How many more women are going to find themselves in this situation ?

[sofrustratedbylackofknowledge]

Thread borne by the sheer amount of posts this week alone, of women who have moved in with wealthier men . Men who own houses solely in their name.. and women who have children with them without a contract of marriage or civil partnership..

The relationship breaks down and the woman is either not working or massively economically disadvantaged compared with their partners .

Made even worst by the courts bias towards shared care rendering CM almost negligible...

Why are women putting themselves in this situation. ?

Marriage has a lot of patriarchal connotations which are 'no go' for some women... but now we have civil partnerships why would you not go for this option .. ? Or is it the man refusing to commit ?

Also really concerned about the massive number of contraception failures . So many women taking the pill finding themselves pregnant and deciding to continue the pregnancy with no legal protection ..is the pill /implant failing ?

Exactly. I've no patience with the "but I fell pregnant and can't bear the thought of a termination" crowd that now expects victim status and sympathy.

If I were against termination I'd be using abstinence or three methods of contraception. Not rolling the dice with the first warm body that gave me five minutes of his time.

The marriage thing only benefits middle class women who have no intention of going back to work SAHM. A penniless working class woman married to a WC man renting is better off never marrying. She can easily leave the relationship and claim benefits if things go wrong.

It's not just financially.
My cousin was with her DP for 17 years & 3 DC when he had a bleed on the brain. He was obviously seriously ill and she was astonished to realise that she wasn't legally his next of kin, his sister was as his parents had already died. On further inspection she also found out that he had never got around to making a will, so their house ( he had bought just before they got together) was not legally anything to do with her.
Luckily his sister was great and he recovered but things could have gone horribly wrong and she would of been homeless with 3DC.
As soon as he had recovered enough they had a registry office wedding with me and DH as witnesses.

@EveryoneToHisOwnGout I think you would be absolutely horrified to discover how much that has changed in recent times. I had a substantial amount of money when I entered the marriage and had rental income from properties that supported a very nice lifestyle for us all, but when it came to divorce because I didn’t physically go out to work, the judge basically implied, I sat on my arse for the last 10 years..

The thing is, saying "just get married" is pointless, because both people have to agree to marry, but often it is the man who doesn't want to get married. The woman then has to decide if she should risk ending the relationship to go through the process of finding another man, or just have children with the current one and hope he'll change his mind later. You can't force someone to marry you.

Why is there such desperation on some women’s part to have a baby with literally anyone.

Because a lot of men are unwilling to commit, which reduces the amount of potential partners, and then some women keep lowering the bar.

This is gonna sound incredibly brutal, but I think my mother did that and ended up with two children that she basically couldn’t stand and she couldn’t live with. He, the father was an abusive bastard that nearly killed her a couple of times, and to be frank. Her sons of grown up to be an absolute carbon copy of him. They’ve both been very physical with their partners, and therefore we don’t see the nieces, nephews grandchildren as a result.
She would’ve been far better off do not have children.

^ And you have nailed it on the head .. not 'worth it to them' .to commit .. yet 18 years + of child rearing is not considered 'committed' ?

Why not if a woman works etc? Many men will waste her fertile years. The woman then has to undergo expensive treatment with low chance of working, have donor eggs etc. To be honest women make the best of it. Not every woman is going to find a kind rich generous man who is going marry and take care of the DC. There's not enough of them.

sofrustratedbylackofknowledge

When male contraceptives are talked about on here several things happen.
Various half truths are posted about the trials and results.
And most of the posters say that they wouldn't be happy to lose control of the couple's fertility.

Most men that I know and have spoken to about this would love for there to be a male pill.

Not true.

Being married gives access to a greater range of bereavement benefits and the penniless working class woman is, if widowed, more likely to need these than the woman with more money.

@DashboardConfessional

It would be nice, but actually for a lot of exes on here it seems 50/50 actually means "hand child over to new girlfriend because I'm busy doing my important man job".

Yes... and foolishly, once again the new girlfriend allows it. The first woman puts herself in the situation, then the next one becomes the nanny with benefits.

I don't get the attraction of a man dumping his kids on you, yet time and time again...women...often younger ones, jump in, sit they're so desperate for any man.

They got rid of the widowed parents allowance it's now a breavement support payment which is much less. It's now 9000 for death of a spouse not a life changing amount and they will lose their benefits.

Many men will waste her fertile years
indeed, best time to have a baby from a health point of view is probably 19-25 ish, but that can be a huge disadvantage in other respects
also you want a big fit athletic man with good genes, desperate Dan jawline and all that.....but that can be a huge disadvantage in other respects.
if I was young and wanted children I think I'd be on the prowl to get myself knocked up by an alpha.....but I'd make damn sure he didnt know anything about the resultant child

They did indeed get rid of it, but what remains is still more generous for a married bereaved partner. The lump sum wouldn't lose them benefits either.

Nobody said it was life changing, but the fact that it exists makes your claim about penniless working class women wrong.

The problems occur when women don't work for years.

I think MN often inflates the safety net of marriage. Yes, there may well be more protection than being unmarried but there are plenty of ways men can get out of paying enough. There are also other situations to take into account too that don't involve men being shits - relying solely on another person is a very precarious place to be.

I have ds's and I have advised them not to marry unless their partner have the same amount of assets as them.

We all know that marriage, or rather divorce, favours the poorer partner. I've also told my ds's to be fully in control of when they want a child and to be responsible for their own contraception and not rely on the woman.

I am married and my dh and I had similar amounts of assets when we married.

I grew up watching my mother rely on one seemingly terrible man after another. We were moved about, pillar to post, spent years in temporary accommodation. She has nothing now but another terrible man makes all of the still terrible decisions. Despite her constantly telling us what a fierce, intelligent feminist she is.

It made me absolutely determined to be as independent as possible. I was a teenage mum, but I have pulled together some sort of career and have always been the breadwinner. It's boring, it isn't what I want to do. But it pays.

When my husband and I bought our home, I only agreed to borrow what we could afford to repay on one salary, so should he fuck up/leave/lose his job/die I would be okay
and actually if I did any of those things, so would he.

I never had security growing up. I never knew a great male or female provider. I see other women who are so vulnerable and I get frustrated at them. Which is entirely shitty and unreasonable of me, and is a clear manifestation of my own demons.

It's a nice idea that both parents can be financially independent, but actually very difficult to achieve. A child with health concerns, even relatively minor, can cost a patent their job. Travel, childcare, not getting the first choice of school, an elderly parent, more than 2 children, children from a previous relationship ... Any one of those things can make it impossible to work full time.

The answer is to ensure that part time work is reliable so that people in those jobs have some security, and ANY person who becomes a parent is responsible for decent financial support until the child is 18, and enforce that, as many other countries do, very effectively. Affordable long tem housing would also be great.

Which is pretty reprehensible. To mate with some low unreliable specimen and then figure the taxpayers can pick up the tab "if" something goes awry.

Oh
i thought that’s what a national curriculum is for?
silly me 🙄

I guess as a parent then I’d get hold of the course and put my kids through it myself then

She would just as fucked if the house was worth £250k though.

I agree that people need to protect themselves. It's particularly pertinent for women as they tend to be the ones leaving work, going part time, giving up occupational pensions etc. I don't know what the answer is though, because nobody believes that their DP will screw them over. Perceived romance seems to trump practicalities.

Well I'm in my 50s, and I knew not to rely on a man, I knew to build my career. So it's not an age thing

Same here.

I think women also do what they saw their mothers and women in their extended family do.

My daughters see that I got married first, that I worked as did their Aunties/Grandma so that's the norm for them.

If they see the older females living with men, no marriage, not working/SAHM forever... then that becomes their norm.

WC have a right to reproduce it's not reserved for the rich. WC also do very important jobs care work etc. Society would fall apart without people doing MW jobs.

I'm guessing WC women need IVF a lot less then MC women because they reproduce younger.