This idea that women need to get married for financial protection is bizarre

[NewFem]

I’ve encountered this view so many times here and it doesn’t make any amount of sense to me. Can someone please explain this to me how it applies to modern life?

Girls go to school and receive the exact same quality of education that boys do.
Girls, I read outperform boys in SATs, GCSEs and at A-level.
Girls attend university at higher rates than boys do, across most ethnicities in the UK.
Girls outnumber boys in highly paid professions like medicine.
Girls also study science, technology, engineering and maths subjects at university in increasing numbers.

Women are perfectly capable of being educated, having a high salary and making a living for themselves. I know plenty of women who are homeowners by themselves and manage to buy a house individually with no help. So why is there still this idea that we need men for financial security. It doesn’t make sense.

When it comes to children and childbirth, most women don’t give up their careers so protection doesn’t apply to them either. I looked this up, in 2019, 75.1% of mothers in the UK were in work. In 2020, 71.8% of mothers in the UK were in work.

In 2019, only 28.5% of mothers with children below 14 years old reduced their working hours to accommodate childcare. This means most women (71.5%) did not reduce or limit their working hours. So it isn’t true for the majority of mothers that most women give up working after they’ve had children or that a man’s career remains unaffected and a woman’s career declines because of childcare. Therefore we need marriage to have protection.

At least this is my opinion based on data and my own life experiences. Open to hear other points of view though

I don't understand why you're looking at statistics over a whole country versus a tiny bit of advice that is being offered on a message board to a tiny number of women? You started out saying you don't understand why that advice is being given on here, and several people have explained it to you, but you still keep pointing at statistics that don't have anything to do with the advice that's being given to a specific individual in a specific situation.

Is this a TAAT? Because I can think of a thread recently where a poster came in and berated a woman for not having the 'protection' of marriage despite the OP clarifying that she was the higher earner and quite independent. The poster was really obsessive about it, very weird.

I'm one of those women who lost out having offered the 'protection' of marriage to man with lesser means who turned out to be a twat, so I certainly don't think marriage should be universally recommended but there are obviously cases in which case it's the best thing for women and children.

“When looking at women and men without dependent children, there were 70.6% of women without dependent children in work in 2019” - there were 75.1% of women with dependent children in work in 2019

Hmm, that seems surprising to me at first glance, but I guess there are lots of students in the childfree cohort?

I'm not sure. I do know one needs to be very careful with interpreting statistics.

• when interpreting statistics

@steff13

I don't understand why you're looking at statistics over a whole country versus a tiny bit of advice that is being offered on a message board to a tiny number of women? You started out saying you don't understand why that advice is being given on here, and several people have explained it to you, but you still keep pointing at statistics that don't have anything to do with the advice that's being given to a specific individual in a specific situation.

Hmm, thing is that advice about women needing to marry for financial and legal protection, aka access to a share of a man’s money is given here to women as a whole.

So when a woman says she doesn’t want to get married, most people will start talking about how marriage is beneficial because it helps protect women. They never specify like has been said in this thread that this advice only really applies to women who:

• earn a lower salary than their male partner
• are coming into the relationship with no assets
• are planning to give up working for a few years for childcare reasons
• are planning on becoming stay at home mums full time and never returning to work

Didn’t the uk recently wipe old cms debt. It was £10 billion iirc. TEN BILLION POUNDS. And that’s only the unpaid child maintenance where claims have been registered with cms. Not all the other unpaid maintenance that hasn’t gone through cms, not the maintenance amounts not calculated because the dac us or has gone self employed to avoid it. And when you think that cms payments are often a tiny fraction of the cost of a child, and nearly all are dads paying for their dc to live with their mums, indeed you’d wonder why would women need financial protection. Oh no wait, it’s screamingly obvious

@Hoesbeforebroes

Is this a TAAT? Because I can think of a thread recently where a poster came in and berated a woman for not having the 'protection' of marriage despite the OP clarifying that she was the higher earner and quite independent. The poster was really obsessive about it, very weird.

I'm one of those women who lost out having offered the 'protection' of marriage to man with lesser means who turned out to be a twat, so I certainly don't think marriage should be universally recommended but there are obviously cases in which case it's the best thing for women and children.

No this is not a TAAT. I haven’t seen that thread

Hmm, thing is that advice about women needing to marry for financial and legal protection, aka access to a share of a man’s money is given here to women as awhole.

Where? I've never seen that. I have seen many women advised not to get married when they are the higher earners and own the property. The only threads where I have seen women being advised to get married is where they are the loaner earners or stay at home mothers.

I’ll bite.
Our combined income is £60k, we both earn £30k so we contribute equally to the household. We have decided to have a child. As a woman I am forced to take maternity leave for at least 2 weeks, up to 8 if I have a pregnancy related illness (and up to 10 if I work in a factory). I don’t have an enhanced maternity package so this means a pay reduction. The reality is that most childcare don’t offer childcare until a baby is 3 months (nannies and maternity nurses aside). I choose to breastfeed my baby which means it makes no sense for DH to take shared parental leave, but if I bottle fed and he could we would have the expense of formula (or I could pump which would eat into my time). NHS and WHO advise to milk feed exclusively until at least 6 months and on demand. Milk should be offered until 2. Full time nursery in my area is quite affordable, but is still more than a quarter of our net income. The cost of working (eg petrol for commute) means it’s almost not worth one of us working. I know a lot of full time SAHDs but DH has overtime in his job so I’ll be the one taking the career break which has a long term impact on my earning potential. So, why does being married matter? Because if DH and I split I am protected. I will never get this time “back”. If he dies I would get additional government benefits that I wouldn’t get if I was unmarried. We’re not wealthy, but I have lost my financial security by having a baby.

@Hoesbeforebroes

Is this a TAAT? Because I can think of a thread recently where a poster came in and berated a woman for not having the 'protection' of marriage despite the OP clarifying that she was the higher earner and quite independent. The poster was really obsessive about it, very weird.

I'm one of those women who lost out having offered the 'protection' of marriage to man with lesser means who turned out to be a twat, so I certainly don't think marriage should be universally recommended but there are obviously cases in which case it's the best thing for women and children.

I think the thread you are talking about was deleted because the OP was obsessive, belligerent and abusive.

I had twins.

OP I would have agreed with you in my twenties when I too thought naively that we live in a world where feminism has succeeded and that being female or being a mother will never limit my life options. I am a doctor and a relatively high earner by the way (nothing like some on here but by no means on minimum wage!)

In reality being female has impacted me negatively in multiple ways from poor mental health (more common in women) to domestic abuse (again mainly women), in my career (was literally once told I didn’t get a job because I am a single mother and they assumed I’d be skipping out on work all the time - never heard of nurseries apparently, once found out a younger male colleague with exactly the same job role as me and who would frequently come to me for advice as more experienced, was being paid the equivalent of 10K more than me of we both worked full time, have been told I can’t apply for a promotion because only available to full time workers - by which they actually mean a man etc etc.). Depressing but true.

Now I know that wasn’t exactly your point but it feeds into all of this. When I was with my husband if our child was sick it was me who would end up talking the day off not him even though I’m the higher earner etc. I had postnatal psychosis and was sectioned and had to take much more time off than planned for maternity leave. I struggled to recover so went back part time. I locummed at one point for the flexibility and couldn’t pay into a pension. And on and on. My career kind of stalled while my husband’s soared due to multiple factors to do with my being female and him being male. Ultimately with child custody I’ve been left totally holding the baby and shouldering absolutely all costs to do with raising our child.

In my particular case I have to say you are right that being married was generally financially unhelpful for me in the end in that I was the higher earner (slightly) and could potentially held liable for some of his (significant) debts as they could be regarded as marital debts, our pensions were disregarded due to a “brief” marriage of 7ish years and our relatively young ages, neither of us had any savings or assets to speak of (other than he had a house overseas but it was felt too complex to bring that into it and he did some fancy legal footwork) and we were both earning enough to self support so we actually ended up with pretty much a clean break.

However the situation would have been very different if I’d never recovered enough to get back to work after we decided to have a baby. And/or if he hadn’t had lots of debts from a business going busy but instead being super successful with high earnings and assets - actually a lot of the business debts was just bad luck and poor timing (with some poor judgement on his part at times). So you never know what life might bring. If you have a child together you are tied together in many ways anyway and so I would say generally better to be married unless you are in a very financially secure position coming into it and partnering with a man in a terrible position financially. Even then there are pre-nups available and other good reasons in my books to get married but I appreciate not everyone thinks the same on that.

I agree with others who say generally the advice to be married for financial protection on here is aimed at stay at home mums who have not had much of a career pre-kids and have often deliberately been the ones to stay at home and do childcare and housework while a male partner earns money for both and builds up assets and pension etc. If that sort of couple split in their 60s if she is unmarried she is at serious financial risk. Many people learn this the hard way.

. Even then there are pre-nups available

Prenups are not legally enforcable in the UK so not worth the paper they're written on. Ultimately, if you have sizeable assets to your name you would be mad to get married in the first place.

When looking at women and men without dependent children, there were 70.6% of women without dependent children in work in 2019” - there were 75.1% of women with dependent children in work in 2019

That will be age related. Students don't work, and many older women (50 plus) retire due to health reasons or through choice

All women regardless of the face whether they are married or not should have their own finances so if anything should go wrong they can afford to set up home on their own. Any woman who is in a better financial situation than their partner is better off not being married as if they were to be married & have to get divorced they could lose out financially.

*this advice only really applies to women who:

• earn a lower salary than their male partner
• are coming into the relationship with no assets
• are planning to give up working for a few years for childcare reasons
• are planning on becoming stay at home mums full time and never returning to work*

If you don't plan to have children, fair enough. If you have children you will more than likely reduce your earning potential through career limitation if not reduced hours. It doesn't only affect sahms. The knock on effect is reduced pension.
If your earnings are significantly higher than your partner's, there may still be no benefit to getting married. But most women earn less than their male partner.

Assets brought to the marriage would have to be big to eclipse the reduction in earnings and pension of even as little as a couple of thousand per year. Perhaps if your parents give you a whole house for example. Again most women aren't in that position

Splitting childcare evenly with the dad sounds nice in theory but the truth is that young children need mum, and most mother's want to be with their children, therefore the default position is that women will be the ones to give up overnight work trips, late finishes, short notice changes of hours, while men carry on the same as they did before.

@Marynotsocontrary

Your figures don't add up OP.

24.9 % of women not working, plus 28.5% of the remainder on reduced hours, means 46.3% of women were affected in 2019.

Or have I misunderstood your figures?

Quite

That the common idea that women need to get married “for protection” doesn’t make sense for most women. This is because the majority of women work, earn their own money, are financially independent both before and after having children so don’t need to rely on a man’s money to survive.

Even if your statistics were right, you are making a lot of assumptions in this sentence which are simply made up. Just because a woman's hours of employment don't drop after having children, you have no idea if she has stayed in the same job and is therefore 'financially independent'. Also, even if (in your hypothetical scenario)a woman's earnings remained identical to those of her partner after having children, if their relationship ends, she is very likely to be stuck with majority of the childcare. But with half the income. If a woman's partner dies, she is not legally entitled to his estate if there isn't a will. Even if there is, his assets will be frozen until after probate.

If you rent together, if you're married, you have the right to stay in the home, even if you're not named on the tenancy agreement.

Etc, etc.

In summary,you're talking out of your arse

Dependent children includes children up to 18. Just because in the snapshot in 2019 a woman is full time, doesn't mean she has never gone part time.

Your stats don't mean "X percent of women with children have always worked and have always been full time", with the resulting implication that there has been no financial disparity in their marriage. Some of those women have older kids but took significant time off, pay cuts to go part time etc, when their children were younger.

This is clear when you look at the breakdown by age of child www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/familiesandthelabourmarketengland/2019

You're living in an idealised world.
I was never going to be a sahm either.
But when you have kids with needs you don't actually get a choice.

Another way to resd your stats:

Approximately 1/4 women quit work altogether after having children.

Of those that do go back to work, approximately 1/4 don't go back full time.

That's a very significant minority.

Issues with your statistical analysis aside, you’ve misunderstood the narrative, OP.

Marriage doesn’t protect the woman; it protects the more financially vulnerable spouse. Tellingly, that’s usually the woman.

What the ONS data you’ve found doesn’t tell you is how many women have had to take pay cuts as they need a job that fits around childcare; how many women take a few years to be a SAHM and never get back to the level of earnings they once had; and how many of those women are parenting alone.

"Hmm, thing is that advice about women needing to marry for financial and legal protection, aka access to a share of a man’s money is given here to women as a whole."

@NewFem - actually OP, the majority of the advice on here always varies according to the situation. Women who already have kids and/or assets, then meet a new partner, are usually advised not to marry, as it puts their assets at risk, and the children's future inheritance. Especially when the partner is a low earner, but anyway just to protect the children's interest.

Women who move into a man's property, earn same or less than him, get pregnant, use their savings on paying for baby, give up work for a few years to look for baby, are advised that if they are not married they are at risk of getting zero support or cash if they split, whereas if they were married they would be entitled to a share of the properties value. that they have pair into, either directly, or indirectly by giving up, or curtailing, work to bring up their children (bringing up children is work).

You also need to consider that when you have children, unless you have fantastic emergency childcare, it's incredibly difficult for both parents to pursue the type of careers that requires you to put work before family. If you are both, for example, City lawyers and both have very important in person meetings to attend on the day that your 6 year old develops chickenpox, someone has to stay home and have work interrupted. In an ideal world these types of days would be split equally but it is difficult and covid has made it much worse with all the isolating that was required. Also, going through pregnancy and maternity leave, particularly if you have multiple DC close together, means that your earning potential may have already been stunted compared to an equivalent male who has not had that disruption. My DP is 32 and earns 80K, his income has doubled since he became a father at age 27. Mine has increased by 20% in the same time period. I have chosen to work at a company that offers flexibility to attract and retain staff as they cannot offer market rate salaries. I could earn more now, but would not out earn my DP, by choosing a different company but would lose the flexibility. I would be financially ok on my salary alone if we split but I do still want the protection that our marriage due to take place next year will give me as I have made sacrifices to facilitate DP's career at the expense of my own.