(mods please keep in caps those words that are, it is meant for extreme emphasis)
As someone in the “parsha” and in the “shidduch system” I will agree with A600KiloBear and say that there is no shidduch crisis but a system crisis.
This so called dilemma is a figment of parents and rabbis (and rebbetzins) imagination when a girl is still single at the antediluvian age of 21 and the boy is still single at the ancient age of 25. DOES THIS NOT SEEM ABSURD!
Most of the single people I know (both girls and boys) do not think that they are despondent or in middle of the above mentioned “crisis”. It usually is the parent that is worrying beyond measure “why isn’t my daughter married; why can’t my son find a normal girl”.
If the society we live in will just “GET OFF OUR BACKS” and stop pushing the girls to get married right out of seminary and the boys to get married when they aren’t mature, then this so called disaster will dissipate. Let EVERYONE go at their own pace and when they feel ready.
This does not mean that Rabbonim should come out and say that boys should try to date girls that are older, but it also doesn’t mean that the boys should limit themselves to minors or barely legal girls. Let everyone find their significant other without guidelines from any outsider (meaning anyone BUT the boy and girl). Give advice if requested, or even if it isn’t, but don’t set statutes and whom can date whom, when and where.
Maybe the crisis is that boys and girls in the “parsha” have too much peer pressure or stress to conform to societies warped sense dating and marriage.