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

You can't come on and berate people for not living their lives according to your (naive) values and not expect some pushback, OP.

For the record, I got married, bought a house and then had a baby, so I followed your rules. But I still think you're being smug.

I won't raise DD with tradition but will encourage informed choices

Your doing well on this thread OP. Better hope you don't end up pregnant before April eh?

I couldn't care less what other people do. DH and I will not be on the housing ladder for several more years at least, and I earn double what he earns, so I don't reckon we are very traditional.

However, when we sat down to discuss our futures before moving in together (unwed!), I was very firm with DH that I wanted to be married before I had children. I can't quite put my finger on why, besides the obvious protection that marriage affords women with children. I think it's because (in my head about myself, like I said,mod what you want with your life) to me it would feel weird doing it the other way round. Like, I would feel weird to have my own kids at my own wedding, and it would feel "untidy" with everybody not having the same last name.

Bit of an odd thread overall really.

"What happened to traditional values? I live my life by them when it comes to marriage and babies."
"But you lived together before getting married?"
"Apart from that one."

true

Life isn't that black & white or right & "wrong" . Also society & its 'norms' & values are always evolving.

Sorry that you seem to have swallowed the middle class version of history, OP. Plenty of people did things in the wrong order and entire generations haven't even bothered to consider buying a house because it has always been somewhat unaffordable to a certain class of people. Nevertheless we have persisted. I wouldn't dream of critiquing the moral value of the way you do things, so please, do, eff right off with imposing them on the rest of us.

People have always had unplanned babies Op. A lot of it may have been hidden better, grandparents or older siblings raising children that weren't theirs to hide a teenage pregnancy. Women forced to give up babies they wanted to keep. But it happened then and it happens now.
I actually think more couples know each other longer before they have children nowadays than in the past. My grandma was engaged after 6 months and that was in part from pressure from her parents.

Marriage before children was important to me and I suppose I would consider myself to be somewhat old fashioned in that way.

However I'm 28, currently pregnant and renting and a lot of people my age think it's insane I opted to have a child and get married before buying a house and I disagree.

Buying a house seems to be the modern version of getting married for most people my age from what I've seen.

For me and DH marriage and kids is more important and we will buy a house in the next 1-2 years.

I'd find it easier to believe in your "traditional values", OP, if I didn't happen to work as a historian.

House ownership as a prerequisite for adult life is something that is limited to a short time post-WW2 (and not even that for people in low-paid jobs). Try selling that as a "value" to the Victorians and listen to the ghostly sound of them pissing themselves with laughter. There simply wasn't enough purchasable property around.

Even the idea of being married before you fell pregnant wasn't terribly popular in rural Victorian/Edwardian England; it was something the upper classes could afford to think about, but if you were a farmer you needed sons, so there was a distinct advantage in knowing that your marriage would be fertile before you tied the knot.

There is a wonderful (authentic) conversation recorded from 1920s England or thereabouts in one of the books that came out around the Downton Abbey series. It went something like this:

-Any news?
-X is getting married.
-Getting married? I didn't even know she was pregnant.
-She isn't.
-Well, she always was a stuck-up cow!

Just a good reminder that you can't tell what is traditional by taking your own ideas and extrapolate into the past by multiplying them.

If I'd waited to do things the 'proper' way, I've have found out that it was too late, as I've been infertile since I was 30 and didn't met the OH until I was 41.

He did things the proper way round and they turned into a complete pile of shit by 31.

You're talking about human beings, not robots, which is why you're not going to get much in the way of agreement here - most posters have more experience of how life doesn't always work out like that; you could be divorced and a single parent living in bed and breakfast accommodation by the time you're 26. You won't be feeling quite so, as you say, smug by then.

You can have whatever values you like - I didn't care.

Please, do not impose your values on anyone else.

That's fair isn't it?

I did things the "traditional" way. Got married. Bought a house (so more traditional than you OP). Had a baby 4 years later. It all went to shit before DS was a year old. Traditional didn't work for me.

My parents OTOH, got pregnant, got married, bought a house five years later. Have been married for nearly 50 years. Not traditional totally worked for them.

But fuck it OP, you're 23 and obviously know better.😂😂😂

'Traditional values' were always intended to benefit men at the expense of women. It's a good thing they are dying out. Now women can support themselves and no longer have to please a man (no matter how unreasonable he is) in order to have a roof over their heads.

Tbh I don't think wanting to be married before having a baby is old fashioned. What's old fashioned is judging anyone who dares to stray from the path, expecting others to follow the same path and bemoaning the loss of "traditional values".

Without wanting to be a dick about it, I'm not sure at 23 I would have had the insight to comment on how best other people should arrange their lives. Shit happens OP.

Dear God, what total and utter shite.

So only people who can afford to own their home should have children? Off you fuck.

This thread didn't go to plan did it op

Because some of us know that if you leave trying for a baby until you're married and can afford it, it might not happen. I work in a hospital and meet many people who struggle to get pregnant, and getting help with it can take years. Why take the risk? Also why is one way right and another way isn't?

Judgemental cow @ OP.

Sometimes people want what they cant have. I would love to have a nice fancy house, be married to a absolute darling then have kids but life did not work out for me that way. Im pregnant to a guy I hardly knew now am going to have to deal with that for the rest of my life. You have to deal with what life throws at you not the other way around.

Know of plenty of people who did the "traditional" way of things and their marriages turned to s* not long after. I think its about living the life you want to live, were not effing robots.

Ah to be young and starry eyed and so sure and certain that my way, is the right way.

I feel the same way as you, but don’t particularly talk about it as it can inspire a lot of vitriol. Maybe I’m just another one of the naive, rose-tinted glasses people though (although I’m in my 30s). I wasn’t particularly raised to believe in marriage before sex/children, but I’ve grown to see the value in it. However, I understand that it’s difficult to live life according to these values.

To me, it seems best. You carefully select someone to marry, commit to love and take care of one another publicly, and then bring children into a stable situation. It doesn’t guarantee happiness. It doesn’t guarantee stability. But, when done honestly, it is a promise to try to live up to the ideal. I personally think that striving is beautiful.

My only arguments for so-called "traditional values" is that single parenting is bloody hard work!