthless except as a means of social control and intimidation. It has NO intrinsic value. Its only function is manipulating psychology.
I hope that hallmark gets involved. I'd love to see the cards related to this.
The problem I have is the societal component, that you're a jerk/cheapskate/a-hole for not buying into the cultural norm of shelling out for an arbitrary symbol. It's not just that it's an expensive gift, it's expensive AND you are expected to comply. Nothing like being guilted into something.
Try giving zirconium, quartz, or even glass as a push present or engagement ring, no matter how beautifully crafted it is.