To be amazed how much women benefit financially from marriage

[Singleparent78]

I've been single most of my adult life, worked FT and built up a good career but despite this... I'm always struck how much better off women who are married are than me.

It's not just about the merging together of two salaries, but about how much easier financial life is when you have the benefit of a man's higher average income, giving many women a lifestyle they could never afford on their own salaries.

Consider:

• the many women I work with on low salaries or working part-time who are living much nicer lifestyles than I as they have a man significantly supplementing them.

• the married women I know at 45+ who have moved to part-time or stopped working as they have accrued significant savings with their dh but, critically, their dh is now a high earner who can pay for both of them.

• the girls from school who didn't go onto further education, got married soon out of school and haven't worked at all or a bit of p-time - they mostly live in nice houses and cars, have enjoyed nice holidays etc. There hasn't been much 'penalty' for not being independent or not having a career.

All in all these women, by way of marriage, seem to have an easier go than solo me slogging it out for 30 years working FT and trying my best to be independent.... like the teachers at school told us girls to be!

I understand: all the constraints on women to generate their own income esp the gender pay gap and the impact of childrearing; that the above scenarios don't apply to all couples; that I'm assuming a heterosexual set up; that women contribute within marriages in other way than bringing in income; and that assets in a marriage are shared as is any income that comes into a marriage. I know people might think I'm being anti-women for challenging women's choices or women's rights or just plain bitter...

Still, AIBU to wonder:.......Is it not depressing that the best or most common way for women to be financially comfortable or create wealth is still through marriage and the merging of assets with a man?

And as a single parent does that mean my career is doomed because (a) I don't have someone ironing my shirts or picking up the kids for me and (b) because I have to compete against enabled men like your husband?

Nor doomed, but harder.

Why should we only say this to our daughters and not our sons? There is nothing wrong with a relationship model when one person works more outside the home and one more at home, but there is no reason it has to be the mother primarily at home. It’s not helpful to implant these cliches in young minds.

I do also wish people would stop trotting out the ‘no one will ever regret spending more time at work on their deathbed’ line. Plenty of people get to the end of their lives and wish they’d had more interesting jobs / got higher at work / earned more. Not everyone, but plenty.

In my work nearly all the men with children have wives who enable them hugely and of course this is an advantage. One senior man admitted to me he'd used a hoover for the first time last year in his entire life, aged mid-fifties. They stay late, write more, attend more conferences, network more, it massively benefits them. I speak to their pissed off wives who wish their careers were better and are still picking up part-time or contract work all the time. Some men/women are more equal but they are in the minority I would say. They often don't have children though, so can both put a lot into their respective careers. It is changing, but being a single parent is a huge disadvantage if you have no other parent support, childcare or money-wise.

Also, everyone is assuming this is about when the children are little and need childcare, but I know quite a few women either stepping back or staying stepped back from careers as they approach menopause/kids are teens or leaving home, that can be a demanding time, also needing to care for parents, so the care demands on women never seem to quite cease.

OK, one more time…

Most of the gap in earnings is because of married women choosing to give up work once they have children. You can’t use the data for all women (which includes married women) to extrapolate and make statements about single women, which is a heavily biased subset of the wider group.

Women out- earn men into their thirties. If you look only at the single cohort it’s very likely that the crossover point is at a significantly higher age.

Many men put attractiveness near the top of their priorities in a life partner. Many women put financial potential near the top of their priorities in a life partner. Many of both sexes do this, of course, without even being fully conscious that’s what they’re doing. It’s been this way for tens of thousands of years. So this is really one of the big dilemmas for feminism: The fact that men generally like gawping at women more than vice versa, while women massively outspend men on beauty products, clothing, and domestic stuff isn’t a consequence of social conditioning/the cause of social inequality between the sexes. Rather the reality of these differences is a consequence of biological/psychological differences between the sexes that probably goes back millions of years.

Of course, you can always try to find someone who is hot as hell and super loaded.

FarFarFarAndAway · Today 16:17
In my work nearly all the men with children have wives who enable them hugely and of course this is an advantage. One senior man admitted to me he'd used a hoover for the first time last year in his entire life, aged mid-fifties.

@FarFarFarAndAway it's so depressing isn't it? I get to work with some of these enabled, sometimes arrogant men and I often wonder 'who are the kept wives who enable these men and do they know what they have created'???

(b) because I have to compete against enabled men like your husband?

Now that is an interesting point. My DH doesn’t work, it has has definitely help my career compared to other women who are single parents or who’s husband works.

OP I can relate to your points. In my work it's very transparent what grade everyone is and therefore how much they earn. It seems to me that for many (older females in particular) there is no association between their salary and their standard of living. Several work part time in relatively low paid (and relatively low stress) roles and live in very expensive areas that I can only dream of.

I only met my partner in my mid 30s so had many years as a single adult. I'd say the biggest financial advantage to being in a couple for me is the added financial security of two incomes. But my partner doesn't earn at a level that has changed my life in terms of my general lifestyle/where we can afford to live.

Go on Relationships and see the number of women whose marriages break down and they are financially fucked. Over 40% of marriages end in divorce, most in late 40s or 50s. In Australia, divorced women are a rising cohort in homelessness. In any other context, a 58% chance of something working out isn’t that great in terms of odds.

But men’s income is only higher in couples where women have taken time out of their careers to raise children, or gone part time - the gender pay gap relates to this, rather than women being paid less for the same work as men. If a woman has gone back to work full time and the couple has used childcare, which is a family expense, there is no reason why her earning power should have been affected at all.

We have no children, I have always been the higher earner and always will be. This is the case for about half the couples I know well enough to know their financial positions.

We have both benefitted from living as a two-person household because it meant that we could afford a larger house than either of us would have on one salary alone, and there are obviously economies in splitting the other bills. We happen to be a heterosexual couple, but this would equally be the case for same-sex partners. It’s not about men and women but a couple versus a single person.

Most of the gap in earnings is because of married women choosing to give up work once they have children.

But do you see that this is often due to societal pressure and expectations / male partners not being willing to do equal childcare / male partners having longer term better earning potential due to the gender pay gap etc?

Some women proactively choose to be SAHM because they want to give up work and are genuinely happy to do so. Many do it because society is constructed in a way that makes it more socially acceptable and financially rewarding for them to do it rather than their male partner, allowing their male partner to earn more and have the opportunity to continue being promoted.

I didn't get married because I thought I would have an easier more comfortable lifestyle.

Why have you avoided marriage?

Bloody hell! You’ve got it all so wrong and you’re so bitter! Come to my world where the majority of women I know are the high earners and it takes a lot of juggling and team work. A lot of ridiculously sexist generalisations there Op

Yes, but that doesn’t mean that the OP gets to mis-use the resultant statistics. The causes don’t matter when the question is “do single women earn less than men.”

I'm not making an argument, it's an observation that actually for many women marrying is probably a better solution to long-term financial security than being independent.

I agree with the person who said it isn't just about small children. I Amat the stage of teenagers and elderly relatives. In some ways this is harder than when I had tiny children as there was more support around.

I'm not trying to moan about married women, it's more of an observation that despite what 2nd wave feminism told us being independent is hard work and default marriage is actually probably an easier and more financially secure option.

YANBU. Lone parent here too. My DPs were weird about me being dependent on someone, probably because they had such a crap marriage. I have built a career and a business and am financially independent but my life has been incredibly stressful and I have little time for myself. My DD is going into a health-based career but fully intends to be with a high-earning man to work PT to have kids. In my 20s I would have been horrified, but after nearly 35 years of working full time myself, now with health problems but still having to carry on with the same in the near future I can't help but think it's a good plan.

This is said ALL the time but most men I know in most kind of jobs would earn the same kind of income regardless of whether they have support at home or not. Granted there are perhaps the very high flying, long hours, lots of travel jobs where obviously ones ability to do that job is infinitely easier if you have a stay at home spouse when children are little. But they are surely a small minority of jobs. Most men I know have the same kind of jobs with occasional promotions (just like everyone else) right through their lives regardless of what is going on in their private or family lives.

Having read through your posts I (reluctantly) agree with you...

I think a single woman such as yourself supporting 2 kids will always be worse off in general to a married couple with 2 kids. You're right, I "could" put my child in full time care and work full time, and you are right I don't have to do that as I have a husband bringing in a wage so I work part time. That's us a luxury, I know I would be worse off if we broke up.

I don't know what the answer really is though. I can't see many men subsiding their ex for financial losses due to having children sadly unless they have agreed spousal maintenance maybe?

@TaranThePigKeeper In my second career, top of my game is about £100k to £120k in my sector. In DH's first career top the game was about £800k to £1m. I didn't earn less because I had dc, I earnt less because of the ceiling.

IMO the vast majority of “successful” AKA long term marriages - be it marriage #1 or marriage #2 or #3, aren’t built on the fact that they are utterly head over heals in love with the other person and can’t imagine ever getting tired of them. They are instead built on the intuitive understanding that marriage is a massive compromise - your partner will often drive you up the wall, you will have less “me” time, you often won’t get the final word on purchases/holidays etc. And that’s if you’re lucky. But marriage also comes with significant “compensation”. Biggest among which is that two salaries/four hands are usually (assuming the partners are reasonably complimentary) better than one salary and two hands! This used to be understood be all, but I guess with the atomisation/individualism it’s been forgotten by some. “Going it alone” is a tough but viable option in richer, developed countries. In many poorer countries it’s unthinkable, and in many others a decision fraught with much greater risk.

I was here, this is an intersting point, which suggests the wage discrepency occurs before maternity leave or why is it the wife's career which is put into cold storage rather than the husband's ? When this happened to us, DH did become the mian carer for about 18m. Interestingly he really wanted to return to fulltime work after that. Despite me being the higher earner (nearly always) he has never felt it sufficient to support me.

If we had to live on my husbands salary we wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage. If he didn't work we'd have no financial issues at all, so I think that's a really stereotypical view

that's your experience @CHiSOCG but the flip side is the shitty working class town where I grew up in and where most women did not pursue FE and left school at 17. Most women in my town knew that marriage was the best route to some semblance of financial security and that being a SAHM was a hell of a lot easier than taking the low pay and low skill jobs available.