To think we would alleviate a lot of misery and some poverty if we phased out marriage in favour of a straight financial contract without a monogamy requirement?

[thepeopleversuswork]

So my view is that its unrealistic to expect people to be monogamous for life.

There will be a small number of people who genuinely remain happily monogamous for decades, yes, but for the overwhelming majority of people a scenario where your financial security is explicitly tied to your ability to remain monogamous is outdated, unrealistic and punitive.

It pushes people to remain with someone long after the relationship has passed its sell-by date and often leaves them trapped with someone they no longer love or even like very much because they don't want to upset the children or disentangle finances.

Could we reimagine a kind of financial contract that essentially requires the financially stronger partner (usually, though not always, the man) to guarantee a certain level of financial support to the weaker partner for the duration of the time the children are at home or potentially later potentially renegotiable in the event that financial capacity changes -- but without the absurd requirement for monogamy?

Haven't thought this through in great detail so bear with me but to me the main reason why divorce is often so rancorous and damaging is because of the "cheating" and the recriminations as to how that should impact on the finances (ie you left me for your secretary, I'm going to take you to the cleaners).

If people were free to renegotiate their emotional commitment to one another without having to redraw the boundaries on the financial commitments linked to child-rearing, or vice versa, it would remove a lot of the most emotionally difficult elements of marriage breakdown, and the stigma.

Children would become more comfortable with the idea of their parents as a financial partnership who love and are committed to them but without the expectation that they have to remain together in perpetuity.

I have observed so many times that the thing that damages children in divorce is not so much the separation of their parents in itself, but the behaviour of their parents either in relation to new partners or in relation to money and the division of spoils.

If the financial element were clearer and not tied to sexual fidelity, and the stigma was removed around people dissolving relationships, would that not make it somewhat easier for children to accept this change in a non-damaging way?

Finally, getting rid of marriage would get rid of the loathsome cult of the wedding and all the toxic effect it has on generations of young women.

Anyone with me?

Sex isn't zero sum. Money is.
At the end of a marriage both parties can end up with more sex. They never end up with more money.

tectonicplates I’m not polyamory, I am in a monogamous relationship. And generally speaking in my experience when people insult you it’s because they have few debating skills and no grasp of rhetoric.

YABU

• Open marriages already exist. So monogamy is not a requirement of marriage. This is also not new. If you read your history books, monogamy was not always required in marriage.

• I profoundly disagree with replacing marriage with a financial contract as that is prostitution pure and simple.

-Courts don’t punish a husband/wife for adultery in real life, so your whole premise of it being barbaric to make financial security dependent on monogamy is without merit. Besides, women have the right to work, have a career and so on. There is nothing stopping us from being financially independent no matter how many partners /husbands we may have.

I have strongly encouraged my children not to marry if they are the stronger financial party

Yes because you can be absolutely guaranteed a job with a steady, increasing income for life and that whoever your partner is, you will always out-earn them. You will never be plagued by situations such as:
being pregnant/taking time off work to raise young children, never in a car crash or otherwise experience a life changing disabling injury, never have cancer or take years off work for it, never become ill with a chronic, debilitating health condition, never watch your career field become obsolete. Etc.

PlanDeRaccordement its true that open marriages exist but they are still far from the norm.

I think one could argue that taken to its logical conclusion marriage is a kind of prostitution, if one partner in the marriage is not economically productive. Not a popular view here no doubt but I'm not the first to make this point. It's an exchange of to put it kindly compansionship or more bleakly, sex and domestic service, for financial security.

Ironically I actually think that kind of marriage works better in a way, although I'd hate to be in one. At least its very clear where the division of labour is and what the roles are.

The problem with a lot of contemporary western marriages is that the woman has advanced a great deal in terms of financial autonomy and agency but the man hasn't generally made equivalent progress. So in a large number of these cases the women are effectively doing two full time jobs: a paid role and a job as carer and domestic servant, without equivalent input from the man and the man isn't prepared to make the sacrifices which the woman needs to advance her career.

Its very clear from this thread that a lot of people don't agree that getting rid of the vow of fidelity is the best way round that and I can understand that.

But it does seem increasingly absurd that an institution which is now a very complex financial set-up in which the woman is vastly more economically productive but the man still generally accumulates more capital, should all hinge on whether the two participants agree not to have sex with anyone else.

@thepeopleversuswork

SurreyHills nope. Not angry. Very happy really. I enjoy other people’s weddings as much as the next man. But I do think they are very damaging to female ambition and empowerment.

Call me a hairy feminist... I just think so many girls get diverted from what they really want to achieve in life by the fantasy industry about marriage and weddings. In the majority of cases getting married is a life limiting step for girls.

It can and should offer them financial protection and I am fully down with that but so many of them get tripped up on the bollocks trappings and sell themselves short.

How is marriage bad for female empowerment and ambition? Marriage didn’t stop me from being the sole or primary breadwinner for my entire life. Is it more ambitious to aspire to just financially support one lone person, your self, or to aspire to financially support six people including yourself? Marriage made me more ambitious, not less.

Why should marriage offer girls financial protection? Isnt the feminist ambition to empower women to be independent from men? If so, then how can we claim to be independent, but also simultaneously in need of a man’s money to survive? Isn’t it more empowering and ambitious to aspire to being not only able to support you and your children, but also their father if needed as well?

Plan

"Yes because you can be absolutely guaranteed a job with a steady, increasing income for life and that whoever your partner is, you will always out-earn them. You will never be plagued by situations such as:
being pregnant/taking time off work to raise young children, never in a car crash or otherwise experience a life changing disabling injury, never have cancer or take years off work for it, never become ill with a chronic, debilitating health condition, never watch your career field become obsolete. Etc."

I've come through a marriage which involved abuse and have suffered depression, then went on to be a single mother. I have never been financially dependent on a man and I never will.

Yes you can have setbacks in your life and these can affect your earnings etc. But you should always always have your own money.

If there's one single thing above anything else that I want to pass on to my daughter its this: that she should never never rely on a man for a penny in income. If you don't have your own money you're not in control.

@thepeopleversuswork

Plan

"Yes because you can be absolutely guaranteed a job with a steady, increasing income for life and that whoever your partner is, you will always out-earn them. You will never be plagued by situations such as:
being pregnant/taking time off work to raise young children, never in a car crash or otherwise experience a life changing disabling injury, never have cancer or take years off work for it, never become ill with a chronic, debilitating health condition, never watch your career field become obsolete. Etc."

I've come through a marriage which involved abuse and have suffered depression, then went on to be a single mother. I have never been financially dependent on a man and I never will.

Yes you can have setbacks in your life and these can affect your earnings etc. But you should always always have your own money.

If there's one single thing above anything else that I want to pass on to my daughter its this: that she should never never rely on a man for a penny in income. If you don't have your own money you're not in control.

Exactly OP. Life has setbacks. But you’ve quoted me out of context? I was replying to the PP who stated she always strongly advises her children to never marry if they are the high earner. My point is that in any long term relationship, there is no guarantee you’d always be the high earner. So marriage is a way to hedge things by pooling resources so if one of you has a setback, the other can support you and then, later, if they have a setback, you can support them. That’s what marriage is. It’s a promise to be a team. Us against the world.

Plan

"Why should marriage offer girls financial protection? Isnt the feminist ambition to empower women to be independent from men? If so, then how can we claim to be independent, but also simultaneously in need of a man’s money to survive? Isn’t it more empowering and ambitious to aspire to being not only able to support you and your children, but also their father if needed as well?"

Per my post above I would never take money from a man.

In theory it might be empowering and ambitious to support you and your children and your spouse/their father. I actually do off and on - -support my daughter's father when he fucks up another job-- but the reality is that in most marriages men are not prepared to support their spouses to fully achieve their career ambitions.

Very very few high achieving men are prepared to do an equivalent number of pick-ups and drop-offs, do all the cooking and cleaning, plan all the school-related social stuff, help with the homework, organise playdates. Some, but a small minority.

And there are some men who stay at home with children. Which I have respect for. But that's a big gamble for a woman to take: a man who is not economically productive for several years is a big drain on finances, is likely to struggle to reenter the workplace and could ultimately the lion's share of access to children in a divorce. It's something I would think twice about, to be honest.

If there's one single thing above anything else that I want to pass on to my daughter its this: that she should never never rely on a man for a penny in income. If you don't have your own money you're not in control.

I think we are saying the same thing, except I’m telling my sons and daughters to always have enough income to support not only themselves but their children plus any current partner if that partner should lose his/her income either temporarily (injury, redundancy) or permanently (disability).

I believe that in certain classes and cultures marriages were much more likely to be treated like this, than in the earnest, all encompassing, emotional way we do now.

A psychotherapist (forgotten who) said that in the French view of marriage, the big taboo is divorce; so, you stayed together, you went out in public together, you provided your children a stable and respectable home, and if emotionally necessary you had discreet affairs. In contrast, the American view of marriage has the big taboo as infidelity, so one is ideally always married to one's lover, even if one is divorced and married 20 times.

I think that is an interesting way of looking at it - if something has to give, what would you rather it was? If your household works, your properly portfolio makes robust sense, your children are living with both parents, and you have space for separate bedrooms - why not just separate the machine of your marriage from the fluctuations of your heart?

Of course traditionally women were much more at risk with these arrangements - some had husbands who accepted an elegant quid pro quo, others might be thrown out and "ruined". Presumably many men would be very unwilling to bring up another man's child so in the time of decent contraception it should be easier for men to be understanding, not more difficult, than it used to be.

There's an awful lot wrong with the nuclear family. in many forms, it is utterly punshing to everyone in it. When I first separated from my ex, and was sad and maudlin, I thought the pressures of small children had a lot to do with our break up, and thought that I had entirely lost myself and wondered if, in a non-child-related way, we could ever find a rapprochement. for a mad 5 minutes I imagined asking him out on a date, wondering if we could find what used to be there. Then I remembered that of all the men in the world, he is absolutely the most inconvenient or impossible for me to date - he is my children's other parent, so if I am on a date, he is with the children, and vice versa. It suddenly struck me as funny that the exact man that the whole world wants you to Make A Go Of It With - the father of your children - is the one who is emotionally and physically so hard to access for deep structural reasons.

If there's one single thing above anything else that I want to pass on to my daughter its this: that she should never never rely on a man for a penny in income. If you don't have your own money you're not in control.

Fine. I still don’t see how a contract plus infidelity fixes the issue. Would you also suggest she ignore affairs?

"And there are some men who stay at home with children. Which I have respect for. But that's a big gamble for a woman to take: a man who is not economically productive for several years is a big drain on finances, is likely to struggle to reenter the workplace and could ultimately the lion's share of access to children in a divorce. It's something I would think twice about, to be honest."

yeah this is a huge trap. Men don't do anything like the kind of job at home as women do. So the women work hard out of the house, work 125% as hard as their male colleagues to collect the same pay; get home and find all that has been piled up in heaps to be done when she gets back. Most men treat SAHP as a holiday, they just don't get it. So resentment builds, and if that leads to the end of the relationship then the woman has to pay this arsehole to stay at home with the kids and she loses them. I would never ever ever ever advise a woman with children to let her man stop WOH. No matter what you do, no matter how easy you make it, they'll never do the house and children stuff properly so you might as well get some family money out of him and DO NOT let him have any claim to be 'primary carer".

If your partner does not support your career ambitions, then do not marry them. Do not have children with them. You write about “the reality” but it’s one most women are fully complicit in creating.

They are badly advised to only marry men who make more money than them. That right then is marrying with the objective to fail because it creates a power differential such that their career is now subordinate to his career. Which, naturally means that she does most child care because his job is more important than her job. Economics drives the decisions.

Marry a man who is a lower earner, and the opposite power dynamic is present. But women are advised against this...because the patriarchy depends on women marrying UP and men marrying DOWN to keep the power balance in favour of the men.

(Waiting for all the women with male SAHPs to pile on and slam me for "sexist generalisations" - "not my Nigel" etc. you're deluding yourself, unless you are one in a billion, in which case, congratulations. But you're not all one in a billion. Most of you are in denial and doing two jobs while he half-arses some of one, and has a jolly nice time at your expense. It's like the people who have cats and litter trays and insist their houses don't smell - sorry, they all do.)

To be fair Senselessm you are being sexist unless you have a peer reviewed scientific study that states only 2 SAHDs in the entire world do as good a job as the worst SAHM? (Extrapolating, from 3,5bn men on the planet, of which approx half would be of child-rearing age).

MarshaBradyo

"Fine. I still don’t see how a contract plus infidelity fixes the issue. Would you also suggest she ignore affairs?"

No. I guess what I'm saying is that the financial/domestic "contract" around child-rearing could be decoupled from the emotional "contract" of two people in a sexually faithful relationship. Obviously the ideal is when those two come together. But when the emotional side comes unstuck, that there could be a prearranged financial commitment which allows the emotional side to be renegotiated without upsetting the whole applecart.

I know a lot of people wouldn't accept this and it may be too cumbersome. But I do think we need something flexible enough to accommodate the emotional unpredictability. Currently, most marriages don't accommodate that -- at least on paper.

PlanDeRaccordement you've hit the nail on the head... this is the central reason why marriage no longer works for women.

If you marry a richer man, you have to accept that you are economically not in the driving seat and you give up a lot of power as a result of that.

If you marry a poorer man you have to accept that at best you will be carrying someone both financially and domestically and at worst you will have a cocklodger who is a drain on the whole family.

You suggest that its incumbent on the woman to choose a man who supports their career ambitions but you can't always tell. Very few men these days are going to say "I forbid you from working after we're married". But quite a lot of men will say they're in favour of it but will then get stroppy if their dinner is not on the table or if you demand that they leave work early three times a week to pick up the kids. It's not nearly as black and white as it might sound.

The solution, for me, is that if you a woman with a decent income and financial security its far safer these days not to get married. Keep your money, work hard, look after your kids on your own. It will be exhausting at times, but at least you won't have either your money or your self-worth leached away from you by a bloke.

When the emotional side comes unstuck? When? Don’t you mean “if”?

So the the financial commitment contract stays in place and both sides are free to move on. Can they re-marry?

It does sound cumbersome, I’d prefer the division of assets and better enforcement of child support which should get closer to financial commitment to the children. Otherwise if no dc for example I think people should be free to move on post divorce, including severing financial ties.

PlanDeRaccordement well if it is a when rather than an if, all the more reason not to sign up to a lifelong contract which precludes you from ever having sex with another person and guarantees that you will lose half your assets if you do.

You can see why men aren't generally that keen on it unless they're getting domestic servitude in return, can't you!

But it does seem increasingly absurd that an institution which is now a very complex financial set-up in which the woman is vastly more economically productive but the man still generally accumulates more capital, should all hinge on whether the two participants agree not to have sex with anyone else.

I really think the assertion that it all hinges on agreeing not to have sex with anyone else is over simplistic and just wrong.

We’ve already touched on open marriages. I have a relative who is not in an open marriage exactly but one in which the odd ‘indiscretion’ has occurred on either side and has been overlooked as long as it’s within whatever bounds their unwritten rules have set. There are plenty of marriages where adultery causes heartache and scars but ultimately the marriage continues.

Similarly, marriages end for other reasons. My marriage absolutely hinges on us being faithful to each other because that’s the terms of our agreement, but it also hinges on neither party being violent or abusive. It hinges on us being kind and respectful to the other. It hinges on us making a roughly equal contribution to our joint life and the family we are starting together - whether that be in terms of finances, domestic tasks, emotional support, childcare - whatever. It hinges on continuing to look out for the other person and be ‘on their team’. Other couples/ marriages will have things that their relationship hinges on, which may well be different to ours. Even if you came up with a contract that didn’t ‘punish’ for adultery, there would still be people who wanted out because their OH had become a cycling obsessive or found religion or stopped showering or something.

People are completely at liberty to set their own terms for marriage or any other relationship and to have their own boundaries and dealbreakers. I don’t think there’s anything you legally have to declare or promise in order to get married beyond the fact that you are free to do so and that you agree of your own free will. At its core marriage is the legal financial arrangement that you’re proposing - it has a lot of social and cultural baggage around it yes, but a lot of the expectations, miscommunications and pitfalls are inherent in human and particularly romantic relationships anyway. People aren’t suddenly going to behave impeccably, fairly, rationally, dispassionately or whatever because you call it something different.

And I don’t know what the contract could say that will somehow allow two people who were previously pooling economic resources, domestic labour and childcare responsibilities (however they split it between them) to split up, separate all that out equally and yet somehow still be no worse off than before?

Again - who is the contract meant to protect? Those who want to cheat? Those who don’t want to stick around and help support and raise the children they were equally responsible for creating? Because we wouldn’t want to punish them for just being human and changing their minds right? Or is it meant to protect the one that is cheated on/ gets left? By ensuring the party that wants to leave continues to support the children? But then how is that different to what happens in marriage/civil partnership anyway? What do you want the contract to say that’s different? Divorce settlements don’t generally award more maintenance because there’s been adultery do they?

Are you arguing that nobody should expect fidelity? That nobody should make their relationship hinge on it? That it’s ok to expect it but that you should still sign a contract that says it’s alright if the other half doesn’t quite live up to it - you won’t come after them for child maintenance in that case? That even if someone really wants to be in a monogamous and faithful relationship they should just give up on that and sign something that says it’s fine as long as you keep paying for the kids?

Lots of cross posting there sorry - I can see you’ve answered a lot of what I’ve just said sorry!

I don’t think the two separate fiancial/
emotional contracts idea holds up still - and I sort of think marriage still IS that anyway. Even if you didn’t have a marriage and had whatever this financial arrangement was called instead, if the relationship ends messily/ with betrayal then you’re going to end up fighting it out on the financial side, hiring your shit hot lawyers etc. Like I said way upthread, if you’re married to a shit who decides he doesn’t want to uphold his financial obligations anymore and he’s going to hide assets, obfuscate and stall - well then he’ll do that whatever the financial contract says, just like happens in standard marriage/ divorce.

And again - there’s no way for the existing financial contract/ status quo to continue unchanged when you’re separating one household with pooled economic, domestic and paternal resources into two, with two lots of costs incurred.

@lucyintheskywithcz

Honestly I think marriage is past it's sell by date. I have strongly encouraged my children not to marry if they are the stronger financial party

That's what a marriage is all about there IS no stronger financial party, all monies are shared, I have earned more than my DH for the last 15 years, even now when he works full time has his state pension and private pension I bring home about £900 per month more than him and so what? its our money, next year our positions may be reversed as I reach state pension age myself and haven't yet decided if I want to continue working, and again it will be our money not his or mine, but as I said we before we have been married for 48 years and its worked for us

It'd only work for me if there was a massive penalty clause if he fathered a child with someone else. Massive. Because the whole point of marriage for me is ensuring my kids have financial and emotional protection.