When I was a kid, my mom would put Valentine's Day presents on the breakfast table before we left for school. We might get a little Whitman's candy sampler and some lip gloss, or perhaps something unrelated, like a pair of socks or a plastic lizard.

Now, as an adult, I’m still trying to figure out the right way to celebrate this day with my husband. One year, I made dinner reservations at a fancy restaurant, but it felt too forced and kind of clichéd. The next year, I made a last-minute raid on the grim selections left at the drugstore. Last year, I made a card out of magazine pictures, but my husband just thought I was being a cheapskate. So I am approaching the day again with some dread.

Young adults are apparently the driving force behind Valentine’s Day. According to the National Retail Federation, people between the ages of 25 and 34 spend the most money on Valentine's Day, shelling out an average of about $164 each. Men spend twice as much as women.

Total retail spending on the holiday is expected to approach $17 billion this year.

All this suggests that love and romance are thriving, and that people are literally investing in their relationships. And although I am ultimately just another one of the millions of consumers spending money on Valentine’s Day, I am also focused on the social justice aspects of two of this holiday’s classics: chocolate and roses.

Not-so-sweet chocolate
Seventy percent of the world's cocoa is grown in the war-torn region of West Africa, where the industry thrives on child labor and the profits fuel violence. An estimated 284,000 children work in West Africa, 200,000 of them in Ivory Coast. Unfortunately, market forces are only increasing the demand for cocoa and thus for child labor. Sometimes children work alongside their parents and still attend school, but many do not.

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