Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6154515-20141105145723/@comment-1458758-20141110193312

Blue Luna wrote: Wait, I thought we were past the stage where seeing couples with a family outside of marriage is "wrong"? There's nothing wrong with having a family before getting married or never getting married at all. Those sort of things vary largly from culture to culture.

Since Verdona is an Anodite, a very free spirited sort of alien, something as binding as marriage might not appeal to most members of the species. She was the one who left Max as soon as the kids were grown and having been stationary for so long to take care of a family was probably murder for her. Even Sunny wasn't beyond flirting with Kevin despite already having a boyfriend.

There's nothing confirmed, but I wouldn't be surprised if Anodites don't have marriage rituals. Or at least, don't have very strict rules or social expectations involving marriage.

Pretty much everything you said is what I would expect.

But, let's look at this from a Meta-perspective. America has not had the best history for tolerance of non-christian morals, this leading to much of the entertainment produced by America having a moral code rooted pretty firmly in the 50s with the Nuclear Family and stuff like that.

While this has certainly improved over the years, it wasn't so long ago that, I can't remember, was it Hallmark or somebody? Created a huge media ****storm by featuring two women in their Mother's Day ad campaign. So in Cartoons, where, even with the unconventional family, the age old shackles of "Married with Kids" is usually still the norm. So to have it out and out confirmed that Max and Verdona, a pair who would have been a couple from some time in the 60s-70s onwards until today, having raised at least 2 kids who themselves had kids, this would be a rather big upset both by what could be expected of in universe norms for their generation and for the typically puritanical belief systems of those who like to bitch out people who don't conform to their moral standard.