Apparently I'm "old fashioned and anti-feminist"

[MVDC]

Because I told my friend who's thinking about TTC that she should seriously consider getting married first, even if it's just a register office job.

Apparently that makes me puritanical and woman shaming. Have directed her to the 4 threads I've read so far this morning where women had kids unmarried and are now getting completely screwed by their partners as the relationship breaks down.

I'm really, really angry. Not so much at my friend as at society who's convinced women that "cool girls don't need marriage" and I'm just... My coffee isn't Irish enough.

And all the above quotes...

Talk about sleepwalking into disaster. Boggles my mind; did she ever stop to think along the way?

Really?
I took it to mean there wasn’t enough booze in it

I guess it means she needs a shot of Irish whisky ?

Or you could get offended like many on here and call her out as racist/nationalist/whatever 😂

You have no idea of the future and what it will bring. How many threads do we see on here about women who are not married and have shit all financial protection?

And the taxpayers who then get to support the "struggling lone parent " and offspring

this is so fucking offensive. I have been a 'struggling lone parent' for the last 15 years. No maintenance, just a ton of hassle. I have done everything I can to keep our heads above water, I have worked full time, and I have done part time and seasonal work on the side of the full time roles. And I have still been entitled to a small amount in tax credits the whole time. I might not be a higher rate tax payer, but I am still a tax payer and I've done my best. Same as thousands of others in the same situation. It has been a huge struggle, not a 'struggle'. The emotional toll, not to mention the physical one and then idiots like you belittle and put down from what you consider a position of superiority. You got lucky. So far. Shit happens - ask any 'struggling lone parent'.

Tbh. I’d just do without the man. Most marriages end and most men don’t want marriage. I see so many people in miserable marriages. Getting married is very much keeping up with the Jones’s. I agree it gives women protection but who really want to be reliant on a man any way?

I might be being stupid, but I really don't see how that could be insulting? I got married at a register office!

Irish coffee is a normal coffee with whiskey.

@Fizzywaterbubbles plenty, as it happens. She thinks my “life is a waste” because “women were put on earth to have babies” and I am child free by choice (but have DSC). Other interesting comments include “a woman should never refuse sex with her boyfriend, it’s his right”. Which also makes me despair!

Neither a man nor a marriage should be a plan for financial stability in life. Women are just as capable as working, investing, and achieving financial success, stability, and independence as men. The idea that men have a duty to be the financial providers and to take care of women is old fashioned and anti feminist. Women aren't plants or pets or children. They are capable adults who can equally take care of themselves, just like a man. Many women have children and still made sound financial and career decisions.

Telling women to get married so that a man can support them and financially provide for them is horrible advice.

Yes I know what Irish coffee is.

Just wondered if the phrase did merely mean needing more alcohol/whiskey.

Wow lots of comments directed at my post, too many to answer individually and obviously this thread isn’t about me but I was just trying to illustrate how marriage doesn’t always offer a benefit or a protection, and OP may not realise that may also be the case for her friend.

For me personally I’ve made sure I’m protected as much as I can be, but I do not want to be legally married again. My Dad is my next of kin, my brother and my dad have LPA for both health and finances which I’m happy with. I’ve protected my deposit, we have various insurances and should I die I want my 2 existing children to inherit, as well as the new baby. My DP will be the stay at home parent if most of those other scenarios happen and it’s very unlikely he’ll start out earning me, if he does well then good for him. The other scenarios, well a split/divorces is far far more likely than me and my child becoming disabled suddenly and if it does happen and my DP decides to leave I’d rather he left and I still had all my assets than he left and was legally able to take half of them.

If in years to come we’re still together and we see a benefit to marriage such as avoiding inheritance tax then maybe we would enter into a civil partnership like some others have noticed their friends are doing.

@HippeePrincess

sounds like you have all the bases covered glad to hear it

You say your DP will be staying at home. is your DP also protected?

The thing is having children puts women at a financial disadvantage compared to men. They are the ones getting pregnant, giving birth They go on maternity leave. And also often take responsibility for younger children. This is triply so if your child has additional needs. So even if you have equal assets, earn more than your partner when you meet, this may change significantly once you have children. It's still the case that women also take the burden of unpaid work in the house. Studies show how the gender gap massively increases once women have children.

ifs.org.uk/publications/women-and-men-work

Yes. And while there are things lots of individual women can do to mitigate the risk of falling foul of these societal, structural factors, one thing we can't do is simply choose to opt out of it. Which some of the advice about telling girls to worry about their careers and earning potential instead sometimes skirts dangerously close to.

Unless you're megarich, which is a sufficiently small group as to be irrelevant to most of us, you only ever need a certain amount of bad luck before some or all of these bite you on the arse. You can't choose not to experience maternity discrimination. You can't choose not to have a child for whom care isn't available or suitable, nor to make your partner do their share in these very difficult situations if they're determined not to or simply cannot cope. You can't choose to live in a society that isn't actually particularly arsed if men do their share of parenting or not, especially not when one of the DC has very significant needs.

None of which is to say there aren't women for whom marriage would be a disadvantage, or at least not confer significant benefit. But merely being female, particularly if you're going to insist on doing something as XX as breeding, that confers a specific set of risks itself in a patriarchal society that undervalues caring labour whilst simultaneously gendering it.

The marriage issue is a particular MN hobby horse, it seems to me. Amid the voluminous, increasingly confrontational threads where two groups of women attack each other for making different lifestyle choices to the ones they personally made, it's also one that's getting lost in the noise.

How others decide to structure their lives is up to them. I don't owe other women respect or support on account of shared XX chromosomes, and don't require similar validation from them. But there will always be women wanting this, and other women waiting in the sidelines to tell them they are wrong.

OP, as you've just discovered, unsolicited advice is rarely welcome. I'd have kept my opinion to myself. Your friend didn't ask you specifically about her marital situation, she asked you about TTC. On that point she's also at fault. Who actually asks other people about that?

Maybe both of you could take out of this the lesson that sometimes the better part of valour is discretion.

I've never been married.
I've been with DP 35 years.
I legally own half of everything.
I've always worked and earned my own money and the children have my surname.
Not really sure why you think me being married would get me anything more?!

I just have a gut feeling that OP is a person with fierce opinions. Which means she has friends with fierce opinions. So... Hope you make up the friendship, OP.

Are prenuptial agreements any good?

Let me tell you a story. I know someone who separated from her husband almost 20 years ago but they never divorced. He dropped dead out of the blue. His employment carried a death in service benefit and, as they were legally married still, she found a six figure sum in her bank account. The woman he lived with got nothing because the terms and conditions specified spouse only.

I think you gave the wrong piece of advice to your friend. Rather than tell her to get married, tell her to make sure she is financially independant, and to ring fence her assets (so for instance to not agree to something like he pays the mortgage and she pays the groceries).

That advice may have been better received, too.

@Blossomtoes we are both named recipients on each other's insurance and pension.
We are legally water tight and I'm independent financially as well.
It's worked for us.
We have always jointly owned everything.
I've never relied on anyone to support me.
We are equal.

Now that would have been remarkably tone deaf. She makes NMW and has no assets. Hence why I think she should consider getting married before TTC.

That’s good. But that particular death in service payment stipulated quite clearly that only a spouse could benefit. So an ex of more than 20 years got more than £1 million tax free. I bet a few weddings of that company’s employees took place quite quickly after that guy died.