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.

Well the families im thinking of are all single income families because the bloke earns so much that the wife doesn't have to work and therefore doesn't.

I'm talking multi million £ property (northern England) kind of income.

Wow - thanks for all the interesting comments that have given me food for thought. And thanks for not flaming me and calling me bitter and jealous.

I've had a really interesting life - which is what I wanted - and an incredibly varied career. I think this musing/concern is normal at this time in my life (mid-40s) when I am juggling the massive pressures of work, raising children, trying to sort childcare and trying to make it all work.... and I look at other women who have it a lot easier just through the luck of marriage. Unless it's more than luck, of course! (they don't call it an MRS degree for nothing!)

I would never give up my independence or having my own salary but there are lots of women who don't really want to work and are happy to leave that to a man - leaving them in a perilous position that they probably ignore but then ignorance is bliss!

I think people probably assume it would never happen to them. They'll never get divorced, their Dh will never leave them for another woman.

Sadly after years on MN you know it can and does happen to anyone.

Sorry Dawn, I didn't mean to be offensive and I don't want this to turn into a SAHM vs WOHM slinging match. I just know a lot of women who do rely on men for their livelihood and don't have a fallback position. And this whole thread is about the fact that we tell women to get educated and get a career but it's often the ones that just marry well that are the best off financially which I think is pretty depressing given what we've been telling women since the women's lib movement.

Could it be down to just marrying itself? Ie two people to share bills, share childcare, etc?

I think it's this. The world & the economic system is organised around couples; most finance matters advantage couples, and disadvantage singles (eg benefits, tax etc etc).

Two can live almost as cheaply as one. Council Tax is a big example: a single resident gets only a 25% discount. Next door may have 6 people in the family, but pay only a little bit more than one person.

Interesting.

The men who are very successful tend to work very hard, be workaholics or married to their business. Assuming they are not assholes (and many of them are), they don't have a lot of time to spend to spend at home, making their spouses effectively lone parents (with a very comfortable lifestyle). Their spouses probably have to give up work or only do very pt work because this successful man is always travelling and his work comes first and the spouse needs to look after his home and family - that is her job.

I would prefer to marry for companionship and both parties have a joint stake in the family enterprise. I don't think I care enough about wealth to want to live off someone else's labour and live at their pleasure. I cannot abide financial insecurity. The whole point of my getting a good professional degree was so I can stand on my own two feet. Marrying well is one thing, staying married being another. There is no strict division of labour in our household. I have a good handle on my dh's life, including his work, as he does of mine and we can easily cover each other's role in the house.

If my dd decided to focus her efforts on marrying well, I would be so worried for her future.

I always thought the opposite. That if it wasn't for DH getting in my way and using up my precious time and energy, I could have focussed even more on my career and building up a portfolio of rental properties and doer-uppers.

The only women I know who have done better than those who haven't got a well paid career are those with no or minimal qualifications or who don't work at all, and I feel a bit sorry for them as they seem to have such limited lives and done very little with them. Even then, their quality of life seems relatively poorer than mine because the handful that I can think of that fall into that category don't really have the sophistication to enjoy the opportunities some degree of wealth brings them. ie they think spoiling their children, going on holiday to Marbella and good quality hair extensions and fillers are the pinnacle of luxury living!

It's interesting that the women you know "who are the best off" got there through marrying well. Didn't they have their own careers?

william, life is hectic as a working mother juggling schools and childcare, particularly at this stage in our lives. I think we will have a lot of be proud of when the children leave the house and it starts to wind down. We still have our jobs and more options. Our identity is not tied to our children, partner or our looks or social status. It is quite liberating.

A kept woman hits her prime early and then goes downhill pretty fast.

You would want more than that op. My mum retired early and her life seems pointless. She just goes round eating out and walking round shops. She wants people to be with her, but they are all at work. Achieving nothing on a daily basis and no purpose. What is the point in living like that? No goals, dreams, aspirations. She did it when she was a bit older, but she says herself she just does all these things for escapism. The idea of doing that young seems even worse.

I dunno
I married a rich man for love and he was on balance an arse and we divorced
His wealth and ability to acknowledge his children and their needs has helped make the divorce and single parenting a great deal more doable

I've been lucky to work at a high level and to retrain and work again at a high level this has been enabled by the safety net of my h and then exh's money.

I'd always say have your own money and work to the highest level you are comfortable with. I'd advise my daughters to marry someone they love and know well but who earn as much or more than they do and who have similar levels of ambition

Great thread!

As Tigermothsaid, 'nobody can take away your skills and experience'. I happen to know (clank as drops name) one of the Real Housewives on telly cough Ramona from NY - and she said that they all live with this fear that their husbands will replace them. It's real fear and it happens and it has happened to her. Also we presume that they get good settlements but their husbands didn't get rich by being good guys and generous and they have good lawyers too. So a lot of women who get divorced suddenly have to live on about a 10th of their salary and as someone said - with no marketable skills at all.

So you could marry well like Jackie Kennedy Onassis. You know why she was always buying dresses? So she could take them back and get cash. Onassis gave her unlimited credit but no cash. When she went back to work at Doubleday Press in NY as an editor, her salary was 55K. She said it was the most 'precious money she ever had' because it was all hers.

LineyReborn Your ex sounds like a prize cunt. I'm so sorry but your kids will grow up and know who has really been there for them. I do hope things improve for you.

Oh I love Ramona. She was always telling Avery never to rely on a man finanically, even before her husband cheated on her thebastard

Quite, re being replaced.

I know two very wealthy families; in each case the husband was a partner in a City law firm. One wife didn't work and the other did - she was hugely successful in her own right and earnt nearly as much as her husband.

Both have ended up pretty unhappy but for different reasons. Both husbands had multiple affairs. The woman who stayed at home has no profession to fall back on, and the one who poured her life into her work has no hobbies or friends. Neither feels they can leave and start afresh.

It's a difficult one but I think whatever path someone takes, balance is important. I would advise my DDs not to give up their independence or their friends for a man OR a job.

I don't really understand what you mean, OP. I am well-educated (PhD) and have a successful, challenging career which I love. Working hard worked for me. But I'm also married to a man I love. Of course I derive more joy from my husband and child than from my work - I'm human! There's nothing wrong with this. But that doesn't mean that I might as well not have tried - my life would be a lot poorer (in all senses) if I didn't have my career and attendant achievements. But I don't know if you'd see me as a 'success' in the same way as the women you envy. I earn more than my DH and don't live a life of leisure.

Yes, you are right. After a mainly single life, not through choice, of hard work, good jobs,and full family responsibility am now surrounded by the smug retired, with dual incomes, dual pensions, wonderful social life that mostly excludes the single, now lacking the contact through children and work. Not bitter, (well, not often) but saddened and agree with poster:-

"realize the best off are the ones who achieved it by aligning themselves with a successful man... it makes me sad that 50 years after Betty Friedan it still is thus!"

The improvement has been that if one is in a rotten marriage, one has the means of escape and the means of creating a good, satisfying life. Everything I have I have earned myself but oh, to be pampered occasionally and not have to worry.

Another thing that springs to mind is that you're more likely to be friends with people who have more free time (because people with less free time have less time to see friends and consequently fewer friends). Ie, you are more likely to know women who are SAHPs who enjoy a life of leisure thanks to their DHs than women who are in high-paid corporate roles. I'm sorry you're feeling discouraged, but please, please don't tell your DD anything but that she should work hard and pursue her dreams.

What if her dream is to be a princess dependant on a rich man Theycallme?

Men still earn more on average than women. As a woman in your 40's this will have affected your earnings.
But feminists of your mums age also knew the danger of relying financially on a man. Some women put up with a lot of shit in their marriage.

Prior to having DS, my DH was a "kept man" and tagged along as I went around the world for work. I never saw him as a trophy husband, we'd been best friends for years before getting together.
Technically it's my money which allowed us to buy our ranch and our other investments but we have always had a joint account and I consider any income as household income. DH is free to spend as much as he likes without justifying it to me as we're a team with shared priorities and shared goals. Surely any marriage is about being a team?!

I "married well" in that I married a man I adore and who adores me. It doesn't matter how much he earns. There's no way I'd ever give him up so I could hang off the arm of a high earner. We won't send our children to private school, we won't have exotic holidays, we won't spend Christmas skiing in the alps, but I still consider myself to have married well. It depends on your definition of "well" doesn't it?

I just don't understand this. You are annoyed that some people are better off?

Isn't that life?

As I said me and dh now own a business. So many clients have had to be put straight because they (men and women) I here we are married and assume dh has been good enough to give his wife a job answering the phone.

Either me or dh put them straight. The fact is the business wouldn't be there if it wasn't for both us and they will no longer be clients of they keep treating me like the monkey to dhs organ grinder.

People obviously looking from the outside think my nice life is down to dh, when it's completely wrong.

The fucking 'Mrs degree' shit pisses me off. I am a wife and mother I am also a successful business woman.

Being married makes me no better than non married people. It certainly doesn't make me worse.

What the OP is complaining about is that for those without family money, the easiest way still for a woman to have money, is to marry a rich Husband. Women in their 40's, which the OP is, have had a lifetime of earning less than men. So a woman who has not married, is likely to be much worse off financially than a single woman, however hard she has worked.
People are allowed to vent about how life is fundamentally unfair.

Depends what you mean by well, obviously. We live in a world where the wealthiest have the most security and stuff. Presumably you knew this. It's cheaper to live together and raise children together; I would have thought that was also clear? FWIW I think trying to 'marry well' entails missing the really important stuff, which has nothing to do with how well heeled your partner is. The fact that both women and men can aim for this important stuff in today's culture is wonderful - we can find fulfilling work, live alone if we want, handle our own money, vote... No one's mother needs to advise them to marry well. But there are all sorts of benefits to being married, on both sides. It would not be wrong to point those out. And if they are lucky enough to choose to marry someone very wealthy for reasons other than his fortune, all to the good.