Fresno Famous

Regional.... absolutely totally, with out a doubt, Regional...

First off?
That your little darlin' likes to play 'wedding,' is cool... because she's getting that 'being married and having a wedding is a good time,'
---and that's coming from seeing the two people that are in her life who ARE her parents --as enjoying being married...
(take a bow dude... little girls are sharp...and she'd not be feeling this way if you had a house that freaked her out... I know kids that are mortified of getting married or having kids
...so she's got a good role models...)

Second...

Okay,,, I'll just say it.
(Having raised and worked with young women?)
This subject is a real sticking point for me.

1. -In this region the gender roles are extremely traditional.
-This means that you GET married at an early age and settle down and have a family to maintain the norm.
(This means, married, pregnant, and raising kids by the mid to late twenties for most women, ---which takes them out of any career track for (at least,) 6 years, ---which means that they have to retrain just to compete, -which means schooling, ---which is damn near impossible when you have little kids, (unless the hubster or other fam. is really helping out...)

(Being an agrarian city, and being a highly religious and conservative one, -there is still that aspect that is a bit of a hold-out from earlier times.
---Problem is: folks are confusing limited career choices and 'loyalty,' to the area with some romantic blat of 'stability and decency.'

2. -As this State has such (incredibly inexpensive, ---yet OBSCENELY ill attended schools and colleges?
---and as 'careers,' are so woefully underrepresented in this town?,
---kids are not really being shown stuff to aim for.
(They don't see a whole lot of industry, corporate work, creative, professional, nor multi-hued career paths to choose from.)
---So the idea of a kid growing up and 'getting their career going, and pursuing THAT, (FIRST?) around here -does not happen.
----This severely truncates a kids life, (particularly if they have gifts and leanings that require some serious schooling.)
It also stunts the region.

3. In truth?
The average age of marriage in a lot of more educationally involved / urban settings is actually in the thirties (if not older,)
---and being in your thirties and not being married is no big deal, --as there are other professionals the same age.

---Remaining single in general (even into your forties and fifties,) is also not unheard of.

(Ready for a Shocker??? In more urban / Educationally progressive areas women stay single longer, now that it's becoming more viable for them to have kids into their 30's 40's and 50's... ---and even then, it's not unheard of for women to simply adopt or become artificially inseminated and have kids ---if Mr. Right doesn't happen to come along... (Lighting does not fall from the sky in this case either, btw...)

4. -In this area, gender has a ton to do with career choice.
It's very hard for young women to really see girls older, in school, and in vocations really dicing it up with the fella's
(in other areas such things are seen as not just really cool, ---but 'normal.')
(Yes, in more progressive areas, the girls I grew up with were shown and told (from the early sixties on up, -'you wanna do this? study hard, stay in school, and you CAN.' ---and that was ANYTHING.)

Here?
Women tend to be conditioned to take a back seat to men, The men often communicate to them in such mannerisms
-and I've heard such things shovelled here in the 'no on a regular basis.
This is still seen greatly as a 'mans town.'
Which sucks.

(Just in religious circles?, my denom, (Episcopalian,) has a Bishop who is trying to pull the whole diocese out of the general (convention of,) churches, ----because he refuses to acknowledge women as priests or as bishops... (so one of the ladies at my church, ---who is ordained as a priest, has to drive to S.F. to celebrate the Mass.)
--In most other areas of the United States, it's my denom that is among the most progressive, -with lots of women in leadership.
--(Our region (Central Valley,) is the only one in the US where there is a near unanimous choice of all the priests to bail on the main denom because of the issue of female equality in leadership (and homophobia.)

5. Further???
It's been proven, also that people who wait until their later years to get married, -tend to stay married.
(The divorce rate among people who got married in their thirties and forties actually reduces to near half of those who got married in their twenties, and drops sharply lower as the 'age married at' goes up.)

(It's my personal opinnion and personal experience, ---but I have found it to be the exception that someone in their twenties really knows themselves that well,
-let alone what it means to be with a mate 24-7,
(let alone, what they really want in a mate, at such a young age.)

I'm not saying that people who marry young are doomed,,,
(I can think of one couple that is quite young that just got engaged, ---and they're so wired for each other it's totally cool to be around them, -and they have their career paths sorted out... ---but again, they're an exception.)

6. I think that this town needs to demand their kids (in general,) stay in school,
---and make it really clear that, without a college education, you will NOT have the skillset to really be viable in most markets, and you are practically assuring that you will live at or near poverty level in most sections of the world, --including, soon, HERE.

--(This means also bouncing your kid out to campus' and cities where they will actually get a chance to SEE and MENTOR with other people of their gender actually doing what they might want to do... So yeah, throw them across to NYC, Boston, Conn. Phila... (ANYWHWERE,) where there are thousands of people doing what they want to do --uninhibited-- who have been doing such for generations...
(....Don't worry, they will come back, (they always do... Californians can't take the cold weather and high density living for too long...)
---but in the mean time they LEARN, and do so without a glass ceiling.)

This will naturally push the age of marriage up a bit,

-but you have to ask youself...
-do you want the kid to be a more actualized and better adjusted boomerang (more solid financially, better educated, and raising kids in their thirties and forties,) -bringing something back INTO the area?

-Or do you want more kids married, having kids, breaking up, and miserable about the place,
---because they never were encouraged to see if there was anything different???

Generational?

I'm wondering the age of your wife's friend because I find that, thankfully, the 20-something generation of women realize their lives can be whole without a man. I wish it were easier for us to learn from others' mistakes. I waited a long time to meet my husband (without knowing he was who I was waiting for) after learning from the women in my life's mistakes with regard to men. I actively seek to show my girls that one of God's greatest gifts is a spouse and that their lives should consist of so much more than just having "any ol' man." Plus, no disrespect whatsoever to my man or men in general, but men are simple creatures - it was pretty easy for me to see that Teule was much more interested in me when I didn't appear so interested in him - I was intriguing, yeah, that's it!

Some balance between crazed

Some balance between crazed work-a-holic and crazy cat lady *would* be nice. I certainly wish that balance on my own kids, but I think they learn more from what I do than what I say---and I don't think my life is always that balanced.
Just thinking out loud:
Several things pull at me and my time, and they all seem very earth-shatteringly important at the moment, but if I answered all those calls----like I'd *like* to go to that Greenpeace guy/talking about the Nuclear Power plant thing...BUT, it's time for me to spend some time with those kids of mine at home (and hope someone else will represent for us at the Warnors and keep my kids from glowing all green and stuff).
-----in my wired craziness, I do sometimes long for the (seemingly) more relaxed craziness of catlady----but I know balance is key. Let's see if I can 'live' what I 'know'.