What happened to getting married before having children?

redstararnie76

CRANKY40 wrote: »

Wrong. See what happens if one of you dies and you're not married. I was married to the father of my child. He died unexpectedly last year. I get a pension from his employers, and so does our son. I also receive widowed parents allowance until our son finishes his education.

I know someone else in the same position as me. She was not married to the father of her child. She gets nothing. Not a bean....

No, please read both of my posts - I was talking about financial incentives to get married, I'm not saying that there are no financial benefits to marriage - I'm refering to the tax breaks that used to exist - the actual reason my husband and I eventually got married is to provide more security to our children in the event that one of us dies. I'm sorry if my post wasn't clear - reading back I can see how it can be misconstrued.

Pee

CRANKY40 wrote: »

Wrong. See what happens if one of you dies and you're not married. I was married to the father of my child. He died unexpectedly last year. I get a pension from his employers, and so does our son. I also receive widowed parents allowance until our son finishes his education.

I know someone else in the same position as me. She was not married to the father of her child. She gets nothing. Not a bean....

But you can appoint people to benefit from your pension, you can make a Will. Marriage makes life easier if you don't put your affairs in order - and when someone dies suddenly and prematurely this is likely to be the case.

brians_daughter

bylromarha wrote: »

Stats are that children born into a marriage are more likely to live at home with both parents until 18 than those children born into relationships where parents aren't married.

And no, I don't have a website ref, it's from a book!

This is true. BUT if you look at committed couples who have been in a relationship a number of years prior to having children the stats are very different. I am currently conducting research on this very topic (from a social POV rather than from any moral standing) although my research is still very much in its infancy i am seeing trends in the following

The prime 'candidates' for a relationship break down is if children are born outside of marriage to parents whom have been together less than 3 years and who are aged below the age of 26 (saying that i know very few married couples who have met. married and had children within 36 months -however, i am aware there are exceptions to every rule). 20-30 years ago this may have been the norm to meet. marry and have children within 3 years but in more recent years this number has decreased vastly). Statistically relationships in these circs sub 3 years are at greater risk of being single parent families.

IMO this is due to 'too much too soon'. Once you look at relationships post 4.5 years prior to children being brought into the equation the stats arent that different when looking at marital status. Note this is data relating to specific areas of the UK so may not be the same within your county, but the county i am currently studying is showing these trends.

I somewhat feel our debate is being clouded by failure to seperate 'long term households which include planned, much wanted children that have not/will not result in marriage' and 'short term encounters that have resulted in unplanned children'

miss_independent

I haven't read through the entire thread so apologies but I am in my 20's and have no intention of having children until I'm married and I would say I am definitely in the minority amongst my peers. I know there are marriages that fail (and I certainly didn't have a perfect cookie-cutter upbringing) and unmarried couples with children who stay together 30 or 40 plus years (although from my experience these are rarer than married couples) but for me I feel that marriage is very important. To me when you marry, you do marry with the intention of staying with that person for life, not to show off to your friends how big and fancy a party you can have only to part ways a couple of years down the line when the going gets tough. When I have children, I want them to have the best possible start in life and for me that means preparing a stable base for them. Marrying someone to me is saying, I'm in it for the long run, through thick and thin, I choose you exclusively to be my husband and the father of my children (if God wills it!) and my companion through life.

Most of the children I work with have parents who are not married to each other. When the children were born they had the best of intentions to stay together but so many times they part and go on to to set up house with other people who they don't marry and have more children again and then go their different ways again and so you have loads of kids growing up with their mothers and fathers having another man or woman living in the house and having half brothers and sisters or "partner's" children around, ex-partners coming round fighting and as a result I see the children confused, hurt, angry. Just this week, two unrelated children have approached me in tears because their mother's have gone off on holiday (one for a month) with their latest partners and left them with their dad's (one is abusive and the other has a girlfriend and children who they do not get along with). One man I know has never been married yet has fourteen children to ten different women and he did live with each of them for up to five years at a time. Friends my age planned children without being married to the men they lived with and when they speak about marriage they say that they don't need a piece of paper to prove their love etc but when probed deeper (or when they have had a few glasses of wine!) they have admitted that either they wanted to get married but their partners didn't want the committment or they didn't want to get married because its easier to split up when you aren't married.

I don't for a minute think marriage is easy and for me, the decision to wait until I'm married to live with someone and have children has forced me to look at relationships objectively. In the long term, I have learned so much about myself by not living with someone throughout my late teens and early twenties, I have learned how to independent and take care of myself and through living with others (in a non romantic way) I have learned how not to be selfish and how to put up with peoples habits and how to work through issues in a non-emotional, constructive way. I also know that when it comes to marriage, I am prepared to give 100% to making it work and I wouldn't marry someone unless they were prepared to do the same. If I don't meet that kind of man, I won't have children. I know there is nothing stopping a man from leaving once you marry and have children but I would rather take my chances knowing that I did everything in my power to provide the stability that a marriage can provide emotionally, financially and legally. I know most people would disagree with me and my views may not be popular but for me marriage and family go hand in hand. I'm not prepared to have children without being married.

bylromarha

brians_daughter wrote: »

The prime 'candidates' for a relationship break down is if children are born outside of marriage to parents whom have been together less than 3 years and who are aged below the age of 26 (saying that i know very few married couples who have met. married and had children within 36 months -however, i am aware there are exceptions to every rule).

IMO this is due to 'too much too soon'. Once you look at relationships post 4.5 years prior to children being brought into the equation the stats arent that different when looking at marital status. Note this is data relating to specific areas of the UK so may not be the same within your county, but the county i am currently studying is showing these trends.

I somewhat feel our debate is being clouded by failure to seperate 'long term households which include planned, much wanted children that have not/will not result in marriage' and 'short term encounters that have resulted in unplanned children'

Having read your post, I can think of at least 20 couples in my wider circle of friends that meet that criteria (met. married and had children within 36 months) All now married 5 - 25+ years with between 1 and 4 kids.

I don't think it is too much too soon. I think our disposable selfish society can no longer cope with the idea of something for lifetime where you put the other before yourself.

Despite all the talk of "it's only a piece of paper" a marriage commitment is, in most cases, a formal announcement of your full intention to stick together through thick and thin and is harder to get out of than a committed relationship. If it solely is a piece of paper to a lot of people, why not just get it for financial ease? Turn up at the registry office in jeans, don't tell anyone about it, do it for yourselves.

Just taking it back 20 years to 1990 when marriage was going off trend: I can honestly say I know of no couple here in 2010 that have been living together for 20 years, but can count a few that are celebrating around their 20th wedding anniversary. A long term relationship without a formal commitment is too easy to get out of. Had I not been married to OH, I can think of 2 occasions where we'd have ended. But we committed to working through those issues 19th June 1999, so we did.

Kate78

CRANKY40 wrote: »

Wrong. See what happens if one of you dies and you're not married. I was married to the father of my child. He died unexpectedly last year. I get a pension from his employers, and so does our son. I also receive widowed parents allowance until our son finishes his education.

I know someone else in the same position as me. She was not married to the father of her child. She gets nothing. Not a bean....

This is EXACTLY the kind of thing I was getting at when I mentioned the legal position of married/not married.

I know it is unromantic and depressing to think about such things, but they can and do happen.

Slightly off topic: I am the only person who thinks that it is kind of ironic that gay/lesbian couples fought hard to get civil partnerships recognised in law, yet heterosexual couples who (in most cases) have always had the right to marriage increasingly reject it?

balletshoes

Isn't it interesting to read differing opinions on this issue - and what its made me think more than anything is that mostly folk still do what they think is best for their family.

I do agree that having a long-term stable relationship (even without the marriage certificate) is completely different to someone choosing to have kids with no intention of having the other parent in the picture (one of my friends did that about 15 years ago - she just wanted a child, didn't care if the father was around or not).

I'm not so sure about the "class" issue regarding marriage though - I have 2 sisters, we were all brought up the same way (working class, same schools etc, they are only 2 years younger than me). One sister got pregnant when she was engaged, went on to have small white wedding when little'un was 2 years old. Other sister (the one we call the "nuclear family" ) got engaged at 20, married at 22, big white wedding, bought their house, then a couple of years later had their first child. And then theres me - young free single and spent all my money on me me me until my early 30's, met OH, 2 years later we had our little'un, then we got married (due to red tape, otherwise wouldn't have bothered) in a registry office with our 2 witnesses and the judge, then the next year we finally managed to live together all the time (again, the geographical separation was due to red tape).

Ten-ish years later (15-20ish years for my sisters) we are all still with our partners, and I personally have little doubt that I would be in the same situation, even if I hadn't gone through the ceremony to get that bit of paper.

Souk08

This is a very interesting thread! For what it's worth my parents have been married for 45 years, were married at 19 and had their 1st child at 27. They are in their 60's now and all their friends were married before they had their kids. Fast forward to now, I'm 31, single and fabulous and no desire to ever have kids but my friends who I went to uni with/worked overseas with predominantly had kids then got married in their late 20's/early 30's. Guess for them the wedding was something they wanted to do but the kids came first. It's a good job we're all different and live in an age/country where we are able to choose, isn't it?!

PolishBigSpender

Well, it makes me laugh personally when I see posts like "I've got two DD already, each with a different partner, and now I'm preggies with the third and getting married to my H2B, I'm soo excited xoxoxox". I know it's normal nowadays, but seriously, it doesn't seem particularly mature or responsible to first have 3 kids with 3 different partners, and then decide to get married.
To me it's first education, than marriage, finally children.

alys_fowler

i have been with my partner for 18 years and we have 2 children together we have a lovely home morgage almost paid of a fantasic family and we are still very much in love, but we are not married. for us we are happy the way we are we do everything and share everything a married couple would just without the piece of paper. we may tie the knot at some point but its not something which we are planning to do any time soon