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'?

AntiGrinch I am completely in agreement with your last couple of posts and thought the same about those recent threads.

It's not being acknowledged that the division of labour rarely ends up a true 50/50 split.

Purple, I suppose it's about recognising that struggling through life on a low income alone is not really the Beyoncé Knowles ideal of 'I depend on me.'

Well obviously, but it's not a feminist position to say that the way to make that better is for a man to come along and save the day with their extra salary.

My mum was a nurse and a single mum. I know it's bloody hard when you don't have much money. Valuing caring professions more and paying them better would make a huge difference to many (mainly) female workers.

So what do you tell your sons OP? Should they marry well too?

cory I didn't ever say I was going to tell my DD's any of these things. In fact my DDs are probably going to be fine given potential inheritance from GPs.

I'm asking if we as mothers should direct our DDs in a certain way. What I've gleaned from this thread is this:

• If you marry FOR LOVE but someone at the same educational and ambition levels at then aren't you lucky if your DH becomes successful and is a high earner.
• If you marry FOR LOVE but not considering similarities in ambition and income but it all works out and your DH becomes successful, then more power to you.
• But if you EVEN CONSIDER the earning potential of a future partner you're a total GOLDDIGGER.

Lots of romantics on the thread.

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.

Not every man wants a career either. Looking back I would have much happier/less stressed had I married a woman who could support us both and allowed me to be a SAHD - no having to look for other work due to worries about budget cutbacks, salary drops or redundancies, no compressed hours to manage childcare which led serious exhaustion and depression, no taking on extra stressful duties just to get another £90 coming in at the end of the month, etc.

If we're offering this up as a advice for our daughters it should extend to sons too.

cory exactly!

Wouldn't it be weird to be warning our daughters about gold diggers that only want to shack up with them for their money, then decide to be SAHD for decades.

BTW I actually favour the one person working, SAHP model, and definitely do not consider SAHP to be anything other than a hard working vocation. I wish average earnings allowed this more readily. I just don't think SAHP should be more than 50% female.

Disagree with the OP.

I'll be telling my DD to become financially independent and to marry only someone who loves, respects and treats her well. Otherwise, don't marry at all. No matter who much money he may have.

The OP is a very anti-feminist statement, in my view.

There is a difference between marrying someone you love, and with whom you have mutual respect, then deciding between you, looking at your family circumstances and finances that it is better for your family for one of you to be a sahp, and that happens to be the mother, and actively looking out for a rich man to marry, then presenting as a fait accompli that you are going to expect to stay at home while he goes out and earns enough money for you to do that. In the first instance, it is likely that the woman has not seen marriage as a meal ticket, but has at least tried to achieve as much as she can educationally, even if that happens to be 5 GCSE's but she has happened to have fallen in love with someone who has better earning capacity than her. As we have seen, that is becoming increasingly unlikely, as many people meet at university or doing the same job. It's not a realistic or admirable ambition for your child to want them to do the latter.

I wouldn't like it, as I'm sure many wouldn't, if their son was in a relationship, when it came to the crunch his partner said, sorry I can't be with you, you don't earn enough and I want to be a SAHM. I honestly thought we'd long passed the days when men's eligibility was based on their pay check.

I admit nursery fees are crazy, I believe child minding is cheaper and a more personal experience. (So I'm led to believe) So there wouldn't be a need for a SAHP, but in today's world you have SAHD & SAHM.

Hopefully both DC will get 'good' jobs, but as long as they're happy, it doesn't really bother me what they do.

DH has a good job, it pays really well, but we live no different to a family that's earning a lot less. You don't need wads of cash to be happy. I think that's a parenting failure, if your children believe success equals finding a man where they don't really have to work.

They'll be in for a shock when their dream man says, 'What do you mean you need a cleaner, someone to wash and iron, plus do the garden, you don't work!' Or even worse, 'So at what point will you start looking for a job?' Will it be a phone call home, bags packed, till the mean man agrees her terms?

I had this crap about 7 years ago when expecting DD, DS was 5 or 6. Someone said oh you must be so excited having 2 DC, now you can give up work and be a SAHM. I smiled and then asked DH later on if that was really expected of me. We had a really good nursery, that followed a totally different ethos, it was reasonable in price.

I want DD to be independent and stand on her own two feet. I don't want her to be a WAG. She can at least lay her own foundations for her future.

I think there is huge denial on here about the default split of labour in families between men and women when women WOH. Huge.

There can be antigrinch, but I think the OP is also doing this a bit when she brackets SAHPing and working PT together. Realistically, on average PTing is more likely to require greater family/household labour from the other parent than SAHPing is. I know there are PT jobs and PT jobs, and there's likely a world of difference between a couple of lunchtimes waitressing while the kids are at school and two long shifts a week as a consultant obstetrician, in terms of how much child and household labour you can cover. But on average, I think it holds true.

I wonder how attractive a single man would be if he told any prospective partners that he wanted to be a stay at home dad? Not very I would wager. On this forum at least it would take less then a page before accusations of being a 'cockloger' or 'lazy' started being bandied about.

As a counter to this so we encourage our DS who are to be seen as a cash cow not to marry at all to protect their assets and requirement to support a wife who wants to be a SAHM. With the current failure rate of marriages anyone who is encouraging their DDs to become financially dependent on a husband is setting them up for a potentially miserable future.

OP, these are things you said:

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.

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.

But 'Ijustwanna' not all women have the skills/savvy to 'aim for the sky' and many people aren't very ambitious.

I have many friends from school who weren't very ambitious and just wanted to get married and have babies.

Your whole argument is based on the idea that women should have the choice whether they want a career or not, whether they work part time or not, but the men should not have the same choice.

Most of my peers are in relationships of huge equality. Similar earnings, and men who are expected to pull their weight. That's what I want for my children.

antigrinch I agree with you-I was responding to the idea that if a woman was in a low paid job, she should look for a rich man to be the breadwinner when I wrote the bit you quoted.

I know a couple where the husband does nothing around the house/with the children but has a high earning job and they have fancy holidays, cars and a big house. Another couple share responsibility for housework, childcare and cooking but he's a fork lift truck driver and earns pretty low wages. Small house in cheap area, old cars and few holidays. Guess which couple is happier?

The advice I would give both my children, either sex, is:

don't marry someone who isn't on the same wavelength as you

talk expectations through first

be aware that any reasonable expectation on your part may also be a reasonable expectation on his/her part

be prepared to negotiate

OP I think to a great extent your problem is that you're being far too prescriptive.

It is a good idea for us to tell our children to think practically about life decisions and partnerships, although the mothers of sons are quite reasonably going to point out that it's an issue for them too. It's also a good idea for us to be helping them think about how to avoid poverty. That's not fun, and it isn't going to get any more fun any time soon.

But you don't seem to be addressing the realities associated with all choices. It isn't just a case of high earning spouse= good, easy life for you. Marrying someone who earns a lot but also works a lot and needs to continue doing so for a particular lifestyle, and also isn't willing or able to pick up much slack in any other areas of life, doesn't suit everyone. Can be a gilded cage.

I think there is huge denial on here about the default split of labour in families between men and women when women WOH. Huge.

On the contrary. Some of us have used that as the very definition of 'marrying well'.

As opposed to marrying someone who will make it financially possible for you to stay home and do the vast majority of it anyway.

I wonder how attractive a single man would be if he told any prospective partners that he wanted to be a stay at home dad? Not very I would wager.

Doesn't that depend entirely on what the woman/man he's trying to attract wants?

If you know you want both a high flying career and children, a spouse who is happy to be a SAHP may well be just the ticket. Particularly in certain sectors and/or if you don't have much other family support. I think it's a reasonable point that there are perhaps fewer women than men who want this, but they certainly exist.

Also, if there were any cries of cocklodger, they'd be corrected extremely quickly by people pointing out that cocklodging means not making any contribution to the family and simply leeching off the finances. Looking after the family's children isn't that, can't possibly be.

I admit nursery fees are crazy, I believe child minding is cheaper and a more personal experience. (So I'm led to believe) So there wouldn't be a need for a SAHP, but in today's world you have SAHD & SAHM.

It's going off at a tangent but is it really so hard to believe that there is never a circumstance in which a parent has to stay at home for a bit?

Child minders/nurseries can't cover variable shift work for instance. Some couples can't afford to put three under five in childcare.

OP I don't know if people on this thread are romantic as such.
But I really want to remind you that nowdays, what will happen is that the man younwish your dd to marry with will also be looking at what sort of earning potential SHE has.
And I don't think that the NOT earning much, wants to be a SAHM woman will be very attractive to him.
Unless this is a guy still living a century ago, in the 1950s, in which case he is also likely to a real pain to live with.

As a woman, if I have to choose, I would much prefer to be working and be an equal with my partner than reverting back to those times.

Also, in your scenario, you assume that te DH will always be in good health and able to provide. What if, god forbid, he gets ill and can't work anymore??
Would that be OK for your dd not to be able to support him and her family because she didn't want a career, prefers part time work etc...

The reality is that yes, in the uk now, to have a decent house you need two people working.
And no you just cannot rely on one wage because if that person has any issue at all, redundancy, ill health etc... you are basically fucked.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't be checking that you aren't marrying a cocklodger and that the guy will pull his weight.
But checking he will do that whilst planning not to do it is

Elisa actually preconceived ideas are still gong strong and the idea that a man would want to be a SAHP whilst his wife has a high flying career wouldn't go down well. Actually it is unlikely to be what a man is aiming for in life because he would be seen as a looser.

Maybe in 10 or 20 years time, things will have changed. But I don't think that is the case yet.

"But if you EVEN CONSIDER the earning potential of a future partner you're a total GOLDDIGGER.

Lots of romantics on the thread"

Not romantics. But plenty of well educated, hard-working women who are prepared to see their own contribution as equally important.

I married a poor man in the knowledge that my own education was not likely to yield much income in the short run. We planned our lifestyle accordingly and because we were both hard-nosed and realistic about what could be achieved we have been absolutely fine. Long engagement meant I knew him very well, I knew he could be trusted to do his bit around the children and house, and that I would get a chance to develop my own career too. My safety lay not in the knowledge that he was rich but that he was reliable. But my own FIL-to-be warned me against marrying him because of his perceived low-earning capacity. He never asked about my earning capacity

I sometimes feel like MN is another universe. Of my 40-50 friends/aquaintances with kids, only 2 have been SAHMs and both of them went back to work when their kids went to school. I know no-one who thinks that being a SAHM is at all necessary when kids are at school. Sure, sometimes one parent will have to take a day off when the kids are ill or order a costume from amazon in their lunchbreak but that sort of thing is not considered worth being a SAHM for.

So, no, I wouldn't encourage a hypothetical daughter to find a husband who was rich enough that she wouldn't need to work.

I actually don't think that the idyll painted on here is at all desireable - men not needing to be bothered with all that silly running a household business on the weekend. I think the ideal is for both parents to be involved in domestic life.

I married a man who is about to take shared parental leave, who plans to also go part-time when we both return to work, we earn the same amount and that feels great.

I think it's really strange that women with no ambition or drive somehow still expect a nice lifestyle - it does feel pretty close to prostitution to me. Men who don't have good jobs somehow manage.