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AIBU?

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Original poster

I think my daughter is throwing her life away

798 replies

BeauxBelle · 23/08/2023 12:14

My daughter is 22, 23 next week, she is a smart, confident, beautiful girl. She did very well in her A-Levels, took a gap year to travel, did a BA in Classics and Ancient History, currently finishing her MA in Classics. She is in a relationship with a man 16 years older, they started dating 3 years ago, got engaged last year, due to marry next September.
We went for lunch yesterday, talking about the future etc. and she dropped that she is starting a second masters next month, immediately after the completion of her current one, this time in English Literature, when I asked why she doesn't plan to get a job, she explained that she doesn't intend to work, She will marry, then they will start trying for children and she will be a stay-at-home mum.
I'm upset and angry, we paid for her to attend top schools her whole life, funded the gap year, all her Uni costs, we are paying for this big dreamy wedding, to a man we do not like (he will be 40 when they marry!!) and for what, for her to stay home and make no life of her own??
Her fiancé is from a decently well off family, he owns a home mortgage free, plans to sell and his parents have offered to cover a ridiculous amount extra to buy a family home. She has tried to reassure me by saying we don't have to pay for this masters as her fiancé has offered to. I'm terrified he is trying to trap her, leave her with no independence. She is sure he isn't. I am a GP, my husband is a Lawyer, I thought we had raised our children to know you have to work hard and earn your own living!!
I feel like she is throwing her life away to play housewife to an older man!!
AIBU to feel she is throwing her life away? Should I share my concerns or leave her to it?

OP posts:
GLORIAGloriarse · 23/08/2023 13:07

Sorry OP but you've raised her to be cosseted and bankrolled by others.

She has zero work ethic because she has never needed one. Staying that a summer or Saturday job was 'never an option' whilst I expect at least some of her friends worked in shops, pulled pints, perhaps did some tutoring, that will have given her the impression that work is not a necessity. And lo, she has been most assiduous in finding her next source of income. Without being rude, what did she actually do for those long weeks at a time spent with elderly relatives? Many kids when travelling pick up a bit of bar work or similar along the way, they aren't just handed tens of thousands of pounds. Did you honestly not see the potential alternative outcome here to your son's?

I would not be paying for this wedding. He is a man of forty-odd who has sought our a much younger woman with no life experience beyond endless holidays and courses seemingly taken for interest only. She has no ambition for herself. This is not a meeting of equals who happen to have an age gap. That isn't a footing on which I would want my daughter starting her married life. I would not trust him to have her best interests at heart or her to recognise any issues.

Toonali8 · 23/08/2023 13:07

Your DDs education is wonderful but she has no transferable skills if she has got to nearly 23 and never worked a day in her life.
You have limited her massively by not encouraging independence. Financial skills, how to save and spend are just as critical as any other qualification, if not more. She has just looked for (and found!) the next source of income.

SunRainStorm · 23/08/2023 13:07

threefiftysix · 23/08/2023 13:04

Just make sure she doesn't sign a pre nup

This was my thought as well 😂

ilovemydogmore · 23/08/2023 13:07

Someone with zero work experience, that has travelled around on other people's dime and has a masters in classics was hardly going to be batting away job opportunities. The degree aside I spot these rich kids a mile off in the interview process and I never hire them because they tend to have very little grit and drive.

theleafandnotthetree · 23/08/2023 13:07

ClareBlue · 23/08/2023 13:05

You strongly imply being an accountant is so much more valuable a use of time than bringing up the next generation of children. It really isn't.
Maybe she will do a different job to you

You did know its possible to be an accountant and also raise the next generation of children right? Amazingly, millions of us manage to work and raise families!

Totallyterrific · 23/08/2023 13:08

The reason we have supported her so much was so she could build a life doing whatever she pleased.
I clicked yanbu but having read your subsequent comments op....... I would now click yabu. She is doing what she wants to. Goal achieved.
And...... £20k + extra money on ONE year travelling. Blimey.

DuckbilledSplatterPuff · 23/08/2023 13:08

I also wonder, what would you say if your son had chosen the same option?

What if her new DH, with such a big age gap becomes ill in the future and unable to work to fund their lifestyle? Hope he puts very good insurance in place and has arranged things so she won't have to sell up to pay her way. Another reason to take her to financial advisor.

Duchessofspace · 23/08/2023 13:08

BeauxBelle · 23/08/2023 12:27

The age gap is the main thing, he is nice enough and seems to treat her well, but is significantly older, he also seems to be obsessed with his job, so if she does have children with him, will be doing a lot alone.

Show quote history

She knows this. Empower her - if she wants to stay home fine - encourage her hobbies and interests and don’t let her become isolated from family and friends

Ginmonkeyagain · 23/08/2023 13:09

@SunRainStorm of course. I didn't mean to imply that Classic degrees were any better than other degree, just that they are not useless in terms of getting a job. No more so than any other decent social science or humanities degree.

Riapia · 23/08/2023 13:10

If only there was a masters in common sense.

MelroseGrainger · 23/08/2023 13:10

I mean this kindly OP, but isn’t he doing exactly what you did? You’ve been funding her to absolutely nothing for years.

Her university education was all in the arts: so has no practicable work application whatsoever. Unless she had always dreamed of working full time in academia and becoming a professor, I’m not sure what you thought she was planning in terms of a big career that you seem to think she should have.

The “life of her own” is the life she chooses. So let her choose. If you really want to, put some money aside as an emergency fund for her in the the future of you think she’ll need an escape route, but otherwise butt out.

She appears to be living quite happily (not bloody surprised, she surrounded by rich patrons who fund her to do whatever she wants!) and if she’s as bright as you say she is, she will adapt in the future if she has to.

let her get on with it, be a safety net if she starts to fall.

man’s next time don’t spend tens of thousands of pounds on private education, top universities and endless vocationalally useless gap years and arts degrees if you want your child to be a salve to a high-earning career like law!

I think you should have clocked long ago that she’s obviously nothing like you, but that’s ok.

QueenBakingBee · 23/08/2023 13:11

OP, there are so many similarities to my life here. I married at 23 to a man over a decade and a half older, first baby at 24, last one at 26. The man I married was my first 'proper' relationship. I didn't have anything to compare it to. Looking back now as over 40, he wasn't a nice man and he would purposefully make sure I felt crap about myself so I didn't succeed. He didn't encourage my career, he didn't help with the kids, he didn't 'see' me in the end. Thankfully I had built up a career and my parents helped me temporarily to get divorced and somewhere to live until I could sort myself out.

If someone had said to me at 23 - listen, what is the rush to do this? What is the rush to marry and have children so young - I wouldn't of been able to answer them, and it MAY have made me think harder about the decisions I was making.

If your daughter lights up when she speaks about her partner, if he builds her up and supports her in what she does (not by throwing money at her) then he's a keeper and nothing you can say will change her mind. But, if there are cracks, then try and make her see them.

Original poster
BeauxBelle · 23/08/2023 13:11

DuckbilledSplatterPuff · 23/08/2023 13:02

When you say married next Sept do you mean Sept 23 or Sept 24.
If Sept 23 presumably the unstoppable jugganaught is in motion.

You've been liberal with her, but that doesn't stop many other people from getting jobs and its in the past. No point beating yourself up about that, can't undo it.

Several issues.

Marrying someone nearly 20 years older at the age of just 22, with no life experience other than uni and a gap year and no intention of doing anything other than going straight into motherhood - people have done this and been perfectly happy but to me, it seems like a big risk.

Will she have step children and ex's to deal with?

What about pensions? What about future work prospects when she wants to do something more fulfilling in later life when the children are older. In 20 years he will be early 60s and looking towards retirement. She will be 40 with no career experience and job options will be very limited.

She is setting herself up to be very vulnerable financially.

Is there no career at all that she could embark on? even on a part time basis?
I have a relative who gave up working on marriage and divorced 20 years later with no money or work experience and she's had to move into rented accom and a series of low paid jobs.
Does your DD expect you to bail her out if this happens?
Supposing it takes time to get pregnant.. how will she spend her time once she's done up the new home? Won't she get bored? She needs to find something that will give her experience in the meantime.

At the end of the day she is an adult and it is her life but I would be pointing out ways that she could adapt her plans to make herself more independent and protect herself. Maybe she could make an academic career for herself?

Definitely take her to a financial/legal advisor. We had to do pre marriage guidance and thought it was a bit of a joke at the time but looking back it was really sensible because it raised issues that would affect married life that we hadn't even thought about. Could you encourage her to do that?

Sept 24, no ex's or stepchildren (he was focussing on his career before settling, was single for 10 years before my daughter, he's now on track to a C-Suite job so I guess that worked for him).

OP posts:
wineschmine · 23/08/2023 13:11

SunsetOverParadise · 23/08/2023 12:31

To play Devil’s advocate, in the traditional sense, your daughter has done the right things to secure a future she wants for herself - she’s marrying a man who is stable and can provide for her and the children she wants to have.

It’s perfectly okay for a woman to just want to have children and spend her efforts raising them to the best of her ability. You do know that, right?

But you can also argue you created this. You should have instilled a work ethic in her from a young age and encouraged her to get part time jobs.

Yes, this is a fair point.

My sister is highly educated. She married "beneath her" (according to my parents). She was very much the breadwinner in their marriage, which my parents hated and felt very resentful of.

So I guess there's a lot of ways of looking at it.

CherryMaDeara · 23/08/2023 13:11

So she will be half owner of a big family house and her DH will pay for her masters.

Doesn’t sound too bad, as long as the house is in her and husband’s name, not his parents name.

If she does leave him later, she will have half the house and half his pension.

She can have a career after her kids are grown up a bit.

Have you already offered the wedding money? I wouldn’t offer it. The tradition these days is the B&G pay for the wedding themselves.

MaybeSmaller · 23/08/2023 13:12

The age gap is the main thing, he is nice enough and seems to treat her well, but is significantly older, he also seems to be obsessed with his job, so if she does have children with him, will be doing a lot alone.

In that case YABU. You don't have any real, solid reason to dislike this man. You're just upset your DD has chosen a different life path to the one you mapped out for her.

Marrying an older, richer man and being a SAHM is not "throwing your life away" by any reasonable standard. For many people, it's in lottery ticket/living the dream territory. Let's face it, if you believe in tradition (which you say you do?), this kind of thing is the stuff of fairy tales.

Also, she's 22. There's nothing to stop her doing something different later in life if it doesn't work out for her. I didn't have a so-called "professional" career type job until I was in my early 30s, and I'm doing fine.

I thought we had raised our children to know you have to work hard and earn your own living!!

Nothing about how you have raised her suggests that at all!

You've absolutely showered her with money her whole life - she's apparently never had to demean herself by getting anything so lowly as "a job".

TooOldForThisNonsense · 23/08/2023 13:12

IAmKenough · 23/08/2023 12:57

This is a pisstake. She's never had a job because she spent the entire holidays at other people's homes. Please don't criticise your daughter's choices - she might give you some home truths on her childhood.

In Uni holidays (in fact over 16) she would have been old enough to work and to do that instead of being shipped out for holidays. My kids are 14 and 17 and been fending for themselves in holidays a good few years now!

Vettrianofan · 23/08/2023 13:13

OP, I was not privately educated, went to uni, got a degree, worked a few years, got married, had my first baby at 24, and had several other children. What of it?? Being a SAHM is very fulfilling and DH is not at all wealthy. We manage fine. Been a SAHM for 16 years, wouldn't have it any other way.

Good luck to your DD. She has done well for herself. Just be happy for her.

Hawkins009 · 23/08/2023 13:13

To be honest if I could afford it and had a large kitty in the bank, I would retire and pursue my hobbies and intrigues.

Ahsoka2001 · 23/08/2023 13:13

Comedycook · 23/08/2023 12:38

I know a few people who have done MAs and unfortunately I'd say a large proportion have done so to put off getting a job and entering the real world.

I myself am guilty of this. I did an MA to get an extra year at uni (I wanted a year of "full uni experience" since my bachelors was disrupted by COVID) and spend more time in the p/t jobs I had gained while in my uni town.

In June I got offered a full-time job in my home town and I'm absolutely loving it. Now I have the opposite problem - instead of my MA distracting me from real-life work the real-life work is distracting me from finishing my dissertation 😂

Regarding your situation, OP, I don't think the age gap will necessarily be a problem (it's who the person is that matters) and if your daughter realises a second MA is a mistake then that's on her, not you.

Ginmonkeyagain · 23/08/2023 13:13

Just spotted the whole "summer job was not an option" 🤣

Without wanting to get all "four Yorkshiremen" on you - my mum died when I was 16. Whilst studying for my A Levels I also did most of the housework and cooking, helped my dad and brother on the family farm and held down a Saturday and holiday job.

Your daughter has been spoilt. Badly

IDontLoveTheWayYouLie · 23/08/2023 13:13

So she's been spoilt, has never had to work because she gets given everything, and now her future husband has basically said he will do the same for her? Sounds like an easy decision to me, no wonder she doesn't want to do much.

Ohmylovejune · 23/08/2023 13:14

I knew a few stay at home mums (which appears to be their plan) and actually I was very envious of them. Her education will come into its own as she spends so much time with them growing up.

You aren't being unreasonable. I would feel the same. However, it's the life she has chosen and, if it all works out, then it sounds lovely.

I'd also fear for where she will be if the relationship doesn't work forever but that's her decision and it sounds like they won't have too much to worry about financially and that's a big bonus.

Autumnsoon · 23/08/2023 13:14

You can’t control what they choose to do with their life
at least she’s getting married before trying for a baby ,that’s some security for her.
all that education will come in handy ,when in 10 /20years she doesn’t want to play nursemaid to an old man
it’s a big age gap
she will probably get fed up before he does

Theborder · 23/08/2023 13:15

She’s getting the life she’s become accustomed too. The whole thing would massively stink if she was marrying a pauper but it doesn’t sound like she is. I was a young SAHM for many years (also not poor). It was lovely to be honest. My life’s been pretty easy and I’ve never struggled. Perhaps your daughter won’t either. She’s an adult. You’ll have to let this play out as you have no choice in the matter anyway. I do think he’s far too old though and I would be disappointed with my DD for choosing someone who’s going to be bald soon.