AIBU to feel discouraged that marrying well makes more impact than professional or academic achievement?

[williaminajetfighter]

When I was growing up my very feminist mother always told me that I didn't need a man to get ahead and suggested I could make my own way, and have a good quality of life, by achieving academically and professionally. I did that and went to the right schools and built a good career. I was also single for the majority of my life, for lots of reasons, but I never felt I needed a man to 'complete me' as it were.

I'm now in my 40s, all well and good and I'm happy with how things have turned out generally. However I don't have an amazing quality of life and as I look around I do feel like the women I know who are the best off got there through marrying well or just marrying young (and thus having someone to support them or a dual income), not through academic or professional achievement.

I appreciate that quality of life isn't just about money and I wouldn't change my life and experiences, but it does make me wonder when I look amongst my peers and realize the best off are the ones who achieved it by aligning themselves with a successful man. I suppose thus it has been through time - but it makes me sad that 50 years after Betty Friedan it still is thus!

And knowing this, what do I tell my DDs? Yes, do well in education and yes, pursue a career but the most important thing you can do to improve your quality of life is to get married, and ideally marry well? Perhaps it's not a meritocracy but a marriage-ocracy?

Please don't flame me - I am curious if others wonder/think the same thing.

In my experience you're right. Because unless you do REALLY well for yourself you and your children don't have the cash behind you that you do if you marry well or have ruch parents yourself.

However, professional and educational achievement is a thing in itself - I'm quite well educated but have had a rubbish career. I married 'up' (i'm saying that in a jokey way!!) so am quite well off but I wish wish wish I'd worked harder at my career. Money doesn't always mean quality of life. However my kids will always be better off than my family is because their dad and his family are rich.

Is it not more about sharing two incomes? With two good incomes but sharing costs you can achieve much better standard of living (though not necessarily be happier).

YANBU.

Could it be down to just marrying itself? Ie two people to share bills, share childcare, etc? For example, a man who had lived exactly your life would find himself with more spare money if he were to marry you. Because he would have his living expenses reduced, as would you. So you could say he had married well? Or just that being married makes living costs go down, more income to play with so better lifestyle.

I got a PhD and yet have a fairly shit quality of life financially. The massively significant moment in my life that led to this relative penury was my ExH walking out on me and the DCs and leaving me high and dry to bring them up on my own. I had already struggled with career / childcare, but that was the final nail in the coffin.

I think yabu.

It's not about 'successful men' but successful people. I think that it does help if you meet your partner younger and have dual income for longer but that's not really something you can control. Women are just as likely to have well off parents as men and dontcha know the law was changed on sons inheriting all a good 100 years ago.....

I think you are probably suffering from a case of 'the grass is always greener'. I imagine quite a few of these women probably look at you and your independence and success and feel that they took the wrong turn and feel unfulfilled.

It doesn't sound like you have a particularly dreadful life. There are always going to be some people who have it better than you. I think you would be better off looking at the things in your life which are good, focusing on them and telling DD about them rather than focusing on not having quite as much as someone else.

I'm not sure you're comparing like with like. If you were (say, for argument's sake) a partner at Goldman Sachs with 2 kids and a SAHP you'd be as well off as if you'd married the partner (better off, in fact, because it would be your income stream), but if you decided to use your same academic prowess to go for a less well paid job (say, become a doctor), then obviously your income will be lower than if you married the GS partner. Academic achievement and hard work don't correlate perfectly with earning potential. If you want to be rich, you have to prioritise that in your career choice, or marry someone who has BUT the first option is open to you, and your daughters.

What do you mean by quality of life OP?

I see what you mean, however, I think the times they are a-changing.

Now that both women and men can have careers, which wasn't so much the case when we were young, men can now also "marry-up" and better themselves by hitching their wagon to a clever and successful woman. Like DH did, except I earn buttons

I think men with supportive wives who do well for themselves are more definitely successful as well. A good partnership works.

In London two incomes makes all the difference to quality of life.

YANBU
My ex's sisters married "well" (men who earn a lot) and have always seemed to have a far more pleasant life - financially and socially - than I did by having to earn my own living and support my kids over the last 12 years.

When I divorced, I found that had I not worked since having children (as they didn't - or not much) it would not have been a disadvantage as far as what I was/wastn't entitled to. It just made it easier for him to leave.

I too was disheartened to learn how little some things appear to have moved on since Jane Austen's time.

ideally marry well?
Thing is, being a trophy wife must be a fairly precarious position, once the trophy wife looses her lustre she could find herself surplus to requirements and the husband sniffing round for someone younger and perter.

She then finds herself with three unenviable choices a) turn a blind eye to any indiscretions and hope he doesn't leave. b) subject herself to a punishing regime of surgery/dieting and beautification to ensure she still looks good dangling off her arm c) leave and start again with limited assets, compramised education/work history and the life skills to stand on your own two feet.

No one can take your skills, education and experience away from you whereas wealthy husnands can and do disappear. As countless threads here will demonstrate the wealthy and powerful can also be very good at wriggling out of financial obligations to their former spouses and children.

It depends how you define the women who are 'best off' though.

If you define them as being the ones who live in the nicest houses, have the easiest life being a SAHP to school age children, have money to do what they want at the weekends, then it makes sense that the best way of achieving that is by marrying someone who has a good income and is willing to support another adult.

If you define them as being the ones who have the most independence, the most successful career, the best travel stories, then marrying well isn't going to help all that much with those things.

Financially, it will always be easier if the load is split between two people rather than one.

I dislike the notion that success in life is determined by the level you reach professionally. There are so many more important things in the world.

Yabu completely. The fact that I am married and have dual income does not mean I have a better life.

It does there is a duel income. That's it. I chose to get married, have kids and managed to have a career at the same time. Both me and dh earn ok (though starting a new business has reduced that).

You probably earn a lot more than a lot of duel income households. So should they be annoyed at you?

There are many men who have wives that earn more. And more that are sahps than years ago. Are they considered to be annoying to you as well.

Of course a house with 2 good incomes will have more money that a household with one good income. Isn't that obvious? Wasn't that always obvious to you?

I absolutely understand where you are coming from but quality of life is so much more than money. So many marriages are niggly if not outright unhappy and many marriages break up later in life.
You don't know what might happen to the under women who appear to have married well in the future and you don't know about their present. In my experience many people are not particularly happy in their marriages.
At least you know that you can be happy alone and independent and I think this is something you could reinforce with your children.

I think you don't know from the outside. I expect lots of people think I live the way I do because of DH and it's true we've been living largely off his income for the last 10 years or so while I've been working PT.

However, our high(ish) standard of living is just as much down to my education/earning power as it is his. He earns a fairly average wage that I'm sure many families would say meant they both "needed" to work f-t. However, because I had 20 years in good jobs myself and because I was always debt adverse/a saver, the mortgage was almost paid off before DC arrived and I have been able to earn decent money in p-t jobs.

Marrying young and staying together was definitely good for us both financially though.

I often think this, OP.

Seems to me that no matter how successful you are as a woman, it seems to boil down to:

A. Are you married? and
B. Do you have children?

It's so sad, but so true.

It's really important for girls and women to have a career, and be self-sufficient, rather than dependent on a man.

But the majority of the time once women have children it's them who lose out on the promotions and career progression.

With this in mind, it would be easy to think 'What's the point in getting a good degree and working my arse off in my 20's, if all that's going to happen is I end up staying at home with my child/taking a huge pay cut/ going part time in a lower paid job?

Sometimes I think we haven't moved on from the 1800's: marry well, it's the easy option.

I think you'll need to revisit this and clarify what you mean a bit further.

Quality of life versus financial stability

Currently my quality of life is shit. I am not working, stressed out of a career. But we are OK for cash.I am not on my uppers, as I am married and have that 2nd wage buffer. But I have strained our relationship and, personally I am often at the very edge.

If you consider the financial element to be more important then maybe I cannot claim to have a shit quality of life?

But in a few months I will be self employed, again considered to be a professional woman, contributing to the cash pot. But that last won't be what improves my quality of life.

So, you may or may NBU.

I don't agree beards.

Both DH and I are much better off because I was educated and had a good career. I (we) chose for me to have a break but it was my previous career that gave me that choice and I also have some security knowing that I will be able to support myself again, should the need arise. We have also at times switched roles, so my "employability" gives DH more freedom and security too.

So, whilst ATM, the main income coming in the house is earned by DH, I have never felt dependant on him, or trapped in the way that I might if my whole standard of living had been achieved by "marrying well".

Also, if you've had a "proper" job before marriage/DC you have far more choices for reasonably well paid and interesting p-t work, should that be what you choose.

For me education/career is more about having choices than being purely about financial gain.

Looking at my friends the "top five" when it comes to being well off financially are all SAHMs who don't work but are married to very successful business men. So yes, I agree with what you're saying that it does seem to be that as a woman marrying well is better for your financial health than having a successful job yourself.

But yes if they divorced for some reason I wouldn't fancy their chances on forging a good career. 2 or 3 of them are married to millionaires though so I suppose their settlement would be good.

Well I wouldn't want to be a kept woman for all the tea on China

YANBU, school and family friends who didn't work at school/uni married rich men and don't work and have a far easier life than me. I worked hard, qualified as a lawyer and have always earned at least as much as DH, sometimes more. But my life is busy and chaotic whilst these other ladies seem to lead very happy relaxed lives.

It's seriously making me reconsider how to advise my academic and driven DDs .

I can see what you mean, williaminajetfighter. YANBU.

But if you have a good career and can support yourself independently you are in a strong position. You don't need a partner to live reasonably well. You have freedom of choice.

Someone who 'married well' and married young, and who then put their career on hold is more vulnerable. Their divorce settlement may be generous but then again it may not.

Of course careers can go tits up or your health may fail, but no one can take away your skills and experience. It's not like wealth that you are given, love from another person which can be withdrawn. It is yours for keeps. That's what I'd emphasis to my daughters.

I think there are simple economics at play - 2 incomes in one household will yield a better quality of life.

And if you're professional and educated you're more likely to choose a similar partner and the benefits multiply.

But I would always encourage both my kids to be financially independent rather than "marry well" - there are cautionary tales every day on MN!