thats a weird show I wouldnt take much notice of it, I reckon its a set up and people are gullible to even go on shows like that.
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It's unusual in the US, but I've seen the show and the comments people think show common ways of thinking about marriage-- that are wrong and unbiblical-- that many Americans hold to. The same is true of other dating and reality type shows.
It does seem in the US parents arent that involved with their offsprings lives after they leave home. Maybe cos of economics they just go where the work is, and americans do not typically work from home or on farms, most work in cities now and often have to commute to work from suburbs or live in apartments. they arent really concerned with marriage as a permanent state as when divorces happen properties just get sold off and people just buy or rent another place. A lot of people do not care about holding on to land that just can be bought at any price. They dont even think about what to leave for their children.
There could be something to that. People going off far away in the pioneer days to live in nuclear families might have contributed to it. But there are families who, for generations, lived 'back east' in one town and are like everyone else in this regard. I suspect Western European cultures do not have parents deciding who the kids marry these days. I haven't interviewed them about this. But they tend to be individualistic rather than collectivist on other matters.
In English culture, Jane Austen's was pushing for emphasis on love between the couples rather than parents deciding over practical matters. She was reacting against parents making materialistic decisions, and the father's permission was still needed. In the US, since the 1800's, there was been a shift between men going to the homes of single men's to court to 'dating' outside. The 'boyfriend' was invented around 1900, promoted by various magazines as a normal thing, and the whole culture shifted over time to young people deciding who to marry. Our legal system which we inherited from the English was set up around that idea, too. If a man had made promises of marriage and slept with her in the English legal system, that had weight (thinking of one of Henry VIIs wives and her previous love interest.)
For me personally, since I saw in scripture that fathers gave daughters in marriage, that part of getting married was extremely important to me, that her father give her away in marriage. In the culture I came from, the couple decides to marry. In theirs, the extended family is involved. I wanted to cover the bases as best we could and get married.
in other countries you only really leave home if you are going to marry, and your parents would have a say in who you married, because of dividing up the land and inheritance. Even back in biblical times it was so. God didnt actually want the israelites to marry any canaanites because he didnt want the land he was givng them to be defiled with their idolatrous practices.
When Boaz married Ruth he knew she was giving up her land and his God was going to be her God. The love he felt for her was seeing how she treated her mother-in-law I suppose, he was basing that on her character rather than her looks althougn she would have looked like a Moabite? Did they look any different I dont know. But definitely it was more than just a 'feeling' or looks between them. Ruth responded to his kindness too when he protected her from other men and gave her more produce.
just giving some persepctive here on what marriage can mean than oh we just feel some 'chemistry' well for the most part. 'chemistry' can happen with most people even when you dont even like each other or even know them hardly at all. When people get drunk or intoxicated they suddently have all this 'chemistry' for anybody in the room![/QUOTE]
