To ask what happened to having traditional values?

[mozzarellasticks]

I'm 23 and from a very young age I was told that it was 'right' to live life in a 'traditional' order.
For example: being in a relationship with someone, buying a house, getting married, and then having kids.
Not trying to be smug or on a high horse, just wondering what happened and why people are getting pregnant after knowing someone for 5 minutes. I'm generally considered to be have old fashioned views but want to know why no one else feels the same way

@LunafortJest I agree with you completely

life in a 'traditional' order. For example: being in a relationship with someone, buying a house, getting married, and then having kids.

That’s not traditional order. Get married before living together.

Also feel a little sad for the pp who said they would terminate a pregnancy if they were not married. I'm pro-choice, but it can't be as black and white as married = baby, engaged = abortion, surely?

I'm probably biased though.

I love it when someone so young, and with hardly any life experiences, comes along and tells everyone else they\re doing it wrong!

Oh for God's sake ,you've had a whole massive 5 years of being an adult and you know it all ?

I did it the right way round according to you OP ,had the career, married the man had the children at appropriate intervals

The timings and order mean absolutely nothing and certainly didn't prevent it all falling apart

I've been on top of the world with a seemingly perfect life and I've been at the bottom of the scrap heap and what counts what really matters is how you respond and whether you can picknyourself up

I look back now at that "traditional" life and it's just ridiculous, stupid societal constructs designed to allow people like the op to find smugness in mundanity

Humans are beautifully complex and amazingly interesting creatures and you actually think there is value in judging people on a paint by numbers system?

Paraphrasing the famous quote when you are young you think you know everything and then you grow up to have the wisdom to known you know nothing

I used to think like you OP. Now I'm in my 50s I think it's bollocks. Being a 'good girl' gets you nowhere. I wish I'd shagged a couple of dozen different blokes while I was young and adventurous and I definitely should have gone clubbing in Ibiza.

Get out and enjoy life.

Why would your parents still be telling you what you have to do when you are an adult?

'Traditional' isn't the same as 'right'. Anyway, traditions have varied quite a bit over the centuries. Anyone with half a brain will do what makes sense for them, not make decisions based on what is traditional.

I'd kind of assume that most people who claim to have 'traditional values' were probably at least some of the following: racist, homophobic, anti-feminist, cringingly old-fashioned, very right-wing or a bit dim.

"Not trying to be smug"

You really, really are.

How long have we had these 'traditional values', looking back you can see values are transient and apply to some groups and not others. Sometimes values are public but the private reality of most people is very different. Live your own life and don't judge others too quickly, life can be very surprising.

Very traditional life for me.

Engaged (but not living together) - bought house (still not living together) - got married - lived together - had DCs. 40 odd years later still together.

It worked for us.

didn't want to continue living apart

Well, ain’t you traditional

Personally, I didn’t leave my parents home until I was married, he’s also my first and only sexual partner.

AuntieCJ and FissionChip5 glad it worked out for you two but you're lucky it did. It's complete and utter madness not to live with someone before you get married and more importantly have children with them

My 2x contraception failed into a new relationship so i ended up 6 weeks pregnant into a 4 week relationship

sometimes babies have other ideas!!
11 years on me and DP are still together, we missed the boat with the house thing due to the baby coming first and marriage doesn't bother us. I had known him a long time before we got together and its not how we would have "planned" it because of the house issue.

my mum and her friends had to marry the first person they slept with. Most of them are now divorced.
My Grandmother married someone kind, if i am honest I'm not sure how much love there was at first.

I think things do just change, my Grandmothers generation would have put up with all sorts of crap unable to split up without judgement, my mothers married quickly and probably too soon for a lot of them.
I think theres pro's and cons to every "traditional way"

I have no problems with people living together, I guess it is just the children issue, I feel if you do have children and still plan to stay together, you should surely want to commit to each other. Children completely changes everything imo. Then legal protections and marriage should be a priority. Take children out of the equation I'm pretty cool with everything else.

OK, but why? DP's got full parental responsibility, we both are on the house deeds, we both work, our life assurance names the other as beneficiary - so the only reason is to save tax on death (which is a very important reason financially, but not the be all and end all). Why is being married so important for the kids? There's no extra stability for the kids (since anyone can divorce) - I'm honestly asking here, in case there's something I've missed!

I got married to a man who I had not slept with, and we didn't move in together until we got back from our honeymoon.

Traditional as you like.

We had no communication skills, and we didn't know each other well enough to realise how little we had in common.

Our 'traditional' marriage descended into controlling, sexually and emotionally abusive hell-hole, and our children were being modelled a relationship with little intimacy, even less communication and zero affection. A mother who was almost completely shut down and a father who was constantly furious.

I'm sure from the outside it looked peachy and would have had 'traditionalists' nodding in approval.

I'm now happily in an unmarried, consensually non-monogamous relationship, with a partner, a boyfriend, and a girlfriend, who all communicate well, and are there for each other, in all four overlapping families forming a village, who we can all count on for help and support.

There are, in total, ten children between us all, ranging in age from 7 to 20. who are all happy, well adjusted and thriving with several adults in their lives who they can call on for support, advice or help.

I'm sure traditionalists are clutching their pearls all over the place, but those who know us and have seen how it pans out in real life - including my DPs SuperCatholic mother, and all of our extended families - have to admit that it seems to work very well.

I know which setup is best for my children, and it's sure as hell not the former.

What @Disfordarkchocolate said!

I'm currently studying tradition as part of my degree and how it is shaped to fit the narrative of the time.

Because of a sense of moral decay and lack of respect, many of this period are harking back to a time when women stayed at home, raised the children and the men went out to work. Where the perfect family was a couple who got engaged and married before living together and having children. Some might even have abstained from sex prior to marriage.

I suspect your tradition isn't a sexless relationship.

I also suspect you wish to be a woman of some independence from her partner rather than relying on housekeeping being filed out weekly.

The traditions of our time are based on a rose tinted view of the recent past.

Owning your own home before marriage, pregnancy or anything else isn't traditional. It isn't traditional to own your own home.
It was also common to have to get married. At least people are largely spared that now.

Eh a lot of the 'traditional' families don't work though do they? As others have said they got married too quickly to appease god essentially and regretted it.

I don't think really though that there are loads of people having babies after a few weeks of knowing each other. That's just what the jeremy Kyle show would like you to think.

I do however think it's better and perhaps safer to be married before children. Simply because if it goes wrong then both sides are protected legally. Whether it's the mother or the father that looks after the child over working, or if both work, they are protected legally in the event of a divorce. When you aren't married, you have nothing.

I have told my partner that should I ever get pregnant (I've got the implant) and we decide to keep it, he will be marrying me before it's born.

Ah yes, traditional values. That’s the ones where the bride wore white because she was waiting for her wedding night before DTD. Meanwhile the groom was encouraged to sow his wild oats to have some experience. The values of the SAHM, who did everything around the house, which wasn’t considered a full time job, unlike his 9 to 5 (or 8 to 6) which was.

Traditional values? The sort John Major banged on about. The ones that supported the patriarchy - I’m told they’re still around, but not for our daughters - fortunately.

t's complete and utter madness not to live with someone before you get married

Why?

I agree you should be living together before babies...in an ideal world

If a lot of people waited until they bought a house before marriage in this age of ridiculous deposits they'd be maybe older than they'd like for the marriage/kids thing.

For me and DP, buying a house was our top priority, then having a baby (due to age and fertility issues) then marriage. Everyone is different, life is varied, things come up or don't come up and people have different priorities on what is important to them and do you know what as long as you are happy, that's all that matters.

Oh and although we did it 'the right way' )not the OPs way...the other right way) that was mainly for my mum

My 20 year old is about to move in with their boyfriend

I have great respect for people who simply don’t believe in marriage, but that isn’t what is happening. These couples plan to marry ‘someday’. Having children is a bigger commitment than marriage. If you believe in marriage, why on earth would you have children with someone you aren’t willing to marry.

I too think marrying someone before living with them is madness. You don’t truly know someone until you live with them.

And ‘saving yourself’ for marriage seems a crazy risk to me too (not that many people do so anymore). Sexual compatibility is so important. Bit alarming to find out that you’ve got a unexplored taste for bdsm and all they want is petals scattered on the bed and Lionel Richie playing in the background.

Am I the only person who now has the theme song of Family Guy running through their head?