Should we be educating young people about the danger of financial vulnerability?

[Brefugee]

Don't want this to be a TAAT but there is one running right now that is quite shocking.

Do we have a responsibility to young people - maybe in secondary school as part of their (what is it? PHSE?) lessons to learn or show how things like "common law marriage" don't actually exist? And that it is sensible to try to be as watertight as you can regarding finances both out of and within a relationship? And that leaving yourself open to poverty in your later years because you believed your partner wouldn't dump you (and children) without a penny?

How can we cut down on this happening?

I think it’s a very educated middle class perspective to say that parents should teach their kids. Lots of parents don’t have the first clue - leaving them to teach their kids just perpetuates the inequality. The only way to address the outdated attitudes of previous generations is to teach better attitudes at school.
Seriously? And if an 'educated, middle class' person said "people not like us shouldn't be allowed to teach their children, they're just not knowledgeable enough" you'd be in uproar I think!!

Well said @Lumiodes

the "rules" may change. But the law isn't going to change (around marriage and the responsibilities that brings when/if it breaks up)

Yes the law and how it is applied does change! I’m 38 and when my family members and school friends parents were divorcing back when I was at school, mesher orders and spousal maintenance was very much the norm. If you had kids and were divorcing back then, it was very common for the resident parent (nearly always the mother) to be able to stay in the family home until the youngest was 18 and spousal maintenance was also more readily awarded and for longer periods of time. Fast forward to today however, courts prefer clean breaks and mesher orders are rarer than hens teeth (barring extenuating circumstances) and you can forget spousal maintenance unless your partner is a very high earner and even then it’s only awarded for a minimum amount of time, usually a year. Courts are also favouring 50/50 residency now compared to back in the day so now even child maintenance isn’t always payable. Women are also expected to work full time time now despite the ages of their kids too.

While there was no formal education on this in my time, a lot of my married friends are now finding themselves screwed because they naively thought they’d get to keep residency of the kids, keep the house, get spousal and not be expected to work full time because the children are under 18 all based on the knowledge of their parents divorce so you can imagine the shock they‘ve had. Times change so they’d have been better off researching what was what at the time they got married rather than relying on outdated information.

and the fact that women stopping their career for 20 years to be a home-maker as an unmarried unpropertied person are leaving themselves open to a hard and uncertain future.

Common law spouses hasn’t been a thing in the UK since the 1700s so why do so women think it’s a thing? In my opinion, I think a lot of women suffer with happily ever after / fairytale syndrome and think it will never happen to them rather than actually be ignorant to the realities.

Of all the things i have read on here this is perfect in explaining it

quote from PP "In my opinion, I think a lot of women suffer with happily ever after / fairytale syndrome and think it will never happen to them rather than actually be ignorant to the realities"

I have caught a man that is all that matters

Yes. So many parents don't realise or care about this stuff. Schools needs far more funding to teach these life skills.

And children need teaching how important the law is.

I think it's one thing to teach the ins and outs of finances and rights.

But an entirely different thing to convince them that "but he's different, he says he loves me, you don't understand" is not a guarantee of anything.

Also teach love and attachment feelings

Again schools can't do it all, but also how many kids don't listen as it is

If schools did actually teach it how many gets that know it already would listen

Same as the kids that listen with math, English etc. They are not the kids that need to be taught it (well they do but more likely to listen in the first place)

It is the kids from 'bad backgrounds' who are possibly the ones not in school enough to be able to teach anyway, to generalise

How many adults don't listen let alone children

People can only put their head in the sand so much school can't force people to think

Aren't they supposed to be taught about marriage in RSE? Surely that should include the legal difference between marriage and co-habitation, but maybe it doesn't. It should also include things like some religious ceremonies not being legal marriages in the UK, as this can also leave people (generally women) very vulnerable, but I don't know whether that's covered either.

But at the end of the day you can't solve everything by teaching kids more stuff in school - a good chunk of them won't be listening in the first place, or will forget within the week anyway.

Actually ime teaching it, it is exactly the kids that need it that do listen. And they are making different choices as a result. I have increasingly found students saying they don’t want to have children because of the cost and responsibility. And thinking carefully about choice of partner. It can be done.

The rse section does indeed cover it.

I have to say I love the idealism on this thread. I’ve worked in a school where we had to routinely do bag searches as a knife crime deterrent. As much as this is a massive issue affecting women, I’m afraid it’ll be quite low down the order of things kids need urgent educating about in the minds of policy makers, especially when some of these issues eg knife crime are literally “life or death.”

Sex education has been taught for awhile how many teens/adults don't have the first idea about contraception etc.

Curriculum is here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62cea352e90e071e789ea9bf/Relationships_Education_RSE_and_Health_Education.pdf

How many adults don't have the first idea about contraception- vanishingly few I would say.

How many surprise pregnancies are spoken of?

I had an unplanned pregnancy myself, I have " the first idea" about contraception, what is your point ?

Also there are single parent or cohabiting teachers. Middle class people are not immune to the problems. I was a single parent myself.

Precisely, I think as said here schools shouldn't have to be searching pupils for deadly weapons, but they are, never mind getting burdened with the responsibility to make sure they know legislation re marital rights!

I suppose though in the response to ops 'we' have the responsibility, but absolving their actual parents from the 'we' because that's apparently judgemental and unfair 🙄 those who are keen to be the 'we' doing this, could set up and fund charities doing this task?

A lot that gets taught at school gets forgotten, especially if it's not relevant at the time and doesn't apply to present life for teenagers.

Influence outside of school can be a better teacher for this type of stuff.

It's like values and morals etc, that should start and be modelled at home. There's a lot of information out there these days, most people have access to it but chose not to.

But young people (generally) aren't watching TV – they're watching streaming services.

Perhaps they should introduce compulsory day courses for 'life skills' once people reach 18. Thing is, people often aren't interested in this stuff until it affects them. I'm not sure how much I would've paid much attention to info about the legalities of marriage if I was taught it in school as it wouldn't have been relevant to me at the time. I suppose we just need to signpost people to the resources as and when they need them.

Are you a teacher? School is the best place to discuss this issue to get to as many children as possible and stop learned behaviours from adults. It only need be a segment as part of PHSE, don’t be so dramatic.

There's plenty of adult women on here actively undermining the "financial independence" cause, often with sanctimonious stuff about how they "didn't have children for someone else to raise". Also many, many, many educated women who simply don't believe it will ever happen to them, even when they're already looking down the barrel of a split - "he'd never cheat/leave/screw me over financially, he's just not like that".

I think to wedge this into the school curriculum would be an utter waste of time. Teenagers will confidently assume none of it applies to them. I don't have an easy answer. Change is cultural, and so many people want to believe in 'common law marriage'.