Has marriage become for men only?

Marriage is for the benefit of the lower earner, so usually for the benefit of women only. It is arguably a foolish person who earns more and marries rather than just lives together.

Well a lot of people do get married but your right I do wonder why we would want to. I think straight couples should be allowed to have civil partnerships. I would definitely prefer that.

Or visit the local pub DWH.

Men, OTOH, are thought of as carefree bachelors, sowing their wild oats, footloose and fancy free, unencumbered by a ball and chain. If they marry, they are 'making an honest woman of her'.

If language influences thought, and vice versa, then why are these things still voiced? Surely in our enlightened times, when women can do all the things ArtetasSwollenAnkle suggests, then no one would make those comments?

'Enlightened times'??? There are places in the world even today where to be female, married or not, is to be a slave to male keepers and the expectations of the society in which they live.

However here, in my corner of this planet, if I wanted to encounter people who voiced such things as what you list your good Doctor would have to lend me his TARDIS or I would have to visit a nursing home for the elderly, probably the very elderly at that.

out: "If this is the biggest reason for a woman to get married, why do women marry who earn more than their partner? Or who have more assets to begin with?"

Wearing my cynical hat I would advise her not to get married particularly if her partner is going to be the primary carer.

Women who don't marry within a certain time frame are still spoken of as 'on the shelf' 'an old maid'. Their biological clocks must be ticking and they become 'dried up old prunes'. None of the language used to describe unmarried women is complementary. Even women in long term monogamous relationships which bear children and are happy are thought of as 'being unable to catch a man'.

Men, OTOH, are thought of as carefree bachelors, sowing their wild oats, footloose and fancy free, unencumbered by a ball and chain. If they marry, they are 'making an honest woman of her'.

If language influences thought, and vice versa, then why are these things still voiced? Surely in our enlightened times, when women can do all the things ArtetasSwollenAnkle suggests, then no one would make those comments?

But, of course they do. Marriage is still mostly for the benefit of men, to the detriment of women, but we still continue to do it.

Just by the bye.... men don't need to be married to the mother of their children in order to have rights anymore, PR is a given now for unmarried fathers. It's women and children who are most at risk in non-married relationship breakdown of being made penniless and homeless, unless everything is shared equally in law, or a will has been made.

Artetas: For hundreds of years, those things were not available to women. They either married, or they remained the property of their fathers or, sometimes, later on, were permitted to take up low-paid, service-style employment eg governess or housekeeper.

As soon as women started to gain financial autonomy, they started rejecting marriage and filing for divorce in greater numbers. This is still going on. Hence the efforts to convince women that they are the ones who are 'unfulfilled' unless they hand themselves over to a man's ownership.

Many of these comments seem to assume that every woman marries a man who is financially stable and earns more than her. If this is the biggest reason for a woman to get married, why do women marry who earn more than their partner? Or who have more assets to begin with?

Well some of us are looking at marriage from a structural perspective and others are looking at marriage still within a frame that women need to be married and that should be their goal i.e. how society frames marriage, something that women search for and men grant. I can see how that would be confusing.

There are other alternatives with raising children e.g. raise children with other women or families.

I think that everyone acknowledges with the way that society is set up currently and if you have children with your partner that marriage is the easiest way of having financial security. However, that security can be achieved outside of marriage even in today's society. It is incredibly patriarchal though that just because you go to a registry office you get financial security not afforded to those who don't. There's something very moralising (and not in a good way) about that. And there are still whiffs of ownership of women and children and their labour within that financial security setup.

I find this thread confusing tbh.

Marriage is good for men and bad for women - compared to what?

If you are going to have and rear children, then a certain amount of resources (time, money, labour) need to be available to do that. So, as an individual wanting children, you have 3 choices:

-have children on the basis you will raise them singly (hard work, huge financial burden)

-have children as an unmarried couple (can work fine, or not, but very little legal protection for either party and this tends to disproportionally penalize women who tend to swap earning power for childcare responsibilities)

-have children within a marriage (can work fine, or not, but some legal protection if things don't work out).

Personally, I chose having children as part of a couple because in return for washing, house-keeping and child-rearing I get access to financial and other support to raise 2 kids that I really wanted in circumstances far, far easier than if I'd chosen single parenthood. Then having chosen coupledom for the purposes of procreation I chose marriage as it gives me financial protection in case of a split.

What does dh get out of it - 2 kids he really wanted being reared plus some housekeeping/home-making in a relationship that gives him legal rights regarding his kids.

I don't really see how either of us benefit more than the other. If anything I think the balance is somewhat on my side because the things dh 'gets' out of marriage as listed in posts above (sex, kids, someone to wash his pants) are all to easily available outside marriage. There are any number of threads on the relationship boards where some poor woman has lived with and had children by some useless tosser man and now wants to leave but the house is in his name, the savings are in his name and he is the main wage earner. Or people like my friend who lost her home when her partner died and his parents claimed half the estate (absolutely not what he would have wanted but no will).

'...because the alternatives to marriage have been deliberately made undesirable for women by men.'

Like going to university, getting a job, having a career, buying a home, travelling, even more education, professional qualifications, happiness, enlightenment, satisfaction, pleasure....

What a shit hand you have been dealt.

A while ago I saw a discussion about whether marriage was bad for women and the consensus was that it was true: but nevertheless, a man who was willing to marry a woman was better than one who wasn't.

Interesting. I guess because a man who will not marry a woman is confirmed to be a bastard as first principal but a man who would marry a woman has, at least, the potential to be a good guy even if, when judging the male herd collectively, the chances are low and potentially higher he could be an even bigger bastard.

Either that or male hate is a thing and/or married women have a form of Stockholm syndrome, where they value their own husbands but pity their friends for the husbands they are married too- and their friends feel the same in return.

TeiTetua: because the alternatives to marriage have been deliberately made undesirable for women by men. Even when women achieved some economic indepence, there was still (and is still) a great deal of social pressure on women to marry, though it's always been framed as 'please a man enough to make him choose you'. The more women look at marriage (and heterosexual monogamy) with clear eyes and decide that actually it's not that good a deal, ta, the more intense the propaganda becomes - women who will not accept a male owner are 'bitter' or 'ugly' or 'desperate' or 'unnatural' or 'failures'.

Because men need and want marriage. They want a woman to cook their meals and clean their house and wash their shitty pants, they want to reproduce without doing very much of the hard work involved in rearing children. And yeah, yeah, Not Your Nigel, plenty of men are not this selfish and do see marriage/heteromongamy as a partnership of equals. Though it seems fairly clear that even the nicer ones quite often have a knack of weaseling out of most of the domestic shitwork and awarding themselves a lot more leisure time than their partners get...

No.

Marriage has just changed,
Childbirth and child raising has cast horrendously abusive values further to one side, Changed massively over time, ...have people stopped having children now because its outdated and pointless? no.

Women just tolerate less crap and expect more equal marriages. I am married and I don't stand for any shit, I haven't stepped into a time warp because I chose to get married.

If marriage has always been so bad for women, it's hard to understand why women have always been so eager to do it! And especially eager to see their daughters do it.

A while ago I saw a discussion about whether marriage was bad for women and the consensus was that it was true: but nevertheless, a man who was willing to marry a woman was better than one who wasn't.

Wot SGB said. Marriage has never been 'for' women. There maybe more parity now within the institution but the whole concept of women as 'chattel' is still played out often enough.

Blueshoes you put it very eloquently

Marriage was invented by men for their benefit - a way of making sure they were able to own women for domestic, sexual and breeding purposes. Men-as-a-class then made it almost impossible for women to live outside of a marital relationship (forbidding them to work or own property) and then sold marriage to them as being 'to their advantage.'

That's how it was. Yes, of course there are plenty of marriages which are happy and (these days, in the developed world) a genuine partnership of equals, but there are plenty more where a woman is trapped by abuse and financial dependency.

Marriage, legally speaking, is really "for" the lower-income, primary carer, in the sense that it protects them from being screwed over in a divorce. This is the security people talk about. Historically and currently, lower-income primary carer is practically synonymous with woman, so marriage is "for" women.

Given my wife always earned more money in her career than me, had we divorced years ago and I been granted primary custody of our kids (and given I was the primary carer for our children as they grew that would not be unreasonable to have been granted) then my ex-wife would have been mandated to pay me child support.

In fact the department of welfare here produced an educational video about dependant child payments many years ago where actors in it played out that exact scenario, thus inverting the societal 'classical thinking' female-male roles as part of the education process, which I thought was doubly good.

If a man is going to out earn the woman over the life of the marriage, it is in the interests of the woman and for her (and dcs') protection to be married.

Whatever the patriarchal roots of marriage are, the legal system in the UK has evolved such that it gives women, particularly SAHMs, security in the event of divorce and death. It is not an instrument of oppression.

Marriage, legally speaking, is really "for" the lower-income, primary carer, in the sense that it protects them from being screwed over in a divorce. This is the security people talk about. Historically and currently, lower-income primary carer is practically synonymous with woman, so marriage is "for" women.

A Certain Style of Feminist?

Excellent, that's the title if my autobiography nailed!

"a certain style of feminist" Really? All those courts awarding spousal support must be notorious for being a certain style of feminist? Oh, wait...

You aren't painting men in a good light whichever way you look at it LadyIsabella.