To think that marriage is an outdated concept?

It’s basically a financial contract which is great if the DH is the higher earner and wealthier than you but less so if the DW earns/owns more.

Perhaps younger generations will move towards being more financially independent in their own right?

And the 'it's only a piece of paper' is trotted out by men who do not want to be anymore committed to their partner than they already are. I have known several men in long term 'committed' relationship who refused to get married. To only then dump their long term partner and happily marry their new girlfriend within a couple of years.

Men are not afraid of the legal commitments of marriage, they just won't allow that commitment with the wrong woman.

@Sunlounger25

I agree with you OP. I'd like to see it completely overhauled and to separate the legal from the emotional. I think too many women sleepwalk into marriage without understanding the legal implications of what they're signing up for.

This is spot on. So many women are brought up not understanding what marriage means and society colludes in this in an infuriating way.

Marriage is not about love or commitment. It’s not about God or hearts and flowers and a big floral table display and a white dress and an expensive holiday.

Its an insurance policy which you may or may not need but for which you need to read the small print.

Our approach to marriage is a hangover from the days when marriage was just something everyone did by default and it was faintly shameful not the do it. Most of the time people only really get married out of FOMO. This needs to change.

Hear hear. There’s nothing ‘natural’ about women being the lower earner, or ‘naturally’ stepping out of the workforce when they have a child any more than the marriage bar was ‘natural’ or the pay gap is all too often viewed as ‘natural’. These things are socially conditioned and can be reconditioned.

@PaperGloves yet most women I know seem to earn less than their male partners. If you read any thread on SAHP's, and on here there are many, 99% of them say that it made sense for them to go part time after children because they were the lower earner. Why were they the lower earner pre children?

I think it is the value we put on women in relationships, straight from when they are teens. So much of many teenage girl's self worth comes from their relationship status. I see it all the time when working with Y.A's.
It's all girls. Clever ones, rich ones, poor ones- 'have you got a boyfriend?' is a constant topic of conversation. Relationship talk and boy talk dominate their lives.
This goes right on until the mid twenties.

Until we start teaching girls, really teaching them, that they do not need to be someone's girlfriend, they don't need to be fancied or gawped at, that being brainy, funny, kind or athletic is 'enough' we will not change the gender roles in any seismic way.

Didn't you know that 'pieces of paper' are incredibly important? Stocks & shares certificates, house deeds, birth certificates, degree certificates, £20 notes, wills.......the list just goes on.

Your marriage certificate is a legally binding contract and yes, it is very important.

It’s legal, nothing else.

And very outdated. Women are opting out, not sacrificing their lives for children and caring for a man. I hope we see a big change now. Can you imagine the progress we could make when women stop being carers? After they’re done with the children and their husbands, elderly care is put upon them too.

However you cut it, women never reach their potential because they spend their lives as carers. We do not live up to our potential in the patriarchy.

I await the sniping, which will be ignored. These are dangerous words and many women will fight for their enslavement.

Women aren’t obliged to be unambitious or settle for minimum-wage jobs just because they ‘need doing’ as a general thing in society, though. And there’s a lot of middle ground between minimum-wage and global CEO of AstraZeneca.

And fuck yes the biggest problem is men expecting women to do all the domestic and child related stuff!!!

Most jobs are low paid jobs.
Not every woman is ever going to have a job they can ever become senior enough in to have flexibility.
Most jobs are call centres, shop assistant, etc low paid, low flexibility. If everyone's doing the senior flexible jobs, who's doing the millions of basic jobs society needs doing?

While it might be the ideal (is the ideal!), what it's not, is realistic. it's just not realistic that the majority of people can wait and build up a career and be important with lots of flexibility and cover all the costs of everything.

Yes shouldn’t need to be a CEO or lawyer!

The truth is of course that men are not pulling their weight. They should be encouraged to take longer paternity leave (not be too macho to even ask), do school runs and ask to go part time. Some do. Most don’t. That would even the playing field a lot.

Most working women end up doing much more than their husbands.

Yes, but what they should be thinking about is how to ensure they don’t take a career hit in the first place. Delay having children till you’re senior enough to have a lot of flexibility, and make it clear well in advance to your partner that if he wants children, he’ll be the one taking the hit. I told DH I would only contemplate having a child if he realised he would be the one working shorter days because of childcare, and that he would be the one taking time off for illness. I wasn’t up for being the default parent. If he wanted a child with me, he needed to think of the cost.

I loved being married to my late DH. And, like it or not, marriage does give certain legal protections, not available for those just living together. 🙂

Yes, many women in non-British cultures do. And not only to look after DC either
Sometimes to look after the elderly.
That contribution needs to be recognised.

the reality is that it is women who take the hit much more often than it is men.
Be that having a few years off until the child is in nursery or school.
Or working part time for many years.
Or being the one who always has to take time off if the kids are sick.
etc etc etc
Most women are not the high earner high flying lawyer, broker, CEO type who can have the children without having to make the career sacrifices. Having children affects mothers' jobs, career progression and pension contributions much more than it does fathers.
no, that's not always the case but it is often the case and if it will be the case then those women need to think with their heads not their hearts.

There are a lot of people assuming here that women will give up work to look after kids. Can anyone afford to do that these days? I couldn’t. Yes, I did go part time to support them later but I still earned more than my DH so that also went unrecognised in divorce.

It's a legal contract that gives you a set of rights. It's very important if you are going to sacrifice or reduce your earning potential and future pension to raise children. I don't think it's wise to 100% trust anyone to always have your back. I am not romantic and I wasn't willing to have the children without the contract in place first. You want to one day piss off? Fine. Goody's getting half your pension.

If you have lots of money and assets and aren't going to be left up shit creek in a concrete canoe if your partner fucks off one day then yes, it's just a romantic piece of paper and a party.

Which is fine too by the way. Who doesn't love a party?

Civil partnership.

@bifurCAT it was normal in the past for women to marry for money because maybe until the 1970s that was the only option they had! I don’t like the idea.

The marriage contract/divorce courts allow one person to take the other’s wealth on divorce and this is what is wrong. You should take out what you put in. Child rearing should be counted towards that equation, as far as I can see.

My ex-husband and I both worked and both did some of the looking after the children but he regarded this more as “sitting” whereas I was left with all the things that needed active organising or money - from dentists to arranging childcare to buying and washing clothes and cooking healthy meals. In any tally I did more and earned more. That was not taken into consideration. I have done also everything since the split to continue supporting our children - financially and emotionally and practically too. He has not been heard of since.

I wouldn’t say he married me for the money - at the start it wasn’t clear how it would turn out. But he was happy to sit back and let me carry the entire load. And the courts rewarded him for it. And maybe he always did have an eye on what he would get out of it.

I have friends who married wealthy men and have done well from divorce. But they did raise the kids and this is something that deserves recognition. And they have continued to provide a stable family home afterwards when the dads have left. So if that contribution deserves 50% (or more) then why isn’t my contribution recognised?? I did at least 75% but my efforts are seen as worth more like 25%.

I don’t know what my advice would be to the next generation. I am starting to see my friends’ kids marry and I cannot feel sure about that arrangement. The divorce laws need reform. I am not against marriage per se.

Agree with this

As someone who won’t get married as it doesn’t suit my situation, I think the whole ‘marriage is outdated and just a piece of paper’ is really detrimental, especially to women.

Women’s careers take a hit when they are pregnant and have children. Even if they return to work, it’s take a hit. If a couple decide it’s better for the family for the woman to be at home or work less hours, not being married is really risky for the woman. especially where the family home is only in the man’s name.

Whilst I think it’s everyone’s own responsibility to look at the pros and cons of a situation before making huge life decisions like moving in to someone’s home, having kids, impacting your financial independence etc I think too many women have fallen into the ‘marriage outdated’ trap. Then found themselves out on the street with very little money and no right over assets they would have, if they had been married.

I find it quite interesting. No kids are taught these things at school. But men, very often, know what they are doing by not getting married and do it to protect their own assets. But so many women seem completely unaware of the implications of not getting married. Or if they are aware seem to be happy to believe it won’t happen to them and believe their dp when they say ‘yeah we will get married one day, let’s just have kids for now’.

I learnt it because mums second husband tried to take half the house she bought after she divorced my Dad. They had been married 9 months when they split and he wanted half the house. I learnt a lot from that.

I did get married. I was young and neither of us had more than the other and built what we had together. So when we divorced it was reasonable we both got half. I wouldn’t do it now as I have a lot more than Dp and earn more and have 2 kids with exh. I married when it suited both and won’t because it doesn’t.

I think we should be encouraging people to understand living a life with someone isn’t just about romance and love. Wether it’s living together, marriage, having kids, we should encourage people to really look at what the options are, the pros and cons and then make a decision.

I hear you on this and you make some good points. But as someone in a long marriage with DC, the idea of ever putting up with someone else's DC is hideous to me. Or them having to put up with mine. especially these days when kids appear to need support until they are 30s. Most of the people I know in second marriages aren't happy either.

A blended family just wouldn't work for me. Would rather stay single if I got divorced.

Yes I think it's outdated. No one needs to live with someone else for their whole lives anymore. Different when we died in our sixties. It's almost impossible that you would still be happy with the person you met in your twenties when you're in your 70's especially after all the stress of decades of child rearing and domesticity.
The happiest women I know are either single or found someone who they truly had things in common with later in life, when their kids have grown up. Many women I know are still resentful of how their husbands were during the hard times, or they found they have become completely different people (boring, rude, selfish) as they have aged. Generally women stay active and social for much longer.

Yes and no.

As has been pointed out, marriage is a legal and financial contract. It still plays a very important role in protecting the financially vulnerable partner (usually, though increasingly not always, the woman). For a woman who needs or wants to stay at home with children for any length of time, marriage is essential to guarantee her financial security.

I do agree with you that marriage is at best neutral and more often than not negative if you are the stronger economic partner. Marriage essentially transfers value from the economic generator to the non economic generator. This is sensible if you are a homemaker. Not so sensible if you’re a female breadwinner with children married to a man who under earns you and doesn’t pull his weight at home. I am a relatively high earner with a kid and a partner and for me marriage would be stupid.

As an aside, I also find the trappings and language of marriage problematic. I know there are plenty of equal marriages today but the symbolism is still very much rooted in an era when women were essentially the property of their husbands. I can’t really get past my sense of nausea around that and I find weddings embarrassingly naff.

I don’t think marriage is obsolete but I do think it will become increasingly irrelevant if women’s economic power continues to grow at the rate it has over the past few decades.

Your employment contract is just a bit of paper, your bank account documentation is just a bit of paper, your will is just a bit of paper etc.

I am the higher earner and DH was a SAHD for a while. Marriage protects him. Any person who is prepared to let their partner become vulnerable through taking on childcare responsibilities without ensuring they are legally protected is not a good partner.