Telling your daughter to "marry a rich man"

[thefinerthingsinlife]

Whilst waiting to collect my dd from school today, I overheard a conversation involving a man, two women, and two young girls (probably aged 6/7).

The man turned to his daughter and said "don't worry that you're not academic, you just have to make sure you marry a rich man". One of the women then piped up "I wish I had"

I was so shocked and angry that someone would actually say that to their daughter.

I was told growing up that education was supremely important - and that the way to bag a rich man was to be intelligent/have good career/go to Oxford etc. I got the education and ignored the other bit . What I want for my dd is that she achieves as much as she is able academically and has enough self esteem to make solid choices on the relationship front.

yes that rings a bell. I was so happy and secure with being 'me' I forgot to put energy into finding the 'one' to complete me...

Exactly right Clovis.

I think being raised with the idea that finding a partner/getting married and having kids is the ultimate goal in life can be suffocating.

All this 'WHEN you get married' 'WHEN you find the one' will make kids feel like major failures if they grow up and don't have a successful relationship or want to stay single.

Dear gods are you bored? Go eat a mince pie

Don't mention mince pies. I can't even look at another

We happened to be talking about jewellery at lunch today. A (female) relative said to DD "when you are grown up you can get a man to buy you a diamond".

I said "work hard DD and buy your jewellery". Relative was rather put out.

I know this is a zombie thread, but y'know what? I do love my DH very much, but we have to scrimp and save every day to make ends meet...we both work (not brill paid public sector jobs) and until having DS recently I was the main earner. However, both of my sisters are with 'rich' men. They both live in a house that they own (not rent, like us), have several foreign holidays a year and can afford luxuries- expensive clothes/makeup/food, etc. Both of the guys are thoroughly nice blokes too. So I can't help feel a teeeeeeny bit envious!

These days it is fairly unlikely a rich man would marry a 'poor' girl anyway. So rather setting her up to fail!
You don't have to be academic to earn good money anyway!

Marrying a rich man is not so easy. Especially if one doesn't want it to be the equivalent of prostitution.

Marriageable men don't grow on trees. Most guys are not that attractive. I haven't even managed to find any man at all I would marry - if I wanted it to be a rich guy, that'd make it even more impossible.

(Marrying any rich guy at all might be easy for a pretty woman, but it'd be the equivalent of prostitution, and I'd never in a thousand years tell my daughter to do that)

"Don't worry that you're not academic, you can get a job where you won't have to be" would be a more sensible thing to say. And more likely to happen, too.

I haven't even managed to find any man at all I would marry

Oh well, if that's the case, it must be that men are mostly ugly and unkind. Seems reasonable.