新视野大学英语读写教程听力 第二册 unit03c_new

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[00:00.00]喜欢hxen.net，就把hxen.net复制到QQ个人资料中！Finding a Marriage Partner
[00:04.00]All humans are born into families
[00:10.37]—and families begin with the joining together of a man and a woman in marriage.
[00:18.54]All societies have their own form of marriage.
[00:24.80]The ideas that we have about marriage are part of our cultural background;
[00:33.44]they are part of our basic beliefs about right and wrong.
[00:41.00]As we study marriage,we find that different cultures
[00:48.06]have solved the problem of finding a spouse in different ways.
[00:55.12]In traditional Chinese culture,
[01:00.37]parents made marriage decisions for their children.
[01:06.35]Parents who wanted to find a spouse for their son or daughter
[01:13.01]asked a marriage counselor to find someone with the right qualities,
[01:20.46]including age and educational background.
[01:26.83]Older family members,
[01:31.30]who understood that the goal of marriage was to produce healthy sons,
[01:38.93]made the all-important decision of marriage.
[01:44.80]In traditional Chinese society,sons were important
[01:52.03]because they would take positions as head of the family
[01:58.01]and keep the family name alive.
[02:02.98]As part of our cultural background,
[02:08.30]beliefs about marriage can be as different as the cultures of the world.
[02:15.54]The Hopi, a native people of North America,
[02:21.91]used to have a very different idea about freedom.
[02:28.28]The Hopi allowed boys to leave their parents' home at age thirteen
[02:36.53]to live in a kiva,a special home for young males.
[02:43.98]Here they enjoyed the freedom to go out alone at night
[02:51.32]and secretly visit young girls.
[02:56.40]Most boys tried to leave the girl's home before dawn,
[03:02.95]but a girl's parents usually did not get angry about the night visits.
[03:11.12]They allowed the visits to continue
[03:16.49]if they thought the boy was someone who would make a good marriage partner.
[03:23.54]After a few months of receiving visits,most girls were expecting a baby.
[03:32.80]At this time they could choose their favorite boy for a husband.
[03:41.33]The Hopi culture is not the only one that allowed young people
[03:48.60]to visit each other at night.
[03:52.78]Some Bavarian people of southern Germany once had a "windowing" custom
[04:01.52]that took place when young women left their windows open at night
[04:09.19]so that young men could enter their bedrooms.
[04:14.56]When a woman was expecting,
[04:20.03]the man usually asked her to marry him.
[04:25.57]But women who were not with child after windowing
[04:31.66]were often unable to find a husband.
[04:37.13]This was because ability to bear children
[04:43.39]was a very important requirement for women in this culture,
[04:49.84]and the windowing custom
[04:54.01]allowed them to prove their ability to others in the community.
[05:00.56]Some people are surprised when they learn of this old custom
[05:07.51]because they think people of southern Germany followed the Catholic religion,
[05:15.47]which teach marriage is a holy right given by God in order to create children.
[05:24.61]But the windowing custom is only one example
[05:30.77]of the surprising views of marriage that have existed around the world.
[05:38.11]One view of marriage that surprises most of us today was held by John Noyes,
[05:47.08]a religious man who started the Oneida Community
[05:52.94]in the state of New York in 1831.
[05:59.10]Noyes decided that group marriage
[06:04.79]was the best way for men and women to live together.
[06:10.44]In this form of marriage, men and women changed partners frequently.
[06:19.19]They were expected to love all members of the community equally.
[06:27.07]Children belonged to all members of the community,
[06:33.05]and all the adults worked hard to support themselves
[06:39.49]and shared everything they had.
[06:44.03]Members of the Oneida Community
[06:49.61]lived together for a while without any serious problems;
[06:56.34]however,this way of life ended when John Noyes left in 1876.