DY: And how is that not being locked in in the cynical way I mentioned it? I’m in a position right now where I know a couple of people in marriages that lasted too long and finally imploded, with fallout for the kids, once each side realized that they were in incompatibly different places hashkafically and the status quo was untenable.
My point is that it does exist, just they’re hiding out. If someone were to allow them out, they’d be around in droves.
Put it this way- a few months ago there was a letter to a shidduch columnist in a well-known magazine in which a woman had started dating at 19 while in college, resolute that she was going to end up a kollel wife supporting her super shtark husband forever. Five years later, she still figured she wanted that, but she kept on encountering on her dates guys who fit the bill in shtarkness but who, due to only ever having been in yeshiva, lacked the sophistication and outside knowledge and self sufficiency that she had picked up over her education and work and which she began to realize she appreciated in a spouse. The columnist told her to put her priorities straight and make sure she was only getting redt to the shtarkest guys from the best yeshivos in order to get that out of her head. But it’s a clear example of how she had changed in some ways and pushing her into the cookie-cutter mold wasn’t going to help. Worse, there’s probably some guy in yeshiva who is a great guy who reads the Wall Street Journal between sedarim, or even has started college, but because she’s being encouraged to date “top guys,” they’ll never meet.
And to totally ignore your non-response, even if you limited it to three, allowing for some population growth and some people never getting married, you’d still have to use embryo selection, as there are families that have a bunch of kids of one gender in a row.