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'?

It's worth making sure your kids know that money is one of the things that can make your life easier, but that's about as far as it should go.

Late to this, agree that marrying well should be marrying a person that loves you and treats you well as equal partner. That applies if you are female or male.

Marrying for money is not a garuantee of happiness or security.

It is effectively impossible to find a man who is prepared to do any of the work of childrearing or homemaking to the same standard as a woman, willingly, without resentment.

My DH is far more domesticated than I am. He works at home in a more flexible job, I work a 9-6 (often later) office job. He's catering and facilities, I'm finance and project management. We would both scoff at the idea of the 'same standard as a woman' because my standard of home making is atrocious because I'm completely useless at domestics. He's the one who taught me how to iron and sew on buttons properly. We sadly can't have children but the plan when we were going through all our fertility treatment and miscarriages was for him to be the primary caregiver, because his work is more flexible. If we're ever eventually successful with our new path of surrogacy and are lucky enough to become parents, we would hope that we'd find an arrangement that suits us

Clearly he is a figment of my imagination as obvs it is impossible to find such a mythical species of man...

My dh is way more domestically orientated than me. Which is lucky really! Men are perfectly capable of cleaning, cooking, looking after children and all the other stuff that keeps a family household going. They are much less likely to consider such things as naturally their responsibility or to feel shame if things aren't up to scratch. This is largely a product of upbringing. As I have a son as well as a daughter I focus on making sure that they both have the domestic skills needed for life as well as in encouraging them to find fulfilling future careers or occupations. Not sure why that's being denigrated as white middle class feminism (or why white and middle class are being used as insults), I've not noticed that my black or working class friends are bringing their children up any differently.

"They are much less likely to consider such things as naturally their responsibility or to feel shame if things aren't up to scratch. This is largely a product of upbringing."

I agree, this is not innate and should be challenged.

As a parent, nooka, you are in a very strong position to shape the next generation and I salute you.

However, adult women who are looking for a life partner won't realistically have that much influence. they are looking at the adult men that there are, not trying to shape and create them from children. It's a different question.

"There are parts of the world which you may consider backward in terms of opportunities for women, but, for instance, in the culture my DH is from, although things are rapidly changing and the proportion of women working is almost the same as in the UK, they have not yet got to the point where the role of women in the home is totally disrespected and marginalised - just some crap that you fit in around the "real work"."

This is a really important point.

In the rush to persuade men that they should be doing stuff at home (and so they should, I don't disagree) women have somehow fallen into a craven habit of devaluing this work. "it's not rocket science!" they howl at men who "can't" get laundry right.

No, it's not rocket science but there are skills involved and these are learnt.
Childcare more than anything is a subtle, tricky job involving great patience and wisdom. you can't just order an exhausted defiant toddler to sleep at nap time for instance; nor can you say "well don't then, and watch as much Peppa Pig as you like." How you work with the screaming toddler, day after day, so that they turn from a shrieking ball of rage when tired, to a contented happy 5 year old who feels held and secure and will go to bed when asked to, isn't just a matter of the child's inevitable development - it is about being with the child, calm, not aggressive BUT ALWAYS IN CONTROL and how you keep doing it DAY AFTER DAY AFTER DAY.

I know loads of women who can't go out and leave their children with their husbands and not come back and find the kid in front of the TV instead of in bed - "he didn't want to go to bed" the dads say. no well of course he didn't WANT to. FFS.

anyway, sure some dads can do this, but hardly any of them cut kids' finger nails; hardly any of them snap washing when they hang it out. they just don't really bother to take full respsonsibility for anything.

I think part of the reason is that doing this stuff is hard (not always difficult but gruelling to get most of it right all the time; on the other hand some of it is tricky and subtle) and we don't admit this to them because we are cravenly begging them to do some of it of their own free will.

I married well but DH lost his job, as did I. he's now unemployable due to illness health so there is no guarantee for the future. However I still love him and we're relatively happy

anyway, sure some dads can do this, but hardly any of them cut kids' finger nails; hardly any of them snap washing when they hang it out. they just don't really bother to take full respsonsibility for anything.

The gay male couples I know who are raising children all seem to manage this perfectly well. Both sets of dads seem to manage these herculean tasks. The expectation of men on here seems to be woeful.

Anti, what kind of culture are you from? I am interseted because even 40 years ago my own father was doing all that and then my children's father and now my son in law. So it sounds alient to me. My chidlren's father eg woudl put on the head lice treatment, took them to the dentist for 17 years and I not once, and certainly cut finger nails! The important point was all these men we know and marry would think of it and be in charge ofi t rather than being asked to do it by a woman as they are human parents so why would they not thnk of it? Does it come down to money and power? My mother kept my father for 10 years from her teaching wages whilst he studied in the 1950s. I was the higher earner in my marriage etc.

As people say gay fathers are perfectly good at domestic stuff. I live with 3 adult sons (two in the sixth form) and they cook for themselves. You just don't marry a man who isn't equal and fair surely/ you look at the family and culture, does his mother work, does his father do as much as them other at home and you pick someone who fits with your own way of doing things and then you let them get on with it in their own way. I've always been delighted to learn better how to do stuff from my other half. I have no special genetic female skills for stuff like how to clean down the back of the toilet bowl or hold a screaming baby for 2 hours at 2am.

"...when I look around at my female friends and peers..."

One of the key things I'll encourage a daughter to do is not cast envious glances at others. This is undoubtedly one of the main causes of unhappiness amongst women.

"You just don't marry a man who isn't equal and fair surely/ you look at the family and culture, does his mother work"

Not really a man's fault if his mother didn't work is it? Wouldn't you look more at how he keeps his own home, is it generally clean and tidy, etc?

I have been with my dh for 19 years, whatever pre-conceptions he may have held before he met me are but a distant memory. The idea that anyone's ideas and values are set in stone and can't be challenged or changed is frankly bizzarre. I do think women are their own worst enemy in this. I left both dcs with dh whilst i worked from 4 or 5 months old, so for us it's just normal. My dsis (for eg) didn't leave the dcs with their Dad until past 1, so of course he is not as practised.

Surely it would be better to advise our DD's to avoid the utterly useless men who can't cut nails or put out washing?

There are millions who can.

I found one, I'm sure DD can. I would think any man who couldn't or ( more likely) wouldn't do necessary domestic tasks would be binned promptly by her.

I mean better advise to avoid than advise that this is how men are so make sure they're good earners to compensate.

hardly any of them snap washing when they hang it out.

I don't. Makes no difference with my technique.

What I do is iron when the clothes are just slightly damp. When done correctly, a pair of chinos can stand at attention.

If you 'snap' the washing when you hang it out, it doesn't need ironing at all.

I assume that 'snap' means giving it a good shake. Where I am 'snap' is a packed lunch.

"It is effectively impossible to find a man who is prepared to do any of the work of childrearing or homemaking to the same standard as a woman, willingly, without resentment."

I really don't think that's true - looking around at the people I know. (Of course none of us know whether there is unexpressed resentment!)

It doesn't really matter how much your dh earns if he jumps ship and organises things so that you are left badly off - and many threads on mn demonstrate that this is possible (even if not always that easy).

So I think the best pieces of financial advice to dds and dss are "try to make sure you always remain able to earn so that you aren't dependent on your spouse " (obviously you can't always achieve that, eg illness or disability).

And my personal view "don't marry/have children with a financial waster" - by which I mean a gambler, or someone who can't/won't match spending to earnings, or someone who runs up debts to finance consumption. Life is definitely much easier if you share the same approach to money I think.

And obviously "don't marry someone who is unkind to you" is also very good advice! (though as many pp have pointed out, people often change if you split up.)

I don't think I snap washing. I don't know what that means.

I married well (a reasonably wealthy and well paid DH) because I felt it was the only option for me.

In my case I had a stately homes childhood and I was also chronically ill. While I had a good education and achieved a masters degree, funded myself through education from 16-23 and worked until 35, i found that working in sectors where men were at the top put me in a position of always needing something from them and therefore vulnerability.

I was constantly, subtly and not so subtly objectified, and women were often complicit in this. So many married bosses would come on to the women in the companies I worked for, and the implication would be that they would be"safe" or keep their jobs, if they did it. It made all my chronic illness problems worse and I would get anxiety just at the idea of going to work. Sexual harassment was rife. I went to HR about it several times and while they listened and "dealt" with it and even though it was supposedly considered not my fault, I never saw any repurcussions on the perpetrators.

When I met DH, the thought of living and doing exactly what I wanted to do without running this political gauntlet every day was a breath of fresh air. Even though I know that I was technically buying into the same belief system that I was having trouble with (that if women are pretty and compliant enough, men will take care of them.)

But I was exhausted, and ill and riddle with anxiety, and it seemed impossible to correct the I'm balance.

I went freelance for a while before I had DC and the moments of being able to say "no" to projects or people who had previously thought I relied on them to live and taken advantage of that, was wonderfully liberating.

I have female friends who chose to still be in the position I was, to still fight the cause and get to the top and turn things around, and they are struggling. Many of them are now 39 and want to start a family but have given their lives and health to these jobs.

I wish it wasn't like this. But I don't want my daughter to be in the position of my friends.

She means cracking it like a whip I assume

Me neither.

If you do school drop off you'll see men doing it.
If you go to a supermarket you'll see men shopping.
If you go to the park you'll see men playing with their DC.

Men are doing this stuff.

I suppose the question would be 'are they doing enough of it' Haircut.

If they are, those things should be 50/50 as the vast majority of DCs will have one male and one female parent (I know there are gay couples, widowed parents etc etc, but a mother and a father will be the majority, even if they are no longer in a relationship) and the dads will be doing the school drop offs, the haircuts, the dental visits, the grocery shopping as well as the playing in the park fun stuff.

I don't think domestic chores and responsibilities need to be strictly split 50/50.

Sensible couples will split these things depending on what needs doing and who has most time/inclination to do it.

Today I will do very little domestic work as I have a big work project to glue together. DH is making brunch as I type because he can ( and wants to).

Advising our DD's that this will not happen and so they should ensure their male partner earns well to compensate seems wrong in so many levels to me.

They are much less likely to consider such things as naturally their responsibility or to feel shame if things aren't up to scratch.

Who gets to decide if things are 'up to scratch' or not? Domestically, very little pisses me off more than having to take criticism from DW based on what she 'would have done' or prefers. For example, she'll pick at what I have dressed DCs in ("I would have put them in x top or y jeans, not those") or what they had for lunch.

They get dressed appropriately, and they eat well, but because it's not what DW 'would do', it's therefore wrong.