Once upon a time, in the early-mid 20th century America, very few men wanted to sit and learn, and fewer women wanted to marry those type. After all, to the early immigrants, parnassa meant survival, not starving. There was no older generation to provide support, mostly, married women did not work.
But now the pendulum has swung in the other direction. The default for the boys is to sit and learn, and the girls are taught/trained to want that for their futures, and instead of being scorned, the bnei Torah are highly valued. It has worked because there are parents who are willing to support and women who are willing to work and have opportunities that did not exist 2-3 generations back. If you think about it, it is amazing and proves the strength of Torah learning in our community – a bracha considering what was lost in the Holocaust.
It also creates a new set of problems- financial stress, which will only grow as the learners’ children get married and don’t have parents to support them, and perhaps contributes to shidduch issues, for those bochurim who can’t/don’t want to learn full time, and for the top girls who outnumber the top learners. It also creates a class society- with the learning bochurm at the top, and the rest considered second-rate.
Given time, and some forward thinking, I think the system can correct itself, pendulums don’t stay to one side forever- girls will be honest with themselves and find appropriate matches among the available bochurim. The external pressure to stay in learning no matter what will decrease as more options open simply because they are needed. There will still be the learners, who will be valued (the shevet Levi, so to speak), and those girls who really want to marry them, but the alternative choice will grow and as it grows, it will no longer be stigmatized. I don’t think the next generation will look like this one.
