Angela Han's Key Points • Ending ‘breach of promise’ laws turned diamond rings into financial collateral, not just romance. • Ongoing social and market change demands a reworked value story for both natural and lab-grown diamonds. • Natural diamonds come with a long legacy of security and status, while lab-grown diamonds are still in its early stages of history. |
Few people realise that ‘back in the day’, if a man broke off an engagement to a woman, he could be sued. A jilted woman could seek damages in court.
Broadly referred to as a ‘breach of promise to marry’, the law allowed the abandoned person - usually the woman - to take common law action.
Many societies around the world – including the US, UK, and Australia – regarded a commitment to marriage as a legally binding contract. These laws have been documented as early as the Middle Ages.
Having promised to marry a woman, a man could face harsh financial penalties should he change his mind and did not honour his pledge.
This is undoubtedly an alien concept in contemporary society; however, these laws existed for several reasons; one being the prevailing attitudes surrounding sexual purity as a measure of a woman’s worth.
Chastity was considered a non-negotiable, and romance outside an engagement or marriage would destroy a woman’s ability to marry later in life. These laws existed because, for an abandoned bride-to-be, the prospects of finding a suitable husband after an initial engagement were practically non-existent.
These laws were also important because of the status of women in society, particularly in the professional workforce. While women have always ‘worked’, they have not always earned a living wage. Abandoned marriage plans severely compromised the financial security of women.
Women began to enter the formal wage-earning workforce in the late 19th century. Numbers surged around World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939-1945). Around the same time, attitudes towards romance before marriage began to change. An increasing number of women started living independently, and a ‘dating culture’ emerged. Youth culture around the world began to increasingly accept that teenagers and young adults could experience multiple serious relationships before settling down.
In the US, most states repealed or limited ‘breach of promise to marry’ laws during the 1930s. Australia followed suit with a federal abolition in 1961, and similar laws were eliminated in England in 1971.
Marriage was increasingly viewed as a personal relationship rather than a binding contract. The ‘Century of the Self’ had begun, and the legal system began to recognise that people should be free to end engagements without legal intervention.
Around this time, another shift was unfolding. Before World War II, diamond engagement rings were widely available; however, they were not a cultural cornerstone. This changed quickly, and by the 1950s, the majority of engagement rings sold in the US featured a diamond.
Many explanations for the remarkable rise of diamond engagement rings have been proposed. Rising income levels, changes in diamond prices and availability, and shifts in consumer preferences are often noted. Perhaps above all, credit is traditionally afforded to the De Beers Group and its legendary marketing campaigns.
But what if that’s only half the story? That was the argument mounted by Professor Margaret Brinig when she published ‘Rings and Promises’ in 1990.
Professor Brinig argued that the rapid rise of diamond engagement rings did not happen because of clever marketing. Instead, it happened because of the widespread abolition of ‘breach of promise to marry’ laws.
The abolition of these laws in the 1930s coincided with a surge of diamond imports to the US. Professor Brinig suggested that the remarkable rise of diamond engagement rings is a cultural reflection of a more profound institutional transformation.
Indeed, while attitudes towards sexual purity and marriage had started to change, most people still held views that would be extremely conservative by today’s standards. While women had entered the professional workforce en masse, their earning power was still weak.
The abolition of ‘breach of promise to marry’ laws meant that a critical financial safety net had been removed for women. Professor Brinig argued that diamond rings became the standard as a substitute for this legal protection.
If an engagement was unexpectedly broken, most abandoned brides-to-be could no longer turn to the legal system for support; however, they still had a valuable diamond ring they could sell. The proceeds provided financial safety when the courts could not.
Why does this history lesson matter? Well, it represents an itch that lab-created diamonds cannot scratch. Lab-created diamonds have little resale value and don’t serve as a financial safety net. The counter is that natural diamonds also have limited resale value.
It could be argued that this story is another chapter in the legacy of natural diamonds. Lab-created diamonds are chemically identical to natural stones; however, they don’t have a legacy of their own upon which to build value.
More importantly, perhaps you might argue that none of this really matters. Women can live independently and outside of individual preferences; most people are expected to have multiple romantic relationships before they find ‘the one’. Getting abandoned at the altar isn’t the social death sentence it once was. Maybe, no one needs a financial safety net in 2025.
Wherever you stand in this discussion, it stands as evidence that the only constant in life is change. As you will soon discover, change is the central theme of the Great Diamond Debate III.
In some way, each contribution in this special issue of Jeweller from diamond industry experts around the world represents a discussion about change. Some contributors are merely documenting significant market changes, while others are calling for a new approach or a new way of thinking about important matters.
Diamonds might be the hardest naturally occurring substance on Earth, but even they are powerless to the winds of change.
THE GREAT DIAMOND DEBATE III
Table of Contents
The Great Diamond Debate Collection