Is preparing all girls for marriage contributing to the Shidduch Crisis?

If you accept #1 as being correct (it is), the rest becomes moot.

There are basically an equal amount of boys and girls born. (Very slightly more girls). Therefore whenever a guy gets married so does a girl. For every girl who decides not to get married there will be a boy not married.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard similar such arguments as the OP and it’s really terrible. Basically what it boils down to is “we should just teach girls to be OK with never getting married.”

The human emotion of loneliness has nothing to do with upbringing. These girls didn’t do anything to deserve never getting married.

I think there’s a stigma against working bochrim, Which must be changed. There are plenty of working bochrim who learn everyday and have great middos, but girls won’t look at them because they’re not learning full time.
On the other hand there are plenty of boys who are not cut out for learning full time, but they are scared to go to work because of “shidduchm”. So they stay in yeshiva/kollel (the coffee room……) for a bunch of years doing nothing .
If girls, parents and shadchanim will only recognize that not everyone is cut out for learning full time. And there are many boys who are working who learn everyday and have great middos. There will be a lot more boys available. And a lot more shidduchm.

The problem is that everybody is afraid of what other people will say if they “settle” for a working boy. It’s assumed that there must be something “wrong” with the girl, so people will talk, wonder “what’s wrong with the family,” etc. Also, they may worry that it will harm the younger girls’ shidduchim.

The real problem in all this is the parents and their need to keep up appearances. Supposedly the parents do the selecting because the young people themselves aren’t mature enough to choose wisely. Looking over the current scene, I think in many cases the parents are less mature than the kids.

If there is a Shidduch crisis, why is the frum population growing?

Because the people who are getting married are having lots of kids.

BTW, from where did you get your statistics that the frum population is growing?

The shidduch crisis exists BECAUSE the frum population is growing. How do people still not get this?

That depends how you define the shidduch crisis.

If you define it as not enough shidduchim taking place for the population to increase, then he’s got a good proof.

lightbrite-“1. Girls are being raised to believe that their role in life is to be a wife and mother. ”

– really? I thought nowadays girls are raised to believe they can be and do whatever they want in life and most importantly, INDEPENDENT! Youre probably referring to the Torah way Beis Yakov girls who are still left.
Feminism and equality have always been around but never this strong and have already done much damage in changing the way people think.

joseph et al ,
Ideal 1: women should be wives and mothers
first
Ideal 2: women are taught in seminary to
marry and support a full time learner.
Ideal. 3: accomplish both simultaneously without
hiring a nanny or stressing out mentally
and physically

This so called shidduch crisis has little if anything do with age gap.

The premise that girls marry at 19 and boys 23 is very enchanting and sounds wonderful, however for the vast majority of frum couples, this is not the case. Shidduchim is a difficult experience and many boys an girls start at 25, an only a muniriy of girls marry under 21.

The real problem boils down to stigma. I am not talkin from my own experience bug also fom the experience of many people i know.

In many communities the shidduch process has become so complex and insanely judgemental that the vast majority of suggestions are rejected, even before the boy meets the girl. In some communities the following factors can be game changers as to not whether they will get married, but meet up in the first place;

Job of parents, income of parents, siblings school reports, clothing style of boy, vague reports by some witness who claimed to have seen or know the boy, city of origin of the boy, some sin he committed which hashem forgave years ago, shoe style, glasses color, how long snd what place he learned torah in. House of fanily. Style of family. Asthma of 2nd cousin
And the list goes on and on.

Is it a wonder why so many young people are not getting married?
Instead of approaching shidduchim with openness and tolerance(within the framework of halacha of course) positivity and hope, many people coming with artillery oc elimination, of judgement, misbelief and in many cases ,it is the parents themselves who are rejecting one shiduch after another without even consulting the person for who they are looking.

The answer to this crisis is to stop thinking so much and to allow dates to happen.

The problem is not lack of marriages, but lack of dates . It can typically take, in some kehillas, 20 even 50 suggestions until a boy meets a girl. Yes pre checks are often important ,however this whole culture of judgement is ridding boys and girls of hundreds of potential matches. Thd vast majority , although not all, concerns , questions and thoughts will be answered kn the dating itself. Genuine human interaction and emotion provides the answer to everything

Girls have a mitzvah to marry in order to enable boys to be mekayem their mitzva (Ran in Keddushin). The Rambam also states that mederabonon a women should not remain single in order to avoid chashad. There’s no question that al pi hashkofas Torah a women was created to be an Eizer kinegdo & bring children to the world. The fact that tragically this doesn’t always work out doesn’t change the way we should raise our children. We should instead try to solve the problem we are facing.

Mrs P: Au contraire. There aren’t enough good girls. Really it is much easier being a good girl than being a good boy, since far far more is expected of boys in other to be considered to be good. But for a boy to find a girl equally good to himself is hard since there aren’t many.

“There aren’t enough good girls. Really it is much easier being a good girl than being a good boy”

Josephine,

More fake news from you. A “good girl” must excel in tzniyus, yiras shamayim, practical Torah knowledge and chesed. If she wants to support a husband in learning, she must also excel in secular knowledge and be prepared to navigate the working world. A “good boy” need do nothing more than stay in yeshiva until he’s married. There’s usually no objective measure of how “good” he is in learning.

If it was so hard “for a boy to find a girl equally good to himself” there would be many more older single boys than girls, yet the exact opposite is true. So are you dismissing them as not being “good girls”? And was your recent heartless comment on another thread, “A majority of Chareidi girls are married before they’re 25” intended as a comfort to the many girls who aren’t? What’s wrong with you?

Pray hard. Be open minded. Like any other “crisis” everything is from Hashem. That’s the solution. Nothing unique about not finding a spouse over any other struggle. Girls should not be taught that “it’s ok not to get married” instead we all should be taught to pray, do hishtadlut, and accept what Hashem gives us.

With all the public discussion about the “shidduch crisis” in our media, conferences, meetings, etc., there have been many ideas proposed to solve it. I have yet to hear any indication that there has been even nominal success with any of the suggested interventions. I might be wrong on this, but there is enough debate on how to assess the “crisis”, what to measure, etc., that finding statistics that indicate progress would be a huge challenge.

I suggest that the focus has been on numbers, or at least perceived numbers. And I am not so sure that trying to change things at a more general level will accomplish anything – except to make one feel as if they are doing something. Maybe each situation is different, and should be addressed individually. There are unmarried boys and there are unmarried girls. It would be counterproductive to try and help an individual with a strategy that would be more appropriate for someone else. Of course, any individual can set standards that are impossible to achieve, and freeze himself/herself out of the market.

Also worth repeating is the notion of the “good” boy or girl. The common uses of the word in the shidduch scene are woefully misleading, and it will take a generation or more to achieve the level of change needed to see young people in a more useful light.