What happened to getting married before having children?

blabberwort

I got married when my daughter was nearly 2. We were engaged some time before I was expecting but when we discovered I was pregnant decided not to set a date for our wedding as we didnt want people (who didnt know us and didnt know we were engaged before) to add the dates up and think we had to get married. We wanted our daughter to know we got married because we wanted to not because we felt obliged to.

SugarSpun

I got married while I was pregnant. It wasn't that I was afraid of people talking, or that I was embarrassed about being pregnant, or that I felt I had to get married. It was because we knew we wanted to get married and have kids anyway and in the country where we live he wouldn't have been able to make next-of-kin decisions for me if something happened and my parents were too far away, so it made sense to make sure he (and I for him) had that legal standing before the birth.

If you go back a bit further than the whole "no sex before marriage" bit, the custom among wealthy families was to organise non-binding year and a day marriages between eligible young people. The belief was that only compatible couples could produce children, so they were given a year and a day and if the bride was visibly pregnant at any stage they'd make the marriage permanent, and if not they'd go off and try another combination. You see a lot of medieval art where the bride is very round in the belly - it's only relatively recently that virginity has become so distastefully valued and we're at the stage now where the fiction of the blood on the bedlinen can be safely put away.

yummymummy79

I wasn't married to my son's dad as it wasn't overly important to us as at the time we lived together with joint everything which seemed adequate, and I agree that having a child was the ultimate commitment in our opinion.

We are not together now, and this would have been the case if we had been married or not. In our case, the commitment to each other we made by having our son continues even now through us being good friends, co-parenting and generally bringing our son up together but separate. if this was a situation that could happen more often, then I think that it more important than whether the parents were married or not in the end.

IMO it's not people having kids and not being married which is the problem, it's people having kids with people they either don't know, or just casually hook up with. That's when the mothers know who the dads actually are of course! SPeaking from experience a bit as my son's dad's sister got pregnant, could have been 1 of 2 or 3 potential dads. She did eventually find out the real dad but it wasn't who she wanted to be so the kid has never seen him, and she has floated through a few boyfriends since, all as useless as each other. This is the situation I feel we should be looking to avoid, rather than worrying about whether a stable, loving household has involved a wedding.

Siemo

purplerose wrote: »

For example they: - start dating - engaged and living together 2-5 months later - start planning wedding - decide as they are getting married anyway they might as well stop using contraception - pregnancy - baby comes within 18 months of couple first getting together and they can no longer afford dream wedding. From then on they can't afford getting married the way they want and won't consider the affordable option of registry office/local church with a wee celebration afterwards and so decide to save for the dream but then there is the question of when to have baby number 2 and wedding plans get bumped further and further down the line as more new things come up that need paid for or they simply can't find the time to marry when juggling parenthood/work.

Most unmarried couples with children who I have come across appear to want to get married but can't/won't because they can't afford it and/or are too busy being parents now.

I think this is right, certainly among people i know. I don't know many people who don't want to get married at all, most want to but have had kids first and then don't have any money left for the wedding of their dreams!

I got married at 21 and was lucky because (at the time!) my parents had money saved and wanted to give us a fairly smart 'do'. However, I wanted to marry him because I wanted to share my life with him and we always said we would have done it at the same time even if all we had was the little money we had saved. I understand that people want to have a huge white wedding these days but honestly don't think it's necessary (my friend spent £2000 on her dress :eek: having waited 10 years to marry the man she had loved so she could have her dream wedding)

For me it was about committing to my DH in front of my family and friends and I'd have been happy with a small ceremony and a pub lunch afterwards if that's all we could afford. We then had 5 lovely years together before thinking about having a family which gave us time to get to settle before the emotional upheaval of having children began!

I'm not saying that unmarried people don't feel the same commitment to each other, of course there are plenty that do, but it does worry me when the step from 'going out' to being effectively 'married' happens within a few weeks and then a baby comes along a few months later.

Siemo

Sorry Waterbaby missed your post - I know you're not attacking me, in the same way I'm not trying to attack anyone else either

In answer to your points I just think people say all sorts of things to each other behind closed doors - I had a long term BF in my teens and I was always telling him we should get married etc, but when it came to actually getting engaged and telling my parents, friends etc, it made me realise that wasn't what I wanted after all. Ok it was partly immaturity on my part, but I think making a statement in front of other people somehow cements what you have said to each other in private. Doesn't necessarily make the relationship last longer I guess but it proves to you both that that's what your intentions are. If my DH hadn't been happy to commit to me in front of other people I would have questioned whether he really meant what he said to me in private. Maybe you're more trusting than me though

Kate78

If you're interested in this subject, then there's a report called "Changing Marriage" which covers changing social attitudes towards marriage - or not. It was written in 2005, so could do with updating, but interesting nonetheless.

Personally I could not really care less if people are married or not, it's none of my business .

My own preference is to marry, although I have previously had cohabiting relationships. If kids were to feature (undecided on that though), I would prefer to be married first.

The only thing I would say is that if you are living together (not married), share property, kids etc is to make sure that you know your legal rights as they are NOT the same as those for married couples when it comes to inheritance, pensions, housing, next of kin etc.

redstararnie76

For me, marriage wasn't a commitment in the same way as having a child together, and buying a house together - both of these, (the child in particular obviously!) were much bigger commitments than a piece of paper.
I certainly could never justify spending a small fortune on a celebration of something that already exists to my mind - our commitment to each other, when our family is much more important.

Families aren't created by marriage - love and stability is much more important I believe, than that piece of paper.

You talk about the 'old days', well, the concept of the 'common-law wife/husband' dates from centuries ago, when people couldn't afford to get married so they just lived together as if they were married - I believe it was the Victorians who were so hung up on the concept of marriage, so relatively recent!

My OH and I did get married in the end, because we wanted our children to have some security if something happened to one of us, we didn't want there to be any legal confusion, but it was never particularly important to us - so we got married in Gretna with just the two of us and our daughter present...

tiff

I got married first, kids later. For me getting married wasnt making a public statement, its about legally making a commitment to each other, its the natural first step to me.

Like kate78 pointed out, there are legal issues to consider. My Mum and Step Dad were together 22 years before they decided to get married, after my Step Dad was diagnosed with cancer. They felt there may be future legal issues with his estranged daughter plus access to bank accounts etc so for them it was more a case of tying the financial/legal knots. They went off and got married in secret and took us all out for a meal later, where they announced their wedding.

redstararnie76

Another reason why people used to get married, is that there were more financial benefits to getting married - tax allowances etc. As far as I'm aware, there is now no financial benefit to getting married, so it tends to be considered on its own merits now!

ETA: I'm purely referring to incentives such as tax breaks that I believe used to exist when my parents got married.

red_devil

i do see where your coming from but it wont change. Something i notice is the speed that some people have children when they havent known one another long and sometimes its planned.
I followed the story of a woman on a parenting forum she already had two children and she met someone. He had a child by someone else. Very quickly they moved in together. They didnt get on very well she often posted about the rows they were having. They still went for a baby of their own born last year.

I wasnt suprised to see that last month she had to throw him out rows had turned violent etc and he wasnt pleasant to live with.

In cases like that i just wonder why they didnt live together for a few years and see if they got on before they embarked on a pregnancy.