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'?

@windygallows - your attitude towards men is vile.

I have raised my sons to respect themselves and respect their partners. They do not see women as commodities - which is what you implied, with your allegation that higher earning men have expectations of getting more attractive girlfriends. It is a shame that you apparently do see women as commodities, and think it is good advice for your dds that they should sell themselves to the highest bidder. That is your vile attitude, not mine.

And I never said anything about being a SAHM being akin to prostitution - that is ridiculous. Fwiw, I have been a SAHM for most of my dses' childhoods, so they have grown up knowing that it is a valid choice for a degree educated professional (RGN, BA Hons), and have seen how my work as a SAHM has benefited the family.

They have also seen some of their friends' mums returning to work, and know t that is an equally valid and beneficial choice for a woman to make.

Cafecat, know plenty of workaholics of both sexes who are parents yet they all manage to do it without expecting their partner to be at home. They may work different hours etc but they all manage.

It's hardly rocket science that if one has long hours, the others finds something compatible with childcare hours. Given childcare is widely available from 7am to 6-7pm it leaves everyone open to pursue work.

By the time chidren are in school, very few hours childcare is actually needed for most jobs.

Windy, what if the DP is equally successful and between them they have negotiated a way of sharing responsibility? Or, and you might need to sit down for this one, what if the DS is really successful but the DP is even more successful? Just saying....

I completely agree with you. I was being facetious. Of course there are a lot of couples who share responsibility equally but I believe there are many more when that sharing is skewed to the woman taking responsibility --- only need to read MN to see that! I'm now in my 40s and I've seen a lot of caring, sensitive men become successful and suddenly start to expect to be looked after. It's not pretty but it does happen, just slowly and sneakily!

Wizzy My parents had an arranged marriage, as did most of my aunts and uncles. One generation later, none of us cousins decided to go down the same route. My parents did suggest some men for me when I was about 25, and unmarried. It was always on the basis of their job. Most of them I didnt get on with at all. It left me with a feeling that my parents didnt know me at all, that they could suggest random men that I had nothing in common with. To be honest, when I think about it, I still feel a bit betrayed. A bit like they would just abandon me to any one as long as they had a good job and they could say I 'married well'. I do know some of the men now, as obviously they are children of family friends. One of them is very high up in the City. His DW is a trained lawyer, but has been a sahm for years now. They live in a massive house, but he is never home. The other one has a good job but never married probably because his horrific overbearing mother would put anyone off. My parents were introduced and married within a month of meeting. They have been married nearly 50 years. My DM was a secretary, my dad a teacher. She married up I suppose. They have nothing in common now that us kids have left home and don't really get on. My dad spends most of the day out of the house. My mum spends every day criticising and moaning at or about him. Of course, that could happen if you marry for love, but I'd hope you could remember why you loved someone.

I tell my 8year old to reach for the stars anything is possible i hope she leads a happy life and does what she wants no need to get married!

I'm sorry but I really don't understand your logic.
So men who do well will expect to be looked after, sharing is skewed and they can trade their success for a better/prettier/more desirable woman.

Ok... somapart form the fact that this is not the way I've raised my two sons
Don't you think that the way forward is NOT to go back to an even more unequal system where women are fully dependant on men and their money but INSTEAD
To educate boys and men about equality, to teach daughters to recognise the signs that a man is starting to ask too much and teach them to stand up for themselves and to NOT accept said behaviour???

I have to say my mind is boggling there.
The system is screwed, men are taking advantage so .... let's fo for it even more

Oh and you know, the case where a father is working so long hours that he can't do drop off and pick up...
I've got news for you.
It's doesn't mean that his dw will have to stop working or do a MW job. She can still be highly successful. What you will see are parents getting organised TOGETHER and having a nanny, an aupair, a CM involved. ALOT but they can afford it because they got have nice jobs.

And then when said successful man comes back home, he can STILL cook dinner, put his dcs to bed and get up at night. Because his job isn't more important than the one his DW has, so he has to pitch in too.
In effect, this doesn't allow for a situation where no solution is to be found bar the DW stoping working. It allows for a situation where there is even MORE equality between parents.

I want my dc to marry kind people.

I would hate for them to marry 'well' in the sense of marrying for money. It immediately puts them on an unequal footing with their spouse and leaves them wide open to being abused.

I couldn't count the number of women on the relationship threads (& in RL), who are unable to leave abusive relationships as they'd be left with nothing! And are financially unable to set up a home by themselves for their children.

So no I don't think marrying money is a good idea at all, unless you want your child to be at the financial mercy of their partner.

I hope my dc aim high have brilliant careers and marry people who love them and are kind to them. With whom they can build their lives.

windygallows - your attitude towards men is vile.

FGS I wasn't making a statement about your sons, people I don't know. I was just saying that there can be a culture amongst some men to have certain expectations - which I have seen and experienced, whether it's expectations that women will do more of the housework or that their careers will be ever so less important. Will your sons be like that? I have no idea but someone's sons somewhere may be. Ultimately though this thread was about women and what we should say or not say to our daughters.

As for 'prostitution' I was referring to what a few posters said earlier on the thread about women, so nothing you said just picking up on a theme.

Rainbows - my point was that some people want to do more than "manage". I know perfectly well that if I was working part-time to fit in with school hours, it would be in a much lower paid job than I had previously, and I would still be doing everything else "wife work" - related anyway. If I worked full-time, the DC would hardly see either of their parents and that is most definitely not a life I would want. So how would either scenario be in the interests of our family, given that any income I earn would be drop in the ocean anyway in terms of the whole. I would find the feel like the jack of all trades, but master of none, "managing" yes, but nobody would be happier - though some other outsiders may consider me more "worthy" by virtue if being a salary earner. But really where is the feminist progress in that?

"To educate boys and men about equality,"

Who is going to do this, and when? I don't see any signs of any education that boys receive about "equality" including anything about genuine respect for women and girls, or giving up any "natural" privilege. They all think it's fine.

"to teach daughters to recognise the signs that a man is starting to ask too much and teach them to stand up for themselves and to NOT accept said behaviour???"

When? When they are already married? Too late.
You can put up with a man, row with a man, or kick him out, but you cannot make a man who doesn't see the problem behave decently to his wife.

Also, what sort of father is he to his kids, that his work is sooo important that he basically would rather spend all day at work, come home after that have gone to bed, never see how they are doing in school, never collect them from school, never read them a bedtime story and just turn up at the weekend for a bit of playing in the park? People make comments about why women have children if they want to work all hours, why do these men want children if they don't want to spend any time with them? I wouldnt want that type of life for my sons.

Well said Rainbows. In this day and age there's no actual need to have a parent at home, but many people want to.

I asked DH about this thread and what he thought - he says he'd hate it if I didn't work (so would I!) and that he would really dislike bearing the burden of being the sole financial provider. The reality is that we could afford for one of us not to work, and could get back on either salary. However, DH would like to go part time after his 3 months SPL ends - I'm very happy about that, because I don't want to take my foot off the career pedal at the moment (I'm slightly lower down the ladder than him due to a change in direction but should achieve promotion in a couple of years).

It's interesting to hear differing people's views on men not being capable of looking after DC and a home at the same time - DH is fab at home, we have a great and equal partnership and I very much doubt he'll turn into a lazy good-for-nothing the second we have DC.

What's been strange is how people have reacted to us saying we'll be sharing the parental leave after DS is born. To him, women have said they really admire him for taking time out, and that their husband/partner would never agree to stay at home for a few months. To me, women express disbelief that I'm willingly giving up part of 'my' leave, and say that they would never go back to work earlier than they have to. On the other hand, most men we've both spoken to say they would love to stay at home for a few months on Shared Parental Leave. So clearly someone is lying.

Riversleep, judging by the number of women who want to be kept and in a decent lifestyle I guess many have no choice but to work long hours. Quite sad really. If they leave to find a partner willing to share the burden, they know they will barely get any time with their children as the ex will claim residency as they were the carer. Lots of women simply quit work the moment children come along whilst the man has no choice or say.

That's where educating boys as well as girls come in. Teach them to be responsible for their own contraception (so no "accidents"), ensure they pick a partner with a work ethic and who loves them for who they are not their wallet. When both share the financial burden and the household parts, it makes for a more equal partnership where no one feels taken advantage of or is missing out.

River, Rainbows and Hedgehog - I'm glad if you have found set-ups that work for you. In the case of DH, he wanted children and a certain kind of family life, so he fully expected to financially provide for this family. I think he even said words to that effect when he proposed, so it's hardly a shocker as to how things panned out. At the time I didn't take much notice tbh, but you can never know how you will feel about these things until you've actually had children. Then you make decisions according to your particular circumstances and whatever you feel motivates you and is in the best interests of the family. There is no right or wrong way.

Im just curious as a mither with a ds...

Should I encourage him to "marry well" yeno make sure his girlfriend has a well paid job just to make his life easier?!?!? Or incase he wants to be a sahd because yes it does happen

Your view is awful teach your daughter to support herself not fine a male to do it for her

Anti what else do you suggest then? To just accept the status quo?

Who is educating boys and men? I do with my own ds. Just like my MIL did with her son (now DH).

And I wish my own mum would, have taught me that men have a tendency to regress to the 1950 style once you are on ML. I wouldn't have let some of stuff gone unchallenged.

Beside that, what else do you propose to do?

It would be nice it it were possible in the world of work to cut the hours and still earn good money pro rata. Some people work very hard, not because they necessarily want to, but because if they want to work at a level and at a pro rata salary that they feel they deserve, there are no opportunities to scale back hours and be taken seriously.

The partners of people like this, earning well, may find that that the family as a whole benefits more from someone being around than a bit more money, and then you get the SAHP situation.

When ex and I were talking about children, we talked about sharing WOH and childcare. There are many reasons why this didn't work out in practice. Some of them were to do with us and our relationship and personalities; partly it was because realistically neither of us could earn enough to make our lifestyle work without one or both of us working full time.

I have often wondered about this with, for instance, law. Every in-house lawyer we have ever had at my work place has been utterly snowed under: working crazy hours hacking through immense and constant backlogs. You can't do anything contractual without the lawyer and they never have enough time. They are also extremely well paid. I have often wondered why it isn't possible to have more lawyers, working saner hours and earning more modestly. There seems to be some sort of machismo around insane hours and high pay. But you don't have to be macho to have a good legal mind. AS it is, lawyers tend to be that type because you have to have incredible stamina to make it through and qualify. but the work itself doesn't necessarily require it. Why do things work in this ridiculous way so often?

BluePeppers, I don't know. but I do know that I am far less idealistic than I was once. I used to think that I could live in a feminist bubble through the force of my intelligence and determination and education. I now know that whether or not I choose to buy into patriarchy, it will shaft me, and probably my daughters. I now know that I must live in this system and can't just will it away because I recognise it as pernicious and unjust.

WindyGallows - this might come as news to you, but we don't all live in London / South East England you know. Some people can buy homes and never earn anywhere near £60K.
Plus, you seem to be thinking that all 'husbands' can earn this type of amount. Go take a look at the statistics. You'll find the vast majority of people get by on under £30K. Weirdly, a goodly proportion of all of those people can be happy in their lives and marraiges you know.

Yes, it's better to be miserable in wealth than in poverty, but it's not "being a romantic" or "being naive" to know that you can be very happy in your life without marrying a rich man.

It's hardly rocket science that if one has long hours, the others finds something compatible with childcare hours. Given childcare is widely available from 7am to 6-7pm it leaves everyone open to pursue work.

By the time chidren are in school, very few hours childcare is actually needed for most jobs.

Hmm. Not necessarily. A lot of that widely available childcare you talk of comes in the form of nurseries, and thus effectively evaporates once children are school age. Many people have pointed out on here that chilldcare can become more, not less difficult at this point. With younger children, assuming you've a nursery close by, you probably do have access to something 10-11 hours a day. School effectively guarantees you 6 hours, but it also closes off other options.

That's not to say it's never a choice too. There is affordable wraparound childcare available near us, as there's an abundance of CMs (although a surprising number of them don't work in the holidays). DH and I could both work FT if we want to. We just don't. But it isn't always, especially if you live somewhere more remote.

" if you have a daughter who is not ambitious and doesnt want to bother with having an education"

Is that your opinion of people in low paid jobs River? OP might be talking about someone who doesn't have the skills to earn a high salary through no fault of her own. Remember that about half the populations aren't allowed access to higher education and it doesn't follow that because someone is not academic that they must be very practical and able to learn a trade. It might be that service jobs are all they can do.

"I know of a couple of single women who are looking to "marry well" and bag themselves a doctor or lawyer. Problem is they are not equals to these men in terms of intelligence"

Men have traditionally been more successful than women with similar intelligence/ability. It could be argued, then, that a woman who marries a man who is more successful in his career it actually marrying her equal.

There's also the fact that certain skills and professions have more market value, but they don't necessarily require lower intelligence. Is the librarian necessarily not the equal of an IT consultant who earns 5 times more? I'd argue that she's not.