The Shidduch Crisis is simple.
The Shidduch Crisis is the attitude that people have towards singles, dating, money, hashkafa, yichus, looks etc. Think of it this way. If people weren’t so worried about their status, getting a daughter in law with rich parents, what high school their potential DIL went to, having a perfect shidduch picture and what their mother wears to the shabbos table- I think we wouldn’t have this problem. But we have a problem with girls who don’t fit boxes.
Boxes include: Bais Yaakov, Heimishe, Modern ORthodox, Baal Teshuva, Sephardi. Yes its easy to set up people who grew up the same, but lets leave the word grew up out of this. People aren’t the same as they were when they grew up nesecarily. People are complicated and fluid and grow. I know no one would have set me and my husband up because we have different background, but BH we found each other by ourselves.
You aren’t rich- you go to a whole different category. You didn’t go to a bais yaakov school- you can’t marry certain guys. You are a baal teshuva- you can’t marry an FFB. You are in secular university- you can’t marry a learning boy. You didn’t go to university but your parents aren’t wealthy- well many guys will overlook you.
Take away these boxy attitudes and what do you get? A focus on who the girl is in the point of time. I rarely see a blurb on a shidduch resume that describes who the girl and is and what she is looking for- rather her height, her summer camps and seminary and her siblings ages and jobs seem more relevant. Why? You aren’t marrying her summer camp, she could and probably is very different than she was in high school, so why does it even matter?
Lets get this straight. The shidduch crisis is an attitude problem and nothing else. If we started loving each other more instead of tearing girls down for not looking good enough in a shidduch resume picture (Rav Dovid Feinstein shlita, , “Why are we making things more difficult? There is a certain chein that young ladies have that often does not come across in a photograph, and can only be seen in person. We are making the shidduch crisis worse with these new requirements.” ) or if we thought maybe to ask why a girl is in university (maybe she wants to support her husband in kollel with a good paying job because she doesnt want to rely on her parents supporting her in this crazy expesnive world????) or maybe if we just stopped talking about 24 year old girls as “old” and threaten them that the 19 year olds are “coming home from seminary soon and if they don’t go out with this specific guy (who they shouldn’t be settling on) they will have missed the boat”.
I think its an attitude change and a little more love.