Is it antifeminist to promote marriage

80 replies

HumanWrites · 29/01/2024 11:37

instead of encouraging women to separately set up all the legal protections they believe marriage confers? It could be cheaper and more effective.

OP posts:

Grammarnut · 01/02/2024 14:54

fedupandstuck · 29/01/2024 12:02

There are some aspects to marriage which can't be replicated, such as the inheritance tax nil rate. Obviously that depends on whether you have enough assets for that to be relevant.

If in a partnership, one of you is going to stop work and spend a period of time providing childcare for your shared children, it is usually in that person's advantage to be married as some form of financial protection in case of the relationship ending. Usually, the person who takes on that role is the woman in an opposite sex relationship. Of course, if they have their own independent income or existing assets that will be enough to support them, then it's less important.

Those with enough assets tend to get married. It's only those who really believe that marriage is 'just a piece of paper' who do not, and then discover their error at leisure.

Godwindar · 02/02/2024 07:21

1stWorldProblems · 01/02/2024 08:30

A lot of people who argue against marriage / civil partnerships do so by saying the law should be changed to reflect current realities but that's not how the law works so if you want the legal & financial protections now then the only realistic thing to do is get on with it. It doesn't have to be expensive if you just pop down the Registry Office - I doubt getting a lawyer to draw up similar paperwork to cover the rights endowed by marriage / cp would be cheaper than the £335 (fee listed by Hampshire Registrars from April 24).

Surely it's feminist to protect your rights before the law as fully as possible?

As for SAHM - they can keep up their skills if they chose to. I was one for 12 years as we had no family nearby to call upon & I would only have seen any of my wage after childcare costs in a 5 week month - so it was less hassle for both me & my children for me to stay at home (no rushing about between childcare & work). Once they were in school, I volunteered for charities, kept my IT skills up to date and became a school governor. Returning to work, my biggest issue was employers not taking voluntary roles seriously - despite schools req governors to legally operate, charities not being able to exist without the, etc. One interviewer even suggested I get a part-time job in retail to improve my CV - despite that not being the area I'm trained / was applying for.

Whoever ends up being the primary caregiver often ends up being part time / having a less high flying job. Financially it can make more sense for one half of a partnership to concentrate on their career (& chances of becoming a high earner) & the other to support them / deal with the life admin of their children & increasingly aging parents. Both sides of the coin need sorting and the legal protections of cp / marriage can make the decision to go with those roles easier.

Unless your husband was a very high earner and you had some independent income, you really weren't protected in that scenario by marriage. You had deskilled and employers noted it. The childcare costs weren't 'your wage' they were a joint family cost, so you shouldn't have lost out by having to pay them. If your husband had left you during these 12 years, most divorces now are clean break with no mesher orders in place, so you may have found yourself with small children, not enough to buy another property and and having to find a job, probably for lower pay than you would have been on. If the custody arrangement had been 50:50, you would also have had no maintenance paid to you. That's actually the legal reality as well and I don't think marriage is protective enough. I've also seen really happy marriages breakdown and people play hardball.

TempestTost · 02/02/2024 10:37

anothernamitynamenamechange · 01/02/2024 11:17

But (unless you both work part time) who is looking after the child when you both work? No criticism - I worked when my son was a toddler and he was in childcare. But I don't consider the childcare workers as "freeloaders" or privileged unproductive people whose lifestyle I was subsidising by paying (expensive) childcare fees. Lots of couples decide to do things differently and one parent (almost always the mother) stays home to look after the child (there are big advantages to that). Of course it would be weird if the other half of the couple paid her a salary for that - marriage is supposed to be about teamwork. But its not if the parent doing the bulk of childcare is seen as contributing less/freeloading/not providing because they aren't bringing in a wage. Once children are older they need less childcare but the stay home parent has hurt their own earning prospects by taking time out and one or both parents still need to fit their work around school/after school finishing times/sick children etc.

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Yes, I find this idea that the husband is "supporting" the wife falls right into "wife work is without value" idea. When my kids were small, my husband had a job on a remote island, so I was alone 6 months of the year. I didn't really work at that time other than doing some childcare (which IMO was great value for the community at large though it didn't pay that well, but it meant two young kids essentially spend their pre-school years in a home environment. It also allowed me to homeschool for the early years for my own kids which was really positive for them.) Would this have suddenly become valuable work if I'd been a nanny being paid during that time?

There are lots of jobs like this where one person will not be able to take on half of the childcare or daily home work, the military, trucking, sailors (what my dad did, again gone half the year) and then others with weird shifts like police, or even in some cases jobs with super high demands like law (not always but in some cases for sure.) Is the idea only unmarried people with no kids get into these kinds of careers?

I always felt that what was going on was that the work of myself and my husband produced the income from the one job.

Now that the kids are older, I'm in a somewhat new career as I felt that I was getting too old to go back to the military, and busy, my husband has a more relaxed role often working from home, so he does a lot more managing the kids day, and the house, than I do. I don't feel like I am now suddenly contributing more, if anything the opposite, I feel less essential to the functioning of the family unit.

1stWorldProblems · 02/02/2024 14:47

@Godwindar - he earns significantly more than me & we've always had joint accounts (since before we married - I doubt I'd have married or had kids with a man who refused to share their financial details). So it made sense for me to take the time to not rush about madly & look after the children (& frequently in emergencies other people's).

You are making the same assumptions the employers' did - that by not being in paid work I had de-skilled. I acquired new ones - organising an annual event for over 2,000 people, knowledge of safeguarding, etc. and continued to keep up to date with my IT skills - I became the 1st-line support within 2 months at my eventual job.

Marriage gives me the confidence to take those risks (incl having children) with more legal protection than if we were just living together. Plus if things like Next of Kin & IHT are sorted too. (And you save about £80 p/a on car insurance as some friends found out.)

TempestTost · 02/02/2024 17:39

That's actually the legal reality as well and I don't think marriage is protective enough.

I have no argument with that.

What I don't get is why it is feminist to therefore say - all women, even mums caring for kids, should work - and antifeminist to say, improve legal protections for caregivers after divorce.

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