Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
since the world is a frightful place these days, how about a fun thread?
[q]July 27, 2006
Spouse Courtesy of Mom the Matchmaker
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
YOU’VE tried Craigslist and Club Med, and have nothing but flirty e-mail messages and hangovers to show for it. Speed dating made you nauseated, and your Web profile is so exaggerated you barely recognize yourself. Some days, you just feel like crawling home to Mom and Dad.
In Ali Seidman Hammer’s case, her father came to her.
Ms. Seidman Hammer, 29, who works at a jewelry company in Manhattan, never lacked suitors. But when she and a boyfriend broke up in 2002, her father wanted to help. He reached out to the son of a longtime family friend, Dave Bray, who contacted a fraternity brother, Mike Hammer. They went on their first date in November 2002 and were married in April this year.
“Sometimes,” said her father, Larry Seidman, “it takes a little prodding.”
For some people parental intervention may seem like an arranged marriage. But for today’s superattentive parents, involved in almost every aspect of their children’s lives, dating is merely one more sphere of influence.
Surprisingly, many adult children don’t seem to mind. In an age of electronic courting, where dating can be reduced to a bleary-eyed scroll through lackluster Web site profiles, some see the appeal of Match.mom.
“If you’re going to give J Date a shot, why not give your mother a shot?” said Leslie Arker, 32, who met her husband, Alex Arker, 33, through their parents (their fathers played golf together) in 2000.
Those in their 20’s and early 30’s are, after all, used to hands-on to-the-rescue parents, and involvement doesn’t end with a college diploma.
“There is a very high appreciation of parents nowadays, which is unusual,” said Helen E. Johnson of Chapel Hill, N.C., an author and a consultant on parent relations to colleges.
Where parents were once feared and distant figures, today they are more like friends to their children, some people who work with families said, and that has led to more open relationships.
Manny Contomanolis, the associate vice president and director of Cooperative Education and Career Services at Rochester Institute of Technology, said that the involvement of parents in their children’s lives is occurring more and more, partly because parents no longer trust institutions like schools and churches to be their children’s best advocates.
But modern technology has also brought a revival of the age-old practice of matchmaking. E-mail and cellphones make it easy for parents to be part of their children’s day-to-day trials and tribulations, and to get emotionally involved.
“They’re potentially living their son’s or daughter’s life along with them,” Mr. Contomanolis said. “It creates more instances and opportunities to intercede.”
Critics who advocate a more laissez-faire approach to parenthood may view parental involvement in affairs of the heart as an extension of what generational scholars call “helicopter parents”: those who hover over their children’s every move, hampering their maturation, autonomy and future ability to cope.
But some say a parent’s suggestion to spend Saturday night with the upstanding son of a business acquaintance is not the same as meddling in college admissions or helping complete a term paper to beef up a grade. Mr. Contomanolis said it is not much different from a parent’s suggesting a child call a family friend who runs a company that needs some business administration graduates. It would be problematic, he said, only if parents were carting in potential mates as the parents did in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”
Parents, of course, have been meddling in their children’s love lives since time immemorial. And writers have long mined the subject of arranged marriage in works as varied as “Romeo and Juliet,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Bend It Like Beckham.” But even in “Anna Karenina,” published in the 1870’s, parents questioned their role in their children’s love lives. “It’s the young people who have to marry and not their parents,” Tolstoy wrote, “and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it as they choose.”
And that was where things were left, in most families. But fathers and mothers may be reclaiming their right to know best.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/f...1b3e8207be737f&ex=1154145600&pagewanted=print
[/q]
so ... do mom and dad know best? is this just overinvolved parents trying to spin even more influence over their codependent children? or are parents and children closer now than they've ever been?
parents: would you want to matchmake for your child?
children: would you want your parents to matchmake for you?
discuss, discuss ...
[q]July 27, 2006
Spouse Courtesy of Mom the Matchmaker
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
YOU’VE tried Craigslist and Club Med, and have nothing but flirty e-mail messages and hangovers to show for it. Speed dating made you nauseated, and your Web profile is so exaggerated you barely recognize yourself. Some days, you just feel like crawling home to Mom and Dad.
In Ali Seidman Hammer’s case, her father came to her.
Ms. Seidman Hammer, 29, who works at a jewelry company in Manhattan, never lacked suitors. But when she and a boyfriend broke up in 2002, her father wanted to help. He reached out to the son of a longtime family friend, Dave Bray, who contacted a fraternity brother, Mike Hammer. They went on their first date in November 2002 and were married in April this year.
“Sometimes,” said her father, Larry Seidman, “it takes a little prodding.”
For some people parental intervention may seem like an arranged marriage. But for today’s superattentive parents, involved in almost every aspect of their children’s lives, dating is merely one more sphere of influence.
Surprisingly, many adult children don’t seem to mind. In an age of electronic courting, where dating can be reduced to a bleary-eyed scroll through lackluster Web site profiles, some see the appeal of Match.mom.
“If you’re going to give J Date a shot, why not give your mother a shot?” said Leslie Arker, 32, who met her husband, Alex Arker, 33, through their parents (their fathers played golf together) in 2000.
Those in their 20’s and early 30’s are, after all, used to hands-on to-the-rescue parents, and involvement doesn’t end with a college diploma.
“There is a very high appreciation of parents nowadays, which is unusual,” said Helen E. Johnson of Chapel Hill, N.C., an author and a consultant on parent relations to colleges.
Where parents were once feared and distant figures, today they are more like friends to their children, some people who work with families said, and that has led to more open relationships.
Manny Contomanolis, the associate vice president and director of Cooperative Education and Career Services at Rochester Institute of Technology, said that the involvement of parents in their children’s lives is occurring more and more, partly because parents no longer trust institutions like schools and churches to be their children’s best advocates.
But modern technology has also brought a revival of the age-old practice of matchmaking. E-mail and cellphones make it easy for parents to be part of their children’s day-to-day trials and tribulations, and to get emotionally involved.
“They’re potentially living their son’s or daughter’s life along with them,” Mr. Contomanolis said. “It creates more instances and opportunities to intercede.”
Critics who advocate a more laissez-faire approach to parenthood may view parental involvement in affairs of the heart as an extension of what generational scholars call “helicopter parents”: those who hover over their children’s every move, hampering their maturation, autonomy and future ability to cope.
But some say a parent’s suggestion to spend Saturday night with the upstanding son of a business acquaintance is not the same as meddling in college admissions or helping complete a term paper to beef up a grade. Mr. Contomanolis said it is not much different from a parent’s suggesting a child call a family friend who runs a company that needs some business administration graduates. It would be problematic, he said, only if parents were carting in potential mates as the parents did in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”
Parents, of course, have been meddling in their children’s love lives since time immemorial. And writers have long mined the subject of arranged marriage in works as varied as “Romeo and Juliet,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Bend It Like Beckham.” But even in “Anna Karenina,” published in the 1870’s, parents questioned their role in their children’s love lives. “It’s the young people who have to marry and not their parents,” Tolstoy wrote, “and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it as they choose.”
And that was where things were left, in most families. But fathers and mothers may be reclaiming their right to know best.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/f...1b3e8207be737f&ex=1154145600&pagewanted=print
[/q]
so ... do mom and dad know best? is this just overinvolved parents trying to spin even more influence over their codependent children? or are parents and children closer now than they've ever been?
parents: would you want to matchmake for your child?
children: would you want your parents to matchmake for you?
discuss, discuss ...
I've got a good "friend" type of relationship with both my parents really, but my mom especially. I wouldn't mind them introducing me to someone, but I wouldn't want them to force anything on me - which they wouldn't. And sexual advice? 
I'm sorry but that just seems weird to me, asking your parents for sexual advice. But hey, if both parties are okay with it then that's cool I guess.
