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

Women are perfectly capable of being educated, having a high salary and making a living for themselves

Of course they are but society is still lagging behind and there is still a huge gender pay gap in the UK.

This will be a lovely ideal to live by once society actually catches up. In the meantime you will still get people marrying for financial protection and security.

I think what you are describing is an ideal scenario and in this scenario: where a woman is well educated and gets a job at parity with a man she shouldnt need to get married.

It’s my fervent hope that as women’s earning power increases the need for marriage will become less and less.

But now most women earn less than most men and they take an unfair share of childcare and domestic responsibilities. Until that happens marriage is basically insurance for these women which is why it’s recommended if you earn nothing or less than him.

In my friendship groups there is only 1 woman who has not reduced her hours since having children. Many of us have also taken on "lower" jobs or remain at a level previous to childbirth because it works better with having young children

Don't get me wrong, in my case it's 100% my choice, I wanted to be at home more for my kids and would rather have a little less money and career progression to do this

@Imdreamingofapeacefulxmas

One lady said for instance how upset she was going back to work after maternity leave but had had massive kitchen renovation done and was constantly going on about those hot water taps and Wolfe appliances and which one to get? She kept repeating how she had to work and yet Wolfe appliances cost a fortune? It felt so odd to me.

I do know what you mean.when i was a single parent i was for a while genuinely unable to make working work for us. But i used to hear people saying they had to work and feel annoyed they didnt realise they could afford to work. But obviously mothers shouldnt be in these situations. Childcare sould be subsidised.

Even when mothers work full time, as I do, there is frequently an earnings ‘penalty’, that doesn’t apply to fathers. Fathers earn more and have more financial assets.

Had, many men won't do that though, I mean the roof over your head is surely a massive deal?

Weddings don't have to be expensive.
I wouldn't have dc with a man and not have names on the deed.

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.
Bollocks.

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

Again, bollocks. This is advice is only ever given to women in those categories.

I don’t think you’ve been on MN long, or you haven’t understood what you’ve read.

An fia.. It did annoy me because we went without. Our kitchen should have been replaced 15 years ago it was bad then! We just waited.
Then she would throw around comments like, I'm lucky I can afford time off.

So infuriating!! Yes because we are living on the bone and don't want quooker taps and Wolfe appliances and extentions. So annoying. She ruined my nct experience to be honest.

I agree with you OP. The double standards are ridiculous in a society where we’re supposed to be striving for equality.

Men are called cocklodgers for marrying men who are financially less well off, but women who do the same are just protecting themselves.

I don’t want to be considered less capable of providing fo myself and my dc just because a tiny proportion of my working years were interrupted when I chose to have a couple of children.

I'm with @SpanielSprint

Your figures are a snapshot. They do not show employment patterns.

I may appear to be one of the 72% working women (who apparently doesn't need a man), but like PP, I have taken career hits like not applying for promotion and worse still, a big pension shortfall from years of maternity leave and PT working. I do not earn anything near like I had anticipated for myself.

I am happy to have done that and would do it all again.

Why? Because when I do retire I'm going to have lots and lots of money from the man currently snoring upstairs. He's paying far more than me on the bills, insurance, mortgage and university costs. He loves telling me about his massive pension and how the house prices in our street have risen. I love reminding him that half of it is mine, all mine and that the only thing keeping between him and divorce is his ability with tea-making and car defrosting.

I did the smart thing and got married before having kids.

I highly recommend it.

OP is really missing the bigger picture.

First, let's not forget that these highly educated women still earn less than their male peers for the same job/skills as soon as they graduate (look it up! it's a scandal, it's real)

Then, as soon as children enter the equation, you may be able to maintain your previous salary (may...), but your outgoings go through the roof (childcare, food, clothing, accommodation, ...). Most parents need to pool financial resources to make ends meet.

Now consider for instance, death and ill health.
A married woman stands to automatically inherit from her husband if he were to die, and a lot of this tax free. An unmarried woman is entitled to a big fat nothing unless there's a favourable will. Many do not have a will, and find themselves in deep shit when their partner dies, since resources that were previously pooled dry up.
Similarly, a woman can become so ill she can no longer work. At that stage, the married woman is (somewhat) protected financially. If her husband decides to leave her, she'll get her share of joint assets, and can claim maintenance if she's still in charge of the kids. The unmarried woman can be abandoned with all the responsibilities and no resources.

The average of ‘mothers’ is meaningless though because you need to stratify caring responsibilities by age. As the ONS does in fact do:

“The way couple families structured their employment differed depending on the age of the youngest dependent child. Figure 3 shows that families whose youngest dependent child was aged between three and four years were most likely to have a father working full-time while their partner worked part-time (56.5%). In comparison, parents whose youngest dependent child was aged between 16 and 18 years were most likely to both be in full-time employment (58.3%).”

Age clearly matters and once women have had a period of mat leave and part time work, they are likely to be behind where they might have otherwise been.

Also the ONS show a clear difference between men and women

“mothers were most likely to say they “reduced working hours” because of childcare, with around 3 in 10 mothers (28.5%) selecting this. In comparison, 1 in 20 fathers (4.8%) said they reduced working hours for childcare reasons. In addition, around 1 in 12 (8.0%) mothers said they had changed jobs or employer to help with childcare arrangements, compared with 1 in 50 fathers (2.0%).

For all of these reasons:

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/2019/10/22/how-womens-employment-changes-after-having-a-child

People who are married/civil partnership earn the benefit of being able to pass valuable assets to the survivor upon death IHT free. Upon divorce there is a legal recourse to split finances. If you are not married/civil partnership there is not.

Let's be honest most people are in the above category, not reducing hours due to young children.

I find these stats really interesting. Genuinely. Because in my experience very few families I know have two full time working parents. I work on a team which is majority women and I am one of 5 full time workers, in a team of 30+, everyone else has at least one extra day off per week, most people work 3 days.
I don't have any mum friends at the school because I dont do drop off or pick up. But most mums I know of (I'm in the WhatsApp group ugh) work part time and can do school stuff like helping to paint the library and join the planning meetings at 2pm.

(I always feel very hard done by cos I'm THE ONLY MUM EVER who has to work full time and I'm still skint as shit 😂)

Anyway. Interesting. I'd love to see more of a breakdown of ages, areas, income brackets etc of which women work full time and which don't. Just cos I genuinely am interested.

@LethargicActress

I agree with you OP. The double standards are ridiculous in a society where we’re supposed to be striving for equality.

Men are called cocklodgers for marrying men who are financially less well off, but women who do the same are just protecting themselves.

I don’t want to be considered less capable of providing fo myself and my dc just because a tiny proportion of my working years were interrupted when I chose to have a couple of children.

Men are called cocklodgers if they financially leech off of a partner whilst also doing nothing around the house and not pulling their weight with the children. I'm sure a sahm would came on and said actually I do fuck all (not sure who that would work mind) would be told the same. Have you seen anyone say my children are at school but I don't want to go back to work? Most comments are lazy get a job. Not double standards in the way you're professing it to be.

When I was going back to work after being a SAHM, my DH told me that he wouldn’t be ringing in sick to his job if the kids were off school ill 🙄

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.

you don't mention the hours of work, how many of this woman juggle part time hours outside the home whilst their salary is lower so they can juggle children - whilst the other partner in the family continues in the main to work full time and put in full time pension contributions and climb any career ladder as a full time worker

In later life women often find themselves caring for elderly parents in at least some respect, even if it means being the one who has to drop everything for emergencies. Often at the same time they’re dealing with menopause.

If you’re in your fifties and spending time in A and E or dashing down motorways to care homes or taking people to chemo appointments having had a terrible night’s sleep as a result of menopause, I can tell you that it isn’t career-enhancing. Lots of women give up serious work at this stage because they are at breaking point. If they’re lucky they have accrued savings or a supportive husband. There is an awkward gap between 55 and pension age.

Would any person go into any type of partnership without having any legal papers drawn up and signed to protect both parties?

@LethargicActress

I agree with you OP. The double standards are ridiculous in a society where we’re supposed to be striving for equality.

Men are called cocklodgers for marrying men who are financially less well off, but women who do the same are just protecting themselves.

I don’t want to be considered less capable of providing fo myself and my dc just because a tiny proportion of my working years were interrupted when I chose to have a couple of children.

The difference between a cocklodger and a SAHP is that the SAHP (usually mother) is carrying the unpaid domestic load and doing a lot of poorly recognised, unpaid work that keeps the household working while the breadwinner can prioritise their (usually his) career.

The female term for cocklodger is gold digger (which is probably the older phrase) and is generally a term used when there's significant affluence involved because once children enter the equation, it takes significant money to outsource care and domestic responsibilities to get away with putting nothing into household life.

Also, about "choosing" to leave work to look after your kids... consider having a disabled child (not a choice!) who requires additional care, cannot access regular childcare... Someone will need to reduce their hours, someone may need to quit their job. Guess who? Typically, the mother.
Again, the unmarried mother stands to lose most if this eventually (not uncommon) leads to relationship break down.

In short, the idea that by having a career, one can have full control of their own life, and guaranteed financial independence, is ridiculous. Ill health happens, disabilities happen, death happens. Children are expensive, resources need pooling. The marriage framework offers some guarantees that this pooling will occur more or less fairly.
Think of it has insurance... Yes, you may not need it. Yes, the other party may end up benefitting more. So what? In a team, it's only fair.

@oneglassandpuzzled

In later life women often find themselves caring for elderly parents in at least some respect, even if it means being the one who has to drop everything for emergencies. Often at the same time they’re dealing with menopause.

If you’re in your fifties and spending time in A and E or dashing down motorways to care homes or taking people to chemo appointments having had a terrible night’s sleep as a result of menopause, I can tell you that it isn’t career-enhancing. Lots of women give up serious work at this stage because they are at breaking point. If they’re lucky they have accrued savings or a supportive husband. There is an awkward gap between 55 and pension age.

I agree. I’ve seen several women I have worked with start to struggle at this age, and take early retirement.

Surely you know the advice to marry for financial protection is centred around motherhood, not just being a woman?!

Women's earnings are negatively impacted by having kids because they take on most of the childcare (link below, but there are many, just google around it). The stats you've given are about staying in some kind of work, not what you earn.

Being married is still a tax advantage, so the couple can build more assets when they are married. And it's an advantage in terms of your rights to pension, property and other shared assets in the event of separation. It also makes you significantly less likely to separate in the first place.

The protection of marriage would apply to a male partner who had put his career on the back burner to raise the kids, although such men are still rare.

theconversation.com/women-earn-less-after-they-have-kids-despite-strong-credentials-94013

At least this is my opinion based on data and my own life experiences

And yet despite all that education you join a women centred site to display how poorly you have understood actual outcomes for women living in a supposedly equal society.

Your own life experiences are anecdata btw. You might want to broaden your data research and look at areas such as, for example:

• the impact of maternity on life time earnings even for women who continue to work
• the societal pressures which still hold despite women achieving better at school
• the fact that jobs dominated by women are less well paid than equivalent jobs dominated by men and we still have a sex based pay gap
• unequal health care outcomes for men and womens ailments
• the myriad of inequalities arising from the default male model being used in decision making
• the pensions gap which follows on from many of the above
• etc

All the above combined contribute to reasons why women, particularly those who bear the load of family responsibilities and have to compromise their work opportunities, are better off married before making that sacrifice.

Biology and societal patriarchy have not gone away, despite the desire of so many men to pretend it has.