Marriage/motherhood warning list

[Someoneshouldatoldme]

Based on many many threads here and my own lived experience, shouldn't we warn all daughters and women pre-marriage or motherhood so that they really know what they'regetting into? I'll list a few, feel free to add:

1. Don't have a child with ANYONE at all unless you know you can manage as a single parent

1. If your husband tells you they want a child and will look after them as well as you, assume they mean occasional fun times and some cooking. (If you're proven wrong, you'll be delighted)

1. Your husband might become your biggest problem once you are pregnant or with a child. Even the 'nicest' guys can (and many will) turn emotionally or physically abusive at this time. You might end up seriously hurt. Many will cheat.

1. Never assume his money is family money. He might pretend for years that it is, only for you to find out that it isnt.

Any others?

So you'd rather she just was miserable in her existence, as she will be if she marries a man who flies the red flags properly acknowledged in this thread, and then either lived in that misery or went through the misery of divorce rather than talk about the reality based acquired wisdom of women. Splendid.👌

The warnings are the basis of reality. I think it is important to prepare for everything early on. If we fail to plan we plan to fail.

Do you have internalised misogyny, or is it the old fashioned misogynistic man sort?

To be clear, I am referring to your use of the word "bitter" to try to shame the person you responded to. You could have certainly disagreed with her respectfully, but went for misogyny instead.

Another one:
Don't have a baby abroad unless you are willing to stay in that country forever.

Given that i said before marriage at the top of the list for all of this, and that "conveyancing" is done before the event, then I'm not sure why you are arguing with me.

Another one - be very careful about having 3 or 4 kids. It’s a massive financial commitment beyond most people. Our hormones might say it’s a great idea but you will be supporting them for perhaps beyond your working lives if they go to uni etc

Yes, that's exactly what I said 🙄

Modelling a healthy dose of self worth, what healthy friendships and relationships should look like, a good understanding of how to manage finances, and a general understanding of what it means to be a decent and caring person so she can recognise that in others, to me is what's needed. Giving her a great long list of all the ways men will inevitably screw her over, is not. I don't want her to go out into the world scared to trust or love another person, and I certainly don't want her to think any of the poor treatment described in this thread is 'normal'.

Rather than imparting our trauma to our daughters, I think it's far more important that we teach our sons how to be better partners, husbands and fathers in the first place. Women and girls should not have to be responsible for the poor behaviour of men.

No but women are responsible for their choices including moving the next unsuitable man into their children's lives, or putting their need to have a child or more above what is best for any children they have

Do any of you actually have teenage daughters though?! I have failed at “advising” dd2 on her outfit on her first day at 6th form let alone her choice of partner. No way will they listen to you about anything.

Best you can do is model good relationships so that’s their normal. Pontificating on to them with your “advice” won’t work.

Most boys model after their fathers. Fathers might not be looking out for womens rights. Motherhood is amazing, but should not be glorified as it has been. Young women need to know what they are signing up for and how to demand certain things before they commit. No one hands you a good deal on a silver platter unless you demand it. (thats one reason why we are also still earning less than men, but thats another thread altogether..)

@TheaBrandt1 For me the most important thing for my daughter is that I am good role-model. I can't exactly tell her to work hard at school, go to uni, get a career etc if I'm not out working at a career myself. Although I wouldn't want her to work in education! I want her to do better for herself and go further than me!!

Can we do the thing that might also help - share what to advise the boys and let the girls know they've been told?

Ten off the top of my head:

1 Women and girls are human. People, with rights and feelings and dreams. Same as you are.

2 Women and girls are not domestic appliances; things to be bought, used, touched, discarded. See number 1.

3 Porn and prostitution are degrading to their frequently trafficked and abused usually female victims. 'Empowering sex work' is a LIE. See number 2.

4 Women and girls are generally physically not as big, strong or powerful as you. Yes, you could probably overpower most. But - don't.

5 Women's experience of sex will be different to yours. Unlike you, they will live with a monthly cycle that will affect their attitude to it. It can go from ohhhh yes please to get away from me in the happiest relationship. And that's her right.

6 Unlike you, they will go through pregnancy, childbirth, post partum experiences you can never share - and it will mean sex with you and centring you will not be as it was before. Are you ready to be a father? To step up and share this?

7 Get used to hearing and accepting No with grace. No to your demands for her attention, time, presence, smile, information, politeness, conversation, accessibility, compliance, acquiescence, submission.

8 You aren't doing the household things; the washing up / laundry / night feed / laundry etc 'for her'. It isn't her job, her calling, duty, pleasure, hobby, domain. Don't require a thankyou.

9 Be able to see and not create more mess. Pick up, hang up, clear up and - apparently - wipe your arse.

10 Learn - LEARN - about menopause. There will be some changes round here.

Given that "Compulsory couples counselling" was stated by you, in isolation and individually in a list of other individual sentences, with no caveat of any kind applied to the phrase "Compulsory couples counselling" it was, of course, quite sensible of me to point out that this would not be acceptable.

And given that you are now stating that you didn't actually mean that battered, raped and abused women should be compelled to spend time with their abusers, and that therefore we are in agreement, I'm not sure why you are arguing with me instead of simply saying "Yes, I should have made it clear that I do not think battered, raped and abused women should be compelled into spending time with their abusers. And yes compulsory couples counselling should be before marriage, I realise I didn't make that clear, but we are in agreement".

THIS 100%

First paragraph
"I'd love to see... before marriage"
"I'd include" followed by a list, of which couples counselling was one of the items.

Not a high level of reading comprehension required there, really, is there?!

And also, don't move abroad with him and the kids if your relationship is rocky, no matter how much he sells it to you as "a new start for the family". This happened to a woman I knew.... when she tried to leave and return to the UK she discovered that since her kids' "habitual place of residence" was now a different country she was stuck abroad unless she only wanted to see them during the school holidays.
Despite DH being an excellent hands on father and the person who does most cleaning I discovered the drawbacks of motherhood and wifery early on and thought about how society sells it to girls as the thing to aim for.....but no one seriously mentions the drawbacks and sacrifices involved. I am in my 50s with grown up sons, but I like to think I would have warned my daughters if I had had any.

Don''t be silly - nobody ever suggested not modelling healthy relationships.
Pretending bad husband don't exist won't make them go away. Pretending that anybody said women are responsible for men's behaviour won't make bad husbands go away either.

It would be far better if you did not keep inventing things to reply to and just stuck to what has been said. Here are some of your strawmen, and why they are incorrect:

"Rather than imparting our trauma to our daughters"
I'm sorry you're doing that - if you're not, not sure why you are bringing it up since giving girls reality based practical advice to help them is certainly not "imparting trauma" on any level. But living with a bad husband and partner you could have avoided if you understood the red flags can sometimes, indeed, be traumatic.

I think it's far more important that we teach our sons how to be better partners,
Nobody suggested or implied not parenting sons to be good partners. It is incredibly important to teach our children not to put their hand on a hot surface, and it is incredibly important to teach girls to avoid red flags in men where possible.

"Women and girls should not have to be responsible for the poor behaviour of men."
They're not, and nobody suggested or implied that.

"But I don't think imparting this level of cynicism is particularly helpful or healthy.
Except it's not cynicism. It is factual, real and practical, it is a guide to behaviour that can indicate a bad potential partner when considering the massively important life changing taks of raising children.

Not all men are awful creatures who can't be trusted.
Literally nobody said this or implied it.

I don't want my daughter to grow up expecting the worst her entire life, what a miserable existence that would be.
Yes, you should try not to instill that in your daughter - but certainly none of the advice here would or could do that, so feel free to impart it to her as a caring mother.

You can certainly choose not to make the effort to discuss these very clear, factual and obvious red flags with your daughter, but you can't simply invent conversations and motivations and reply to them instead of sticking to the discussion we are actually having.

Well, I mean you can - and did - but it's rather pointless.

Oh dear, I am sorry you are so triggered that your unclear comment was called out as unclear.

Not sure why you are continuing to attempt to argue with me as you claimed you were in agreement. Bit odd, that.

Why do lots of men change when a woman gets pregnant or has a baby? It’s bizarre! I want facts on why it happens.

It's rare indeed that a man who is coercively controlling or abusive hides it completely until the woman gets pregnant, but the signs are often much more subtle, which is why it's important mothers talk to their daughters about abuse/coercive control so that they can recognise it if it pops up.

Young women and women without a lot of dating experience are particularly vulnerable to having children with an abusive man as it is difficult sometimes to pick up the clues.

For example, I dated a man who became violent towards me when I was 19, long ago now, for about a year.

I thought his demands to see me more frequently than I had time for (and that left me with little time to see any friends or catch up on any hobbies) meant that he really liked me.

I didn't realise that he was keeping me up till late in the night (while he was unemployed, this changed completely when he got another job) in the hope that I would sleep in for work and lose my job, until I picked up on a few comments he made and started to think.

I also didn't realise that his constant demands that I wear no make up is actually a fairly standard red flag in abusive men. I had not come across it before, and he tried to sell it as a compliment. There are a few articles out there and at least one study to say that 1 in 5 women in an abusive relationship have had their make up controlled - but I did not know this.

As the months went on, he became more aggressive in his arguing tactics and slammed a door in my face. When I tried to end the relationship, he strangled me and punched me. Until then I had had no reason to physically fear him and had not.

He was extremely keen to have a baby. Luckily for me, I had no interest in motherhood until I was mid 20s, otherwise, I might have actually gone for it as he was good looking and charming and seemed to care a lot for me.

Once an abusive man knows she is vulnerable, needs him and has much less power, abusive men become comfortable being more abusive.

@thebabayaga i’m so sorry you experienced that. And so pleased you didn’t have a child with him. It’s extremely scary. I didn’t realise how vulnerable a woman becomes until I became a mother at 38. I have much more empathy now. But even some decent men become less interested and just not as nice as before once the woman has a child and I just wonder why! Is it like a caveman ‘I’ve sown my seed now I can move on’ type biological reaction or something. Gross. You explain the theory re already abusive men very well.

Thank you - honestly the make up one really threw me. I had just had no idea about this being a red flag at all, but it made sense once I realised it and read about it years later.

And yes, I agree some men do actually change into less loving people after a baby is born.To be clear, I don't think women are ever to blame for not picking up on men's red flags anyway, but yes sometimes there really aren't any obvious flags.

It could be that he is naturally quite selfish, or emotionally stunted in some way, and once the baby is born he feels less attention is being given to him (as naturally it will be). And yes men (as a sex, not all of them obviously) are naturally less inclined to have that fierce bond that a mother has - after all he is physically capable of producing hundreds of babies and if he runs off and leaves them the mother will likely care for them, women can only have a dozen or so if we are super busy and willing to wreck our health. On a very basic biological/sharing DNA level this can make men more selfish and less loving when it comes to nurturing children.

There are a lot of threads to pull at, for sure.

@Bridgetjonesheart It's because the realisation that suddenly he is no longer centred hits hard. Someone else has now become the focus of her attention. Her body is changing away from what he fancied. Her body is now doing functions it didn't do before - and they aren't for his pleasure. Also the disruption, noise, responsibility, mess, smells of a baby. And the fact he's no being expected to - shock horror - step up and pull his weight at home.

This is just bitter generalisation, I've taught my daughters to be ambitious and be able to support themselves first, but that shouldn't put them off trying to find love and happiness, and they have also had a wonderful male role model in their life who has been successful, but always been there for them and me.