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<p>I work in the software industry and you wouldn’t know that people are wealthy by their appearance.</p>
<p>My wife has lots of CZ pieces because they look nice and there’s always a concern about theft. I’ve always told her to buy what she wants when it comes to jewelry but she’s overall as cheap as I am (generally). Maybe we should give that mining site a try.</p>
<p>CZ is not the only alternative to diamonds and, frankly, not the best. There is too much difference in their physical properties that they could be even told apart by a trained eye (I suppose not too many people walk around with a conductivity meter :)). There are other stones that look like diamonds.</p>
<p>Ah, Romaniggypsy, yes, there are women who adopt rather than go through the biological process, but statistically, it is still the women who go through the physical birth process, and yes, it is a biological process that can be medically challenging both physically and mentally. So I do believe that some leeway should be given for those who go through a pregnancy and birth. To ignore that it is a medical risk would be unrealistic. Though the days of when childbirth was a leading cause of female death are gone, it still is not an insignificant medical process. It does not compare medically to picking up a child in an adoptive process. There are those who have done both, and yes, there is something to the physical undergoing of developing an embryo to a live baby. I know a lot of women who have medical issues stemming from something that occurred in that time period, not to mention the hormonal issues that come with that territory. </p>
<p>So until men come close to the same numbers in enduring the physical load of actually having a child or we can incubate a fetus to birth, some medical quarter should be given to women when they are physically pregnant. </p>
<p>And as for what couples fight about the most, add children to that mix.</p>
<p>BC, my friend and her bf spent a day in that field. Not a speck of diamond dust in sight. :)</p>
<p>@ Oldfort “Just because you don’t understand, doesn’t mean it has no validity to someone else.”</p>
<p>I love this line and it is so true. I am going to try this one out on my husband.</p>
<p>We’re going to be in the SouthEast later this year - I don’t know whether it’s worth a side-trip down there. It would be a lot easier just to buy something. My usual pattern would be to trade TIF, take the profits from that and buy something. I’ll add TIF to my streaming charts.</p>
<p>Cpt, huh? Women’s health is my area of specialty. I’m well aware of the risks associated with (and those greatly exaggerated of) maternal health. </p>
<p>I just gave my opinion on the matter. Nothing more, nothing less.</p>
<p>Shallow or not, you want something, it’s a fact that exists. If it is attainable without too much trouble so that basic tenets do not get hurt, I see no problem.</p>
<p>As for the sociological issues, that again comes down to the personal. I’ve known folks big on causes and yet own stock of companies that are the ones responsible for the very causes. I know that I live a hypocritical life in many ways No question that those I’ve hired, the house I’ve bought, are done by illegal immigrant labor. but I buy and use. I buy products from companies involved in things that I don’t support and even vehemently oppose. The diamond issue is not one that has come into my frog like scope of vision yet for my activist tongue to try to zap. I’ll keep my one 1/2 carat blood diamond. And if my kids want to buy their SOs diamonds, I have nothing to say in that area about them.</p>
<p>Bunsen, I was told on good authority (a specialist in the field some years ago) that even he cannot tell the difference between a good CZ and a diamond with just the eye. This guy made his living, and a decent one at that, buying and selling diamonds. </p>
<p>I am a Swarovski crystal fan myself, though I don’t even wear that in terms of jewelry.</p>
<p>I do wear Swarovski crystal jewelry. I love pink sparkly things and the cost doesn’t make my throat close up. I am really cheap.</p>
<p>To add to what cpt said… Have you seen those pain charts at your doctor’s office? “Describe you pain on the scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst, e.g. childbirth.” LOL. No. Not really a 10, but if it lasts 18 hours - maybe! :)</p>
<p>Now, to stretch things a bit - let the one who has not sinned cast the first stone. Bet we cannot find a saint among CCers, since we are all hypocrites here - posting from our computers built with components made by toxic processes in third world countries by exploited labor.</p>
<p>Zm, I’m even “cheaper” - I like my Alexis Bittar bling made of plastic (although that stuff is not really cheap) 
But 99% of the time the holes in my ears are plugged with tiny diamond studs set in platinum.</p>
<p>I’m a hypocrite. No pretending. I do try to minimize my bad impact on humanity though :). One way of doing that, for me, is by buying “ethical” jewelry.</p>
<p>I wonder if you can get a complete computer made with components from Germany, South Korea and the United States. Intel makes CPUs in the US and you have Infeneon and Hynix for memory. There are flash memory makers in South Korea and Japan. You can get PSUs manufactured from Japan or Taiwan. There are motherboards from Taiwan and Japan. I think that it would be hard to avoid some motherboard components sourced from China. So you could build a PC with parts mostly not from China and from non-third-world countries.</p>
<p>Cpt and Romani, you have made me realize that it’s about time for me to pick out my “push present”.</p>
<p>If the value of the gift is equal to the value of the suffering, I should pick out something very nice!</p>
<p>Let me be more clear: wanting to be able to run the family on the husband’s salary alone is not just about the 24 hours of childbirth. It’s about the potential for bed rest, a disabled child, something that goes awry during pregnancy; it’s about the biological fact that men can’t breast-feed and infants need to be fed every two hours. Sometimes, day care (especially for two kids) costs more than a woman gets in net pay after taxes. </p>
<p>I would have agreed with Romani when I was younger; in my old age, having seen professional women with graduate degrees stay at home (for various reasons - reasons which are not addressed in a health class), I simply do not. I have two professional degrees and believe in being self-supporting, but if I were to wed, I would want to run our lives so that we could live on either salary - even if we never needed to, for the same reason I wouldn’t jump on a boat that didn’t have an emergency floatation device.</p>
<p>I don’t know why it has to be the man’s salary that is “primary.” Obviously, I agree that only women can give birth (and do need to recover from it) and breastfeed, but parenting after breastfeeding age can be done equally as well by either parent (or earlier if one puts breast milk in a bottle).<br>
When it comes to proposals, rings, and weddings, the gender biases are very pronounced, IMO. I know my D will expect a ring versus buying it 50/50. I cannot think of one situation in my world where the bride to be contributed financially to the ring. Yet they all work and contribute to other expenses. Interesting!</p>
<p>Actually,I have a friend who told her future husband that she wanted a sizable ring and she would have gladly contributed towards it if needed. Both of them married later in life, late 30’s and both surgeons, she in plastic surgery.</p>
<p>Many of my friends either contribute to their ring or both partners get a ring. I don’t pretend for a second that that’s a norm but I think it’s more common than people think. I also wonder if it’s more common for second or later life marriages.</p>
<p>A lot of this probably “depends,” honestly. Will the bride’s family be paying for the wedding, or will the couple pay? I mean, I don’t think anyone “expects” the grooms family to pay for the wedding. There are some things about marriages and weddings that are left over, for whatever reason.</p>
<p>We are in a fortunate situation. Grooms family is also in a fortunate situation. Nobody is really doing a lot of money math on this and we are grateful for that. But, I can see if the groom’s family expects the bride’s family to pay for the big wedding, then it is silly for them to be weird about the ring.</p>
<p>It’s all about taste. You should probably begin as you mean to go on, in the spirit of openness and love, not money and support. I think that might be a kind of strange way to “see” the ring or the wedding, personally.</p>