There’s a Cracked article (of all things) that actually does a pretty good job of explaining at least one of the reasons behind this phenomenon. The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor. Item #4, “Extra Money Has To Be Spent Right Goddamn Now!”
Way to put your litle child at risk, it doesn’t matter if its the thing back home where you come from, you’re not back home where you come from .
You’re in a violent inner city environment.
I worry for the kids who have parents who are so obviously lacking in basic common sense as the ones in the article.
Whats the betting that they replace the mugger magnets for their children very shortly ?
If nothing else, those kids will be incredibly streetwise if they survive to adulthood.
Thats of course if their parents don’t exchange them for a handful of beans.
This.
Yeah, but giving and receiving gold meant for children is different from actually wearing it out in public. My kids all have their “birth gold” in lock boxes in our house. They wore some of it for milestone events like their first birthday or first Chinese New Year, but that’s about it. I could never imagine putting my baby daughter in a stroller with her solid gold bracelets or pendants and going for a walk, especially in some parts of Brooklyn…
Some people consider that a very desireable thing. Also, 10K gold jewelry is considerably more durable than most costume jewelry. My nieces went all through childhood with one pair of gold earrings each bought (when gold was cheaper for around $60.00). That breaks down to less than $10.00 a year for earrings.
It’s a cultural thing, not much different than a wedding ring.
Gold jewelry in particular is often sold by weight and thus holds it’s value through the years and can be passed down. In many places it is seen as a conveniently portable way to store wealth, rather than as a consumption item. Giving a child jewelry is much like giving them a saving’s bond. This is especially true in countries that have a mix of shaky banking systems and currency controls. Would you rather hold your life’s savings in the Bank of Chad’s CFA, or in as gold bullion in a secure deposit box? In China, it’s not at all unusual for a well-off family to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold. Given China’s history, people see the value in wealth that can be retrieved anonymously and packed in a suitcase should the shit hit the fan. In this case, the family had a Spanish last name. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have roots in a country that has been hit by a currency crisis. It only takes losing your life saving’s once to no longer trust banking systems.
For women and girls in particular, jewelry often serves as a sort of safeguard agains absolute poverty, and thus symbolizes how much a family treasures a given women. In many places, other forms of wealth are absorbed into the husband’s family. But a woman’s jewelry is often hers and hers alone, and may be the only wealth she has sole control of. Having a substantial amount of jewelry is protection and buys you choices in life- if your husband is bad, it gives you the option to leave. If something happens to your husband, it keeps you from being entirely dependent on your in-laws for charity. If everything goes to hell, it will buy you a little bit more time. A very loving family will load their daughters up with as much jewelry as they can manage, showing great tenderness and care for their well-being. It’s a strong symbol of familial love. Jewelry is preferred because it is easy to keep under your control (keeping it on you keeps it safer from a vindictive mother-in-law trying to pawn it off while you are out running errands, for example) and very portable. These may be cultures where women are traditionally a lot more home-bound, so robbers are not as big of a worry as family members, household staff, visitors, and other people who might swipe something out of a lockbox but probably wouldn’t tear the earrings out of your earlobes.
So you can see how cheap jewelry wouldn’t work in this context. Costume jewelry would be absurd and insulting- implying that a child is unloved and the family is unconcerned about their future well-being. It would be like giving someone a pile of monopoly money for their graduation gift.
As others have said, it’s a common Indian thing. That doesn’t mean the kid wears it all the time, but I would no sooner give an Indian child a 14 K anything than I would give her a $2 toy from the corner store. When I finally have a niece, I definitely plan to give her a piece of 22K gold, and I am as Americanized as they come.
However, they don’t generally wear them all the time. Less because of thieves and more because of little fingers working at the latch, though.
There’s also the old-fashioned “Add-A-Pearl” necklace, where the child is given a chain and a tiny pearl at birth, and every year on her birthday another pearl is added to said chain.
There’s another interesting cultural difference. My parents recently gave my nieces each $5 to spend at the dollar store. My nieces loved getting to pick out five toys from the dollar store.
Oh it would be different to give them $5. I wouldn’t buy them a $5 gift, though!
Mised the edit window. I also wouldn’t give you $5 to give them; like for a birthday or something.
Maybe it was an Elder Sign. Would certainly fit with the child’s name.
I’m sure my parents don’t do that (or at least that wouldn’t be the only thing they’d get for a birthday). They spoil my nieces, and I know they will spoil my daughter when she is born. Ah well, I guess that’s their job as grandparents.
Since this has been resurrected–
On the contrary. Mugging a pregnant mother and young toddler actually requires a very pragmatic criminal–one who understands that such a situation has a very high chance of him getting what he wants without being injured in any way.
I am surprised that in this thread no one mentioned baby tiara’s given by kleptomaniac sisters.
More than surprised. Disappointed in the Soper who love breaking bad so much.