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?

And he will also inherit in-laws who will be grandparents to his children and will regard themselves as the number 1 GPs.
He will be expected to 'support' whatever his wife says, even if he genuinely disagrees, hers will be the only opinion that counts where children are concerned.

This is a great thread, just filled with practical, real and actionable advice from intelligent women who've been there. Love it.

If I had known some of these things I could have avoided my first marriage. My second is fantastic to a great man because I knew the red flags, having lived them.

It's great that the huge majority of people on here are helpful, and only one or two are so desperately bitter about intelligent, caring women giving one another practical and useful advice and so desperate to stop women having important, real and practical conversations to help other women.

Oh well, we'll just keep doing that anyway :) 😍

@jbm16 Lucky, lucky, lucky you having a good man. And lucky lucky lucky daughters having a good father and mother.

Please respect the women here who suffered and are suffering from their experiences of fathers and partners who were anything but.

Their experiences are not 'just' anything. Don't minimise their experience. Respect it, and understand that your daughters' world may be very different from your own assured certainties.

Sorry, 80% of this thread is just showing the bitterness of most of the women on this site, sure there are some useful red flags, but good god if you read this you would never have a relationship

Not minimising their experience, but it's just that, their experiences, I'm not giving my daughters some long warning list which was the point of the original post. They are bright young women who can make sensible decisions about partners, life is not perfect, but to paint such a negative picture of men is not helpful either.

Not 'bitterness', itself a misogynistic term often used to insult women.

Lived experience, wisdom and knowledge.

They are just words... when couples split up there is generally bitterness (anger and disappointment at being treated unfairly; resentment) on BOTH sides, not just the women, so not sure how it's misogynistic (my father was bitter for 40 years after my mother left him), however on this site you tend to get one side of story.

Then don't. And yeah, you did try (and fail) to minimise - but you already know that :)

Not to worry, intelligent women will still give one another practical actionable advice even though one or two of you are really bitter about it :)

Sorry you are so bitter and have such a huge dose of internalised misogyny that you simply cannot allow women to have a conversation without trying to diminish them, minimise them and derail because you don't want to hurty de feelings of de menz.

We're just going to keep having normal, actionable, practical discussions with one another no matter how often you try to shout us down though😘

Seems like I need to create a warning list for my son to avoid condescending women...

Do that, add your condescending, bitter remarks to it.

I don’t agree that getting married is always the best advice for all women.

If I had been married to my abusive ex he would ended up getting legal advice and pursued a court mandated custody arrangement and then used that against me until my youngest was 18. He would have loved the power and it would still be going on now. As it is none of us have seen him since we decided we’d finally had enough years ago. We have a nice life now without the constant anxiety over what he’ll do or say next.

Despite all his threats of taking them away from me and telling everyone in court was a terrible mum I was, it became quite clear that he didn’t have the knowledge or grit in him to even start the process. And thinking back, he had never done anything other than go to work at the same job he had always had and turn up at things arranged by everyone else.

I read about mums being told they have to hand their babies that they grew inside them over to abusive men for court mandated visits and it makes me feel sick inside.

I know CMA aren’t perfect about getting fathers to pay their share but that’s how I got mine. No marriage necessary.

I guess my tip would be don't have a baby with a man who’s wages are off the record 😬

Partners don't have to be abusive for women to feel the heavy burden of motherhood. Very ordinary well-meaning men expect women to manage all household/childcare related things and wait around to be told what to do. Mothers burn-out is real. And women need to be honest about how thinhgs are now so that they can change the dynamics going forward.

Women have brains, supposedly, so why dont more use them why do ot and go along with it, if a woman has a problem then do something about it

And if you dont think he or people around him should be in a child's life dont have kids with him and leave courts, social services and other organisations to pick up the pieces of them mess adults create, another daily on here

Mothers complain the father has access to children they jointly created the complain about it afterwards and the children suffer again and again

Did you know @PollyBell that women can be misogynistic too? It's not their fault because the way we grow up sometimes programmes us in that way and it's really hard to challenge your thinking. Based on the things you write, i think you might want to have a think whose world view youre subscribing to.

I presume childrens because all I hear is rights for adults and 'me having a child is more important than ensuring what is best for any children I have'

Then you're hearing a bit wrong. Everyone is here talking about what to take into conderation BEFORE having children so that the environment they are born in is hopefully balanced and happy.
A childs happiness depends on the mothers happiness a lot.

Children are very moral. They recognise right from wrong very easily. Somehow as we reach adulthood we are all muddled up with roles, excuses, power play and hierarchy.

Women need to be aware that:

1. These days even preschool children dont get to stay with the mum in a separation, you’ll be forced to share childcare 50% of the time if the man demands it, regardless of whether his parenting consists purely of sugar and television.
2. Divorcing men will ask for, and be advised to ask for, 50% childcare to make sure they get half of the marital money/house.
3. You will not be allowed to move away from the father once you have children if he wants to prevent you.
4. It is therefore vitally important to only have kids once you are living somewhere you want to bring up your kids, and with someone you have every faith is up to the task.
5. Choose a partner you have seen under high stress and known a long time and know to be someone ethical who does not take advantage of people but works hard, takes responsibility, delivers on promises and likes to help.
6. When choosing a partner to have kids with, know that being a good dad is not about being funny and entertaining to small kids, it’s about putting in everything you have to support everyone in the family at all ages even when you don’t feel like it, it’s a serious and responsible job.

I'm not pretending anything, it's a fact that women are often made to be responsible for the actions of men, because the patriarchy allows men to do as they please and we pick up the pieces, and this list is testament to that. If we're saying there's a lot of bad husbands and fathers out there, and as women we need to learn how to avoid or protect ourselves from that, then we're having to take on the burdon of responsibility there. Boys need to be taught to respect womens rights from a young age and be accountable for their actions if we want that to change.

My comment wasn't a "bitter" attack against intelligent women, and I don't feel I've been aggressive or patronising in my posts (and if I you feel I have, then I apologise), my point was simply that I think the best approach would be to set the standard for our girls to follow. My mum had a rubbish marriage to a selfish and uncaring man and useless absent father, but she had enough of it, got divorced, worked hard and rebuilt herself, remarried a good man who treated me like his own, and in doing so set a standard for me. As a teen and adult I've grown up believing in love and that good honest men exist, but have avoided so much just by looking at behaviour and thinking "there's no way my mum would put up with this bs, and I won't either. "

Some of the suggestions on here do come across pretty cynical (e.g. never love a man as much as he loves you, secretly stashing away money in case he leaves), and equally many are genuinely good advice such as taking your time and really getting to know someone properly before marriage/kids etc. But as other posters have said, you can advise a teenage girl what to do and what not to do til you're blue in the face but you can't make them listen...

Also:

Do not move cities, counties, countries, languages or cultures away from your own family and friends and job to please a man.

Be aware that in some parts of the world women and children are property.

Isolating yourself will make you lonely and without resources, backup and help - if you need it.

And the further away you are from your comfort zone the more vulnerable you'll be. Possibly stranded, with fewer rights.

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Should you fall for a man with dependent children:

Do not drift into becoming an unpaid nanny, housekeeper, maid etc. Nanny with a fanny is a thing.

Whether he has 50/50 or whatever, be welcoming and kind and supportive - but the parenting responsibility is HIS. Not yours. Or his mum's.

But this thread IS women using their brains, by discussing their many lifetimes of accumulated knowledge to pass on to the next generation (a fairly standard mechanism of learning).

It's about educating women, particulary young women, so that they avoid negative relationships all together, rather than ending up needing to actually tackle a bad situation.

I hear so many teens and young women in our local 6th form adjacent cafe going on about their attempts to get a man, cooing over outfits and romantic fluff and wedding dreams, and then bemoaning their disappointments and traumas.

I would like to print leaflets from here and hand them out ...

People do need to learn from their own mistakes, that’s for sure.

But I really could have done with this theoretical list too!

Everything you tried to say about this thread was thoroughly debunked. You're wrong, and that's that.

I didn't read a single word of your comment once I clocked that you were once again repeating a strawman which had nothing at all to do with this thread.

Perhaps you should start your own thread which actually discusses the issues you've raised, since nothing you had to add was relevant to anything said here.

Again, love this thread - great advice, useful, realistic, practical, actionable. Great stuff.