about 'umarried' mothers?

[Thurlow]

I probably am being. I just want a rant. I have seen so many comments on MN over the past few months about unmarried mothers where the assumption is that you are only unmarried because one of you, usually the man, is a non-committal waste of space, and that he has no right to share a name with any DC because he hasn't bothered to put a ring on it.

Yes, it's only words on screen, but I'm starting to feel an overwhelming belief out there that unmarried couples are less committed than married couples. As someone in a very long-term relationship who made the joint decision not to marry as it wasn't for us, and who - sin of sins - gave their DC their father's surname, it just leaves me with the impression that I am being judged by most people as less committed. It's not a cheerful impression to have.

This isn't a rant against marriage - it just wasn't for us as a couple. And it's not a debate about marriage because I know that legally it brings so much protection, which is not relevant to our current situation.

I'm just getting royally narked with all the 'if you like it you should have put a ring on it' comments I've seen lately.

And breathe...

partner and I have been together for just coming up to 20 years. we have a joint mortgage and two teenage kids who have my surname. Never really discussed marriage.

I admit that in some social and professional settings I have referred to my partner as my wife - just seems easier. Her mum mentioned the M word quite a bit in the early days - mainly after we had children - but she seems to have gotten used to it now.

DP and I have now been together for 27 years. 2 DCs. It works for us.

if i am to honest i think sometimes if you are not married it is easier to say fuck it im off if you are not married .so from my point of view you probably try harder .and before anyone eats me .there has been times over the last twenty years i would have walked if we were just living together .but that wee gold band made me stop and think when i probably would not have .

If I was going to walk I'd have walked gold band or not.

my partner;s two best friends have married, divorced and re-married during the time that we have together as unmarried. my three older brothers are all divorced - none of their marriages lasted as long as my partnership.

my sister has been married for 30 years

horses for courses

Glad your pension companies allow you to do this, both mine and my husbands do not.

Even so, if either of you chose, you can change your arrangements and the other would never know. Your arrangements are great for now whilst things are going ok but should things fall apart, as so many relationships do, your currents arrangements can be undone.

I'm not anti anti-marriage but whatever arrangements you may have do not give you the same rights or legal partnership as a marriage. My views that marriage is better is not from anything other than a more robust legal standing, something it may well have also been cheaper and less time consuming to obtain by popping down the registry office!

Dp and are together because we want to be,have grown up together and work hard at our relationship.We made an unspoken commitment years ago.

An arse is an arse and sorry if he was horrible there is no way I'd stay however many smaltzy wedding vows I'd made.

So many negative assumptions in your imagined worst case scenario stereotype of 'this despised theoretical feckless ex-partner I don't know', which you have reserved for the male partner. Very unpleasant.

It's not a stereotype, it's a "what if." Lots of people break up and stay friends, that's not what I was talking about . . . I was talking about a specific situation. And lots of women are horrible to their partners, and some women do leave their children and not support them and so on.

If a man wasn't married to a woman and they had children who had her name and she upped and left leaving to bring the children up and support them all by himself OF COURSE I'd think it was just as much as a shame for him. It's just that that doesn't happen anything like as often.

I think it's a pity that on threads like these you practically have to go to the effort of cutting and pasting an entire paragraph, reversing all the sexes, so that you have one paragraph that applies to men and an identical one that applies to women, just so that people won't accuse you of peddling negative gender stereotypes when TBH it's obvious that it's not the gender involved you are criticising, it's the situation.

Married women who give up work can still get dicked on though. It might be the giving up of the career that's the real risk rather than the nit marrying?

*not

Well funny all of ours are signed over and we've got several.

Oh and what's to stop married husbands from taking your name off their pension without you knowing.

If you haven't got trust you haven't got trust,no ceremony is going to change that.

I think you have more protection being married in legal terms.

I never wanted to get married.

I was with EXDP for 15 years and had 3 children with him.

What was always in my mind was, a relationship is successful because of various factors, having a legal document linking two people isn't IMO one of them.

I do get the legal ramifications re property etc, but this was not a priority for me.

Sometimes things go bad and not being legally tied makes the fallout from that so much easier.

Only thing that used to piss me off was the assumption from many that I was not married because my DP didnt want to commit in that way to me, truth was, he wanted to marry me, it was me that wasn't fussed.

Im not sure why youre so bothered about others opinion.you'll not get universal approval
You seem sorted,youre mindful of social/financial implication of cohabitation
Make sure you inform gp you're dp medical nok.get it recorded next of kin card

Y.N.B.U at all. Some People can be closed minded almost medieval. We'll never change some people, but my argument is. What is a women is raped and decides to have her baby what does she do exactly err marry her rapist. What about fathers who walk away. Funny though I don't much critic for the absent parent. Me thinks lone parents are an easy target. There's far too many grey areas for people to be judgemental. xx

Pensions signed over to each other. Inheritance tax currently not an issue as our estate is.below the threshold

If marriage makes no significant financial difference to you, I'm guessing you and your partner have comparable financial assets, and comparable total future earning ability.

If I get divorced, then assuming I keep the home that I alone paid for, my (pension) income for the next 30 years might be half what it would have been if I hadn't married. (And that's with her having accumulated significant savings of her own during the marriage, without that I would be in danger of losing 100% of my pension, if I wanted to keep my home, and I would have to start working again to replace the pension.)

Marriage means I'm several hundred thousand pounds more committed to DW than I want to be. I envy you.

BalloonSlayer
It's not a stereotype, it's a "what if."

Here's what you wrote originally, on advising woman not to give children their father's surname:

The reason is that if you break up and the children's father turns nasty - say he won't pay child support/you end up despising him /you never see him again, you have a different name to your children, no adult in the house has that name, you can't get it changed without his consent. Why I think a mother would feel differently if she also had the surname of this despised theoretical feckless ex-partner I don't know, but that's how I imagine I would feel.

From your latest post, I don't think you understand the implications of what you've written. There is something seriously wrong with effectively suggesting that all unmarried partnered women with children should take steps (in this case not giving them the father's surname) to protect themselves against their male partners, in case they become difficult in future. Why not take your idea one step further, and not have children (or maybe even not have a relationship) with a man who might turn out to fulfil the 'despised theoretical feckless ex-partner' role, that your advice reserves for males?

You haven't answered my question about how you would advise same sex couples (different surnames) with children. Which partner would you identify as the one who needs protection? Which one is more likely to make life awkward after a split?

I'm not disputing that partnerships and marriages break up and that partners can sometimes make things difficult. But your advice presumes at the outset that the female partner needs to take steps to protect herself from future unreasonable behaviour from her male partner.

We haven't got married because we don't want to, really.

That's exactly the kind of comment I meant.

Yes but what I said is I don't get why you wouldn't get married/want to get married if you were fully committed (which you're saying you are)? Which you haven't answered.

My partner died in an accident soon after our boy was born, and since then I've been regularly judged for being a single mum if I choose not to tell people what happened. A few years later when I wanted to try to meet someone, I wasn't looking for the same kind of relationship or a replacement father, so I've had a few open relationships and flings, and have found that people judge me for that too. The moral of the story, just ignore what other people think!

Oh if as part of an unmarried couple I "have" to justify it it's because neither of us want to go through a ceremony or vows of any kind,we don't feel we need to.We have a huge commitment so have no need to show it or legalise it.

I actually feel marriage is a crock of shite and we both have parents who gave been married from teenagers for years(50 years and above of marriage).We have the same kind of relationship our parents have who also think it's totally unnecessary.

I think many couples make vows as a kind of pretence(the divorce rates back me up) as a kind of dreamy play act.As a couple we have absolutely no need to do this.I find the whole thing nauseous.

"Yes but what I said is I don't get why you wouldn't get married/want to get married if you were fully committed (which you're saying you are)? Which you haven't answered."

For me - why would you want to?

It doesn't make any practical difference to us, we don't think it makes any difference to an actual relationship, so why do it?

Yes it can be done fairly cheaply and easily, but so can lots of things I can't see any point to, I don't do them either. Why would I put myself out to do something that doesn't matter to me?

I'm also think that unhappy marriages are quite damaging.If you are unhappy then sorry staying together because of some vow is wrong.You should stay together because you want to,a vow should never be a reason.Yes relationships take a lot of hard work and commitment but it needs to come freely from both not because of some vows uttered in a single day in time.I'd hate dp to stay with me because of a ceremony.We're together because we want to be and it's great knowing that.

And what tab said.

For me, the whole 'why wouldn't you get married question?' is no more relevant than someone looking puzzled and saying 'But why wouldn't you paint your front room in pink and purple stripes?' or 'But why don't you do a bungee jump?'

I don't consider it relevant or important to my life, any more than someone else's taste in decorating or extreme sports has any bearing on my choice of decorating or pastimes.

There are a million and one things in the world that I could be doing and don't bother doing. Marriage is just one of them.

Sorry, I was out last night (so apologies if a few of my replies were quite short to posters!)

To follow up on a few points...

really, why do we need to justify why we don't want to get married? Our reasons are our reasons, and we agree on them, and they'd be an essay in their own right. The crux of it though, as I suspect you will keep asking or thinking about it, is that I find the concept of having to legally register your relationship with the state plain bizarre. Your relationship is your relationship, do what the hell you want with it.

I find opinions in RL and MN very different sometimes. On MN, I can admit I am BU to get annoyed when people constantly question legal arrangements and bring up protection because they do mean well when they say it - they don't know me from Adam, they don't know that we are sorted, they mean well bringing it up as many couples aren't sorted at all and just believe that everything will be alright, which it may not be.

I think what pomme says about giving up work is spot on. As much as I don't want to be married, should either my partner or I give up work to raise DC I would insist on it, reluctantly, as in that situation it does provide more legal protection. But I wouldn't be happy about it, and am angry that we would be forced to do something we don't want to do, and that there is no other way of protecting ourselves. Overall, one partner relying on another for all their income is far riskier than not being married.

In RL, the impression I get when this conversation has come up occasionally over the years is that the consensus is DP must have made this decision because he doesn't want to commit to me. I feel like it is tied in with a rather feminist argument about all women wanting a big white wedding and a ring on their finger. My female friends find it very hard to believe I never wanted the dream wedding or romantic proposal, and that feeling seems to extend to them not being able to comprehend that it is as much me not wanting to be married as it is DP.