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Message: <blockquote data-quote="broghammerj" data-source="post: 1732809" data-attributes="member: 1869">Hey I throw in my two cents because that's all its worth. Hey, my parents are divorced.  I'm a doctor,  my sister is a school teacher, and my brother is in the Army and just got back from Iraq (whether it's right or wrong he's still in prinicple, attempting to help our country).  I think we've all contributed to society and my parents have helped make us who we are.Someone correct me, but I thought I heard that the number of unwed parents were drastically increasing in many of the socialist Scandinavian countries. The average age of American marriage is getting later and later.  So is the age of birthing children, except in the poor and underprivledged.Most of the Turks are Muslim. I live in the middle of the highest number of Lebanese outside of Lebanon and a ton of various people from other Muslim cultures.  My wife is an obstetrician.  I guarentee you she delivers more young, MARRIED, arabic women in their teens with multiple children because that is the cultural expectation.  I don't know where this age bias of your friend comes from.  There is a proponderence of arabic men in their 20s marrying girls in their teens and bearing large numbers of children.  Note, I really hate to generalize a group of people but if we're doing to it to Americans I simply use it as an example.Lichtenhart,If I could give you my take on the American mentality of moving out.  It would be best encompassed by the so called "American Dream".  If you work hard you can accomplish anything here in America.  I think this is why American work hours have now exceded everyone elses in the world.  Although most Americans know this to not be true, we are afforded a great number of opportunities. This idea stems from many levels but most importantly that our poor immigrant parents came to start a new life from their home countries.  There is an idea of independence and opportunity from us being a young country of 200+ years and fighting our revolution to win independence.  The great migration west over the open plains allowed people to have their own piece of land if they wanted it.  These all sort of end up as drives to succeed for ourselves.  Your parents help you, but there is a time to break out on your own to find your success.  In a sense, one does what they have done before you.  There was also a great movement from an agrarian economy with the big family of farm hands to a urban based, service oriented work force.Of the extended families I know, there are two types.  One is the family that takes back in the elderly member who can no longer care for themselves due to health reasons.  The other is a current immigrant family who has moved to the USA.  They stick together as that is how they are raised and not everyone in the family speaks the language, knows the culture, etc.  I find a lot of this changes when they start to have American born children.As to the gamer geek portion of the threadYeah I'm a geek.  I built my own computer, play RPGs, and know way to much trivia reguarding Star Trek.  I never played a lot of sports in school.  I was joe average in terms of popularity.  I didn't date a lot in high school.  My wife still thinks that after 7 yrs I am a dork.  She doesn't understand my hobbies or makes any attempt except them anymore than the booth babes at the trade shows.  She was the class president, star basketball player, etc.  Trust me when I say we wouldn't have "hung out" in school.You know what happened....people grew up including myself.  People began to care less about sports, popularity, etc.  I figured out you have to get on the social horse and if you get bucked off then you just dust off and get back up.  Oh yeah, and I showered between those dustings <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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