AIBU to think we should encourage our daughters to 'marry well'?

[windygallows]

I know 'marrying well' is something our mothers and grandmothers crowed about but it's not a phrase I've heard much these days and it feels quite an anti-feminist sentiment in a world where women can do well without men.

Yet I wonder if marrying well - marrying into money or marrying someone who is in a well-paid profession - is something we should be encouraging our daughters to do. Why? Because not every woman wants to have a career and if you want to be a SAHM then really that's easiest if your DH is well paid. Also women still experience a pay gap and are in lower-paid roles by comparison, so having a well paid DH really does make up that pay gap.

Plus - when I look around at my female friends and peers (I'm mid-40s) of the ones who have a comfortable lifestyle and are able to work part-time or be SAHM, for about 3/4 that lifestyle is attributed to having a well-paid or wealthy DH. The other 1/4 got there through their work/career, family money etc. This is purely a sample of my peers, by no means the norm.

I'm a staunch feminist so it's a bit hard to write this but I'm also a single parent and know what a slog it can be making everything work on my own salary. Marrying well doesn't mean a good marriage or relationship but it does make things easier. In the end shouldn't we be having an honest conversation with our daughters about this and encouraging them to think a bit more about 'marrying well'?

I don't disagree with this, but the logical conclusion that I draw from this is not that dd should marry a rich person, but rather that she should ensure that she has enough earning potential to meet the requirements of her desired lifestyle. This approach seems to me to be far more reliable!

Again, another person saying that you hope your DDs will have enough earning potential to meet the requirements of her lifestyle. But even the most basic lifestyle is expensive. I promise you unless your daughter is making over 60k pa she will struggle to buy a house on her own. Or are you okay for her to get into a financial partnership that is marriage, just not to be mercenary about it?

And not all working mothers would choose to be at home with the kids if they could - I wouldn't. Love them as much as any mother loves her kids, always taken them to school, gone to every school event, weekends full of quality time. But no way would I want to be a SAHM or even work PT, it's really not for everyone.

Marriage has fuck all to do with feminism OP. Traditionally it was very much about the passing of ownership of the woman from father to husband. Marrying "well" as you describe seems to hark back to this.

That's not what I would want for a daughter, or for my son.

Marrying for money is a very outdated concept. Ambition doesn't have to be financial, either. We have ambitions like going interrailing with the children and having weekends together (not working weekends). However, I am under no illusion that being comfortable financially makes it easier to focus on these goals. Isn't there a saying - money is like oxygen, you only think about it when it's run out?

It is, however, vital to be on the same wavelength as your partner in terms of how you manage finances and what you spend money on. In our town, you could buy a 3-bed semi in a reasonable area for about £120k - so perfectly possible for a couple working 50 or 60 hours between them in average jobs to afford - but not if one partner is a spendthrift.

Marry someone who makes you laugh every day and is supportive and kind. But make sure you are on the same page about the "big" issues, too - our vicar told us they were sex, money and housework and I don't think he was far wrong.

The thing is, it's never going to be an even playing field.

Marrying well is part of it. But there's also inheritance to take into account, and perversely, family support. Two people on lowish salaries but with devoted grandparents can save a lot of money due to not needing to access childcare.

I know a single woman with a degree from oxford who really struggles and I know her job doesn't pay badly at all (£50,000) but by the time she's paid the mortgage, the nursery fees and the bills single handedly there is not a lot left.

People are making out it is EITHER Work Hard And Get A Good Job OR Marry A Rich Fella and there are numerous nuances between the two.

"Eventually she wants to go back into education and at some point train as a nurse"

Have they cut nursing bursaries? The easiest way to afford it would be if she shared costs with a partner so finding a man who earns well would help.

"unless she marries someone who earns more than twice a nurse's salary she will never be able to afford to buy a home."

She needs four times a nurse's salary to buy a house?? Where I live nurses can buy a house on their own, so maybe she could consider relocating?

For all those who want their daughters to be successful and independent, do you know how hard it is to have an amazing life on one income?

What is an 'amazing life'?

Is it possible to have a happy, succesful life on one income? Or on two low incomes?

I'd say Yes, given...you know, the vast majority of the population.

I feel genuinely sorry for people who need lots of money to feel like they have a good life. They will always want more.

"We also need to teach women to apply for roles that are above their current role, "

Only possible if you're in a field where there are more jobs than applicants. In most jobs it's the opposite and the employer will ask for PROVEN EXPERIENCE.

Have they cut nursing bursaries? The easiest way to afford it would be if she shared costs with a partner so finding a man who earns well would help

Yes, they have cut nursing bursaries.

Yabu
I wouldn't want my DS to be used in that way because he has a good job, money etc. He has a lot more going for him and deserves a happy equal partner who loves him, not a leech.

Similarly I want DD to be independent, follow her own dreams and not marry for money. She has her own 'starter fund/ideas to independent wealth' already. None of them include being a leech.

DH and I weren't well off when we met but we've built our wealth together, both contributing.

I'm an academic married to a teacher. We both went to an elite university, and almost all of our university friends went into the city, and now earn, at a conservative estimate, at least four times our salaries. I have sometimes thought about how different life would have been if I'd married one of them. I've also thought about how different life would have been if I'd chosen a different route and been the one working in the city law firm now. Ultimately, though, I'd never swap my current life and my husband for any of that.

I think that maybe marrying a man who is nice enough but whose bank balance is his biggest asset is OK when all is going well: I imagine it's easy enough to rub along together even if you're not wild about each other. The thing is, though, that life will go through patches (maybe long ones) where everything's not OK: bereavement, illness, etc. We're going through one of those patches at the moment (I've just had a second early miscarriage) and the thought of doing this with someone who isn't my best friend, who I didn't choose first and foremost for him, not for his money, is pretty grim.

"As a feminist, surely you can see that encouraging your daughters to take any path that perpetuates the status quo (wage gap and all) is not the answer. "

Of course, but what if she can't. MN is quite full of successful women who can't seem to understand that some people end up working in Macdonalds.

For all those who want their daughters to be successful and independent, do you know how hard it is to have an amazing life on one income? It's tough and I say that as a high paid 'successful' woman living solo. I know very few women who are on single incomes and living the high life and most that I know struggle

What is this "amazing life" you're talking about? It's perfectly doable to have a very normal happy life without earning mega bucks. I don't know why you think people need to have masses of money to be happy, successful and fulfilled. Maybe that says something about you.

YABVU.

You should be teaching your daughters to be independent, self-confident and assertive. Luckily this is what my parents did for me, even though as a child I was shy and withdrawn.

The only person I know who 'married well' from a status and financial perspective has had a miserable life.

"To see these two off together travelling, going to the theatre and opera"

You need quite a lot of money for those two things so what you're saying is that it's good from your DSIL's point of view that he married well. You're point backs up the OP just from the man's perspective.

Marry well sounds like to marry someone with money but as we have seen over the last 40 years money can be here today and gone tomorrow.

Have ambition and a plan and marry someone else with ambition and a plan I think is better advice.

Some of the poorest girls and boys growing up are now some of the richest.

I 'married well' when I was 17, he was 25. He was an abusive arse, mentally at first and then physically.
I'm now married to a not well off man who is the love of my life. We struggle financially but we are happy.

It sounds like a recipe for making your daughter very vulnerable.
Men get ill, get made redundant or just want to share parenting an earning more equally.

Also, just to say: those (many) high-earning male friends of mine and my husband's have all, without exception, formed relationships/married women with similar educational backgrounds who do similar jobs. Some of them the women are a bit younger and so less advanced in their careers, but they're still on the same kind of track. I'd agree with previous posters that whether or not it's moral to advise your daughters that they can go work in a shop and then marry rich, it's certainly not wise - I just don't think there is a huge supply of high-earning men who want to marry women in minimum wage jobs. Sadly, class stratification in our society means that most high-earning men (and women) barely have contact with people earning the minimum wage.

"I'm an academic married to a teacher."

So you have a pretty good income then. Most likely at least one of you earns more than the national average.
What if you were on a really low income? A care assistant and a cleaner? Don't you think life would be harder and you might wish you'd found a partner who earned more?

The only jobs in that will enable a woman to buy a home in the SE without the help of a high earning partner are medicine, law, IT, accountancy and banking

If this is true, then it's true for men too. Surely there aren't enough male lawyers and doctors to go round for the golddigging women that want to "marry well" instead of having their own career.

What of the decent hard working men who are teachers or nurses? It sounds like they are nothing but fit for the scrapheap marriage-wise! Charming!

And we wonder why equality is so hard to gain ... maybe a big reason is that there are so many women that don't want it, because they just want to be bankrolled by men.

I despair, I really do.

I would never be happy as a Sahm- I hated maternity leave and couldn't wait to get back to work. My sister too felt the same but couldn't as fell pregnant accidentally after leaving a job to set up a business which obviously could no longer be her focus. Her husband is loaded so she doesn't have to work, but we were raised with an extremely strong work ethic so I know how down she is about it- it's always the thing she brings up last after discussing the minutiae of kids life. He also does no housework because he has a high powered job and her at home.

My husband and I could never afford for me to be a sahm, but he does at least 50% of all housework and treats me like his best friend. He always asks and listens to my advice, he calls me on my crap as I do with him. We agree fully on how to raise our children and we take each other into account when making decisions. I couldn't have married better.

My parents (dad) were very anti him at the beginning- especially with their treatment of my wealthy bil. But I am happier than my sis and now my mum especially would probably agree that I married well.

It sounds smug and it is because I wouldn't be happy in the unequal partnership suggested by the op. I have been with wealthier man and felt like an unequal partner- no fun.

You're not an "active feminist" if you believe men should be paying for women who are uneducated, unskilled and have no aspirations.

If the roles were reversed we'd be calling them cocklodgers.

Sorry haven't RTFT but these days with more women going to university than men I think it'll be the men who'd want to marry well as their wives will be the main bread winner. I think women can't have it both ways if we want to have equal access to education and career opportunities we can't then whinge when work becomes hard and a bit of a grind then look towards a man to bail us out. This then becomes the argument not to educate women.
In my own friendship circles only half the university educated women work and the rest have been SAHM since their dcs were born and they are all in their teens now. All are very ambitious for their dds but I do wonder whether their dds will also see marry well as a viable option.

Why do people think it's all about earning a 6 fig salary? Out of London and more affluent areas, that isn't essential.

Where I live I could buy a 2 bed house for less than 100k. You can earn 30k + without going to uni.

An amazing life doesn't mean flash cars and private education for your kids or even owning property