US campaigner Larry Jacobs claims an emphasis on traditional marriage would eliminate 90 per cent of poverty (”Poverty 90% solved by marriage”, 30/8).

I was raised in a traditional family with five children and a father with a well-paid managerial job and a mother who did not work outside the home. We were not rich but the real poverty was my mother’s, as he denied her any money. This was the 1950s. Hard for married women to work, even harder for them to leave a violent marriage. No childcare, no government support for women who left violent marriages, no refuges, and he would legally keep the children. My father had all the power, and all the money. He paid the bills, organised delivery of groceries. As punishment for her refusal to bend to his will, he denied her any cash. She could not buy clothes, could not buy presents, could not go out. The government child endowment she spent on the children’s clothes. She was trapped in traditional marriage and poverty. As were many wives, then and now.

Real poverty was her lot until the last child left home and so did she, after 36 years of ”traditional” marriage.

Kath McKay, Upwey

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-letters/traditional-marriage-can-impoverish-women-20140831-3en0b.html#ixzz3C12IzawK