To think that some married women on here think they are better than unmarried women?

[malificent7]

After reading the thread about legal rights, marriage and birth certificates I was struck by the patronising way in which some married women spoke to those who are cohabiting or not married.
True married women have better rights but it was the way in which the relationships of unmarried women were dismissed as lesser and these women were being sneered at.

Someone told a woman who had been cohabiting that her relationship meant nothing and that if you are not married you are single.
REALLY? I am not married but I am not single. I don't even live with the guy but why is my relationship seen as less valid? Some married people hate each other and don't have the guts to leave. Some of the best love affairs involve people who live miles apart.
I don't like the fact that I have to put single on a form . Why can I not be in a relationship?

Ok, If you are married you have some legal rights and security that the unmarried have but shouldn't we question this? Why should we make vows especially if you don't believe in the laws of marriage? Also, it was originally a religious ceremony..I don't believe in God and I am not a commodity to be given away by my dad to another male.

Does it lead to stability? My dp is divorced. The marriage vows didn't stop things from falling apart.

Marriage can be a great thing but the tone in the last thread was old fashioned and practically berated women for not managing to get a man to marry them. Surely there has to be other options if you don't believe in marriage ? It is a patriarchal tradition after all to do with male prperty rights. Also, many men want pre nuptuals as they are now wise to gold digging wives.

I think you can have some marriages which have less love than some cohabiting relationships. Why is one type of relationship more valid? I find it all very old fashioned.

Judging by the number of men who don't leave their wives a dime on divorce, I am not convinced by the stability argument.

Lol at Baum - I do now get that vision

She's 13 and not keen on marriage and I couldn't be happier.

Genuinely not a loaded question - how so? When I was 13, I certainly didn't understand contract law or the different rights and responsibilities that marriage entailed - and I couldn't decide whether marriage was for me until I was in a committed relationship, as it depended on personally circumstances as to whether marriage would or wouldn't be a sensibly idea.

It strikes me a bit like critical illness insurance. I didn't know what it actually was when I was 13 - and whether or not it made sense to take a policy out depended entirety on my personal circumstances, whether or not it was beneficial. I couldn't have said at 13 whether or not I was keen on critical health insurance, so I don't think I could have said whether or not I was keen on marriage

I was brought up to be definitely keen on a committed relationship based on mutual love, equality and respect. I was keen on the idea of a future with someone I loved and who loved me. I hadn't got a clue about marriage

Your DD sounds a lot savvier than I was at 13! I hadn't started my periods or chosen my GCSEs, much less considered legal partnership

@surferjet I have to agree with you. I would really want my dd to achieve for herself rather than facilitate someone else’s career. But I would be happy for her to marry someone nice too if she wanted.

Laydeez, there is an alternative to marrying a man with a job! Get one yourself and see if your dp is keen to marry then if he is doing the childcare.

"Inviting the law into your relationship by getting married"...

Yeah it was totally legal to rape your wife until the late 90s.

What if the law changed once again? In favour of ownership of wife to the husband?

Just saying.

I don't want to. Guess I'm not lovely then.

My dd would actually be mortified not pleased.

No a declaration of committment is working at a relationship for 30 of years. Plenty or people talk the talk and get married with half the commitment we have as is shown by divorce stats and infidelity.

I was the higher earner and me and my dcs are better off because I didn’t marry

Sorry didn’t rtft but if your partner has sacrified career prospects or has had a larger hand in raising the DC why wouldn’t you want to protect him?

LOL, when I was 13 I wasn't keen on any form of liberalism. At all. Adamant in that. Rather made sense, my parents voted Conservative. I'm the polar opposite now.

but I worry a lot about the women posting on the relationship board who have naively sleep walked in to giving up their jobs, to becomes SAHP, with no pension in a house they have no rights over.

This ^

To go back to the point of this thread, it was about whether some married women see unmarried women as 'lesser.'

So far we've had the person that won't send their children to houses where the parents aren't married in case the male partner molests them. We've had another person equating deviance with being unmarried. And now another implying being unmarried is a bad example to your daughters.

So I think we can conclude that the answer is yes. Some women genuinely think this.

I did not equate deviance with being unmarried. Sigh.

But the family unit is undeniably helpful in socialising children. Give and take, respect, manners, boundaries, lack of tolerance for inappropriate behaviour... Two adults who are there is an infinitely better model than one adult and a revolving door of "partners" who are not invested in that family and the children.

Agree also about posters being proud of keeping their earnings/assets to themselves. It's no better than what some women are experiencing from crap men on the relationships boards. Such posters are demonstrating exactly the same behaviour as that they purport to deplore.

Legally there is married/civil partnership or single. Yes you may live with someone if you are unmarried, but you are still classed as single, with none of the protective rights afforded to married people. If you read info on CAB or Government websites the laws are very clear. I never understand why people get confused ?

I've been with my partner for 12 years. We are a family unit. It makes absolutely no difference that we're not married.

@IrmaFayLear your point was that a family unit knocks the edges off deviant behaviour (I agree with you.) But then you went on to say that in your friend's class all the parents were unmarried. So were the two statements completely unrelated?

brokenharbour
It may make no difference to you and how you feel and it may suit your set up.

But it does make a difference in law should you split.

People are free to make whatever choice they want but there's a difference in law.

Actually it does. You might want to read some of the threads about marriage to see how.

@MaisyPops I'm fully aware there's a difference in law. My point was directed at a poster who implied unmarried parents were not a family unit in the sense that affects the behaviour of their children. I would contend that we are a family unit and marriage would make no difference to that (or to how my children will behave.)

*So far we've had the person that won't send their children to houses where the parents aren't married in case the male partner molests them. We've had another person equating deviance with being unmarried. And now another implying being unmarried is a bad example to your daughters.

So I think we can conclude that the answer is yes. Some women genuinely think this.*

Fair point, but you are selectively only mentioning the sneering from married women and not the other way round.

There are plenty of sneering remarks from unmarried women about how they are so much better off not having the risk of their partners getting their hands on their money.

MN is also full of sneering remarks from high-earning women about women who, for whatever reason, are not financially self-sufficient.

At the start of our marriage I was the higher earner. I inherited money and marriage undoubtedly put me at a financial risk.

Suddenly and unexpectedly I developed a life-changing disability. I could have kept up my job with a big fight (it’s very hard to sack a disabled person) but realistically there was no way that both DH and I could have kept up full-time work without putting the kids up for adoption.

So now I’m not financially independent. DH has gone on to inherit a large sum. We are still married and still happy, but the financial security of marriage is not unwelcome

Sneer all you want at my ‘financial dependence’ on DH. Life has a habit of fucking up the best of plans. Smugness is never a good idea.

@SweetSummerchild that's fair enough. But the point of the thread was answered. It probably goes the other way too, I agree.

@Bluelady I wasn't talking about the legal implications. I was talking about the inference that it affected my children's behaviour.

brokenharbour
Apologies then.

@MaisyPops accepted, thank you! I realise read out of context it seems like a blank statement.

@brokenharbour I am undoubtedly over-sensitive to posters who suggest that women who are financially dependent on high-earning partners are somehow stupid, lazy or deluded.

This was not how I envisaged my life when I was a teenager and filling in my UCCA form. I was going to be the ultimate ‘independent woman’. However, I have made the best of the situation I have found myself in.

I get that for some women being unmarried is either advantageous or ‘neutral’. For me it wouldn’t be. It would just add a load more anxiety to an already uncertain life ahead of me.

Yes, I misinterpreted too. Apologies from me as well.

Out of interest - to those posters who've said they're the higher earner and marriage wouldn't benefit them financially

If your DP became ill and unable to work, and therefore was in a more vulnerable financial position - would you marry to look out for his best interests?

Or if you had a DC needing full time care and one of you needed to give up work

Or if you became ill and unable to work

Basically, if there was an element of financial vulnerability in the committed partnership due to life circumstances - would you still be against marriage regarded of which partner could lose out from protections that may not have applied before?

The problem with the OP is that it conflated obviously appalling comments like not letting your kid stay over unless the parents are married with comments that are true, but simply not liked very much by the unmarried person they're addressed to. Like the one about the poster's 30 year cohabiting relationship meaning nothing. Which like it or not, in certain circumstances it does.

The first is someone who's either a dick or a troll, the other is someone who's unpalatably but unquestionably right. You have to distinguish between the two in order to NBU. Had OP simply said AIBU to think someone complaining about 47% out of wedlock births thinks she's better than unmarried women, the answer would be an uncomplicated YANBU.

@SweetSummerchild I completely understand. The point I've been trying to make here all along (perhaps badly) is that I think it's important for women, married or unmarried, to maintain their own financial independence if they are able to. I certainly feel I am in a more secure financial position than some married women, so it's confusing to me why anyone would look down on me (or my relationship) because we are not married. And it seems there are people that do, bizarrely. You are right that you never know what's round the block so I can only make the best choices for myself now, as you have done. If I was unable to work and my partner was the only one earning then I would certainly want to be married for my own security.