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I saw this on a different site & figured that perhaps it would be an appropriate Tu B’av topic:
Consider the following. The same parents who are picky when their sons are in shidduchim, suddenly become very easygoing when their daughters are in shidduchim. While support makes all the difference for their son, money, to a certain extent, is of no importance for their daughter.
While it is difficult to come up with hard numbers to support any percentages, claims, or representations being made, by simply analyzing the situation, certain facts become glaringly obvious.
If a boy in the parsha is going out on a steady basis and a girl in a similar situation does not go on a date for months on end, then there are obviously a lot more girls available than boys.
No matter how many community shidduch groups we organize and convene, and no matter how many housewives turn into full-time shadchanim, not much would change.
What we have accomplished recently with these discussions is nothing more than the equivalent of turning up the music, picking up the pace, and making the eventually unsuccessful game of musical chairs a little more frantic.
The most encouraging solution suggested so far has been for boys to start dating at a younger age and with girls closer to their age.
This is an encouraging idea, but also not the answer. This solution relies on the unlikely premise that difficult decisions will be made by those most unaffected by the problem: the boys and their parents. This is painful to say, but it is probably true.
Even if boys would begin dating at age 21 or even 20, this will still leave a 2-year disparity between the boys and the girls, who generally begin dating at 18.
While the above suggestion may slightly alleviate the problem, it is not a complete solution.
– Coupling this with the suggestion that boys begin to date younger, boys would automatically begin meeting girls closer to their age, eventually bringing the age-disparity-gap to a close.
– The stigma of the single 24-year old girl would be gone. After all, she was only allowed to begin dating at 20!
If this would become accepted – and perhaps mandatory – in the community, then shadchanim would no longer redd shidduchim to those girls younger than the age limit. All people would focus their efforts on these, more aptly-matched, girls.
We would no longer have the sad spectacle of girls watching their friends get engaged while they are left behind.
There are those who would rather take a wait-and-see attitude and simply encourage people to become shadchanim. Some people are uneasy about implementing any kind of new approach, especially one of this magnitude. This is a sad mistake. Sticking our heads in the sand in the hope that this problem goes away is drastically unfair to all the eligible girls out there.
It is time we begin to show that we treat our daughters like the diamonds they are.
OMgoodness! When I said that some of these proposals amount to putting girls in the freezer I was told, of course not, heaven forfend! And here it is, b’feirush!
And then, if this takes off, the girls will be seen as “career girls”, “too set in their ways”, who aren’t interested in boys they’ll deem “insubstantial”.
And boys going out earlier is just going to mean MORE years of support which is part of the REAL problem. Parents CAN’T support anymore, and the boys will be even less prepared to assume their responsibilities when the time comes.
ckk: Some good points in there.
;
P.S. Who wrote this, BTW?
wow. that’s fantastic! realistically, how could it be implemented and spread??
Many yeshivas recommend to their bochurim not getting married to a young girl for that reason. Lakewood is essentially a hefkervelt so there is no way of implementing this barring a concerted effort on everyone’s part.
But what do you want the girls to do until they turn 20? They shouldn’t teach because they are inexperienced and we would Chas Vishalom want them to go to college! So what should they do???
The analysis is correct here, it is indeed musical chairs. The solution proposed, though, doesn’t solve the problem, it just changes the rate of players looking for chairs. Same number of players, same number of chairs. The problem, to any mathematician out there, is not solvable. If you have different numbers of men and women, you will have some who have no match.
I heard a rabbi say that there are equal amounts of boys and girls. I disagree. I went to a class and everyone was asked to give singles names for shidduchim. When I got to the list, on the boys page, there were only 6 names. On the girls side, there were 25!! If it’s true, that there are equal boys and girls, will someone please tell me where are the boys!!
tzippi- I think I read it on Matzav.
Ettie, thanks. I found it. Was curious as to who the actual author was.
I think that MANY girls probably WOULD benefit from waiting. But many others wouldn’t.
I know that demographics are a big part of the issue. But there are so many other issues that are creating the difficulties our kids are having re shidduchim. Let’s address them.
Let’s have as concerted a campaign for parents to be mechanech their children and shepherd them through the process according to what will ultimately bring them the greatest shalom bayis as their is to solve the “age gap.” Said this before, I don’t like much of the New Age thinking.
cholent – See onlyemes’ comment above. There may be a problem. But this does nothing to solve it.
CKK, some of the solutions for this problem are – boys starting to date younger, boys coming back from E”Y earlier…. all these things are herd mentality, not what each kid needs to grow into the ben Torah he will spend his life being, whether in the beis medrash or in the workplace. (And if there isn’t near one hundred percent compliance then will the numbers move significantly?) Which is why focusing on the numbers alone isn’t enough.
In response to the one who asked “wait till they are 20, then what should they do?”. So getting married is the communities way of keeping girls busy?
Without 100% compliance, this project is doomed to failure. If one girl sits in the freezer while all her classmates are dating and getting engaged, pretty soon everyone chickens out and starts dating. Encouraging people to marry older girls is a much more practical solution- girls can date whenever they want, and guys who want the special zechus will marry older girls.
Jothar writes, boys that want the special zechus will marry older girls.
This doesn’t sit right. The boys should be marrying whoever they can see themselves building a bayis neeman with!!! Now if they’re only going to date older girls, and they find that it works for them, ok but we have to get back to the basics – shalom bayis and batei neeman b’Yisrael.
I like it!
just as Jothar said, if not EVERYONE does it, than those girls who will, will be stuck
Great idea for 2 reasons (IMHO)
1) girls should wait till 20 before plunging into adult life, where there are no “do-overs” and mistakes come with a steep price to pay. Let them learn about life, and be better prepared to face what marriage really entails.
2) Since boys enter the shidduch market at 22-23, they SHOULD be dating girls that are 20. Its a sad comment on our boys, if they see an 18 year old as their peer.
And for the record, I speak from experience; I was a 21 year old, the Mrs was 19. Though its been 20+ years, I think I would have made less mistakes (some very costly) had I been somewhat older. Can’t speak for her, but I know I said / did some dumb things, all because of a lack of maturity
Tzippi:
New Age Thinking??
Einstein said
“To solve the significant problems we face we can not approach them at the same level of thinking we were at we created them”
And if there isn’t near one hundred percent compliance then will the numbers move significantly?)
YES YES YES
Just look at what the NASI project has accomplished in less than two years
Your soap box re: preparing kids for marriage is very important but wholly unrelated to the problem of far two many older single girls.
welcome back, you made your point… please refrain from making multiple posts in this thread making the same point. Thank you. YW Moderator-72
It was only a matter of time. Hi AZ
It bothers me to no end all of you who play G-d. Setting universal standards, determining who should and who should not go out/get married due to their age. Last I checked age had no connection to maturity or responsibility.
AZ it is a chutzpa to put aside a reasonable concern about people preparing for marriage because of the numbers you claim to have in front of you.
It is also absurd to believe you are against the video-conferencing dating because it is not the age-gap (yes, I saw that). The fact that you are only in favor of YOUR way is quite ga’avadik of you (but we knew that already from your comments to the moderators). I also find it weird that here you claim not to be a man of numbers, yet elsewhere you are referred to as a “perhaps the leading exponent of the mathematical theory”, go figure.
Despite what you say here, you have an underlying bias towards the age gap and the NASI project as a whole. You don’t want the shidduch crisis to be over, YOU have a need to fix it. There are fundamental differences between the two, and it is option two which annoys me to no end.
I hope the mods would be kind enough to end the misery now, rather than wait for 400 posts in 3 days again to prove that such a discussion with said individual is worthless.
inspiredteen wrote:
But what do you want the girls to do until they turn 20? They shouldn’t teach because they are inexperienced and we would Chas Vishalom want them to go to college! So what should they do???
You want to know what girls should do until 20? The most obvious answer is go to college so they can support their future husband in Kollel. And if you really think that college is assur, so send them for shana bet in seminary. If their parents can afford to support an uneducated daughter and son-in-law then they can probably afford another year of seminary in Eretz Yisrael.
And if they start going out before 20, what are they doing anyway? Is dating/marriage a full-time job that it gives them something to do? They should be going to college or teaching during this time anyway, dating or not. I don’t agree with you that they shouldn’t be teaching because they are inexperienced. Many girls have the ability to teach well. And how else will they gain this experience?
I do agree that not all girls should start dating at 18. Some 18 year-olds are much more mature than 24-year-olds and should start dating immediately if she so desires. Others should wait a few years. There shouldn’t feel pressure because all their friends are getting married, they should do whatever is right for themselves and have bitachon that they will find the right person at the right time.
And I don’t understand this whole solution anyway. There are plenty of stories of couples who at first did not go out with each other because of age and a few years later ended up married. I’m sure the experiences that each had during the years before agreeing to go out helped them to better appreciate each other later. Whether a girl’s bashert is close in age, much older, or even younger, she will marry him eventually no matter when she starts dating. Hashem has a plan for everyone and although the numbers might seem to not make sense, they make perfect sense to Him.
The demographic discrepancy is actually greater than has been described because while boys outnumber girls at birth, males are more likely than females to die of natural and accidental causes at all stages of life. However, if this was purely a mathematical problem we would have many single women and no single men.
I agree with onlyemes that this proposal makes no mathematical sense. It won’t do a thing if implemented.
please stop saying this doesn’t make mathematical sense. clearly u don’t understand the problem and/or solution. this idea is in essence the exact same thing as what is currently going on. encouraging boys starting to date, who are for the most part between 22-23 yrs old, to date girls within 2 yrs of themselves is to prevent girls from dating till they turn 20 unless a boy is dating before he’s 22. all this adds is to make a clear “rule”. as far as the math, its quite simple, by asking girls to hold off on dating, they will end up dating boys closer to them in age which greatly reduces the difference in the numbers if not eliminates it. (btw, this whole approach to solve the shidduch crisis is based on the belief that a boy is likely to marry within a relatively short period of time whether he is dating 22 yr olds or 19 yr olds, so by going out only with 22 yr olds he’ll probably marry one, while if he also went out with 19 yr olds he may marry one of them. basically, a boy can marry more than one girl and its a matter of who comes first. if you’re of the belief that everyone has only one “bashert” and is pre destined to marry their “bashert” no matter what then it’s gonna be a whole lot harder to grasp the solution to the shidduch crisis. it’s still doable but harder.)
I saw this post and felt I had to respond. This is an amazing idea.
1) we are in a financial crises and many people are out of work. Many parents cannot support a kollel couple as many years as the couple might like. If they wait until she is 20 then there will be time for her to start saving money so the parents do not have to, as well as give more time for the parents to save.
2) girls will have the opportunity to go for shana bes and not have to worry about this “ruining her chances”. girls mature a lot when they go away for seminary, especially shana bes. Many girls I have met grew so much their shana bes year that I was glad they went before getting into the parsha.
3) Girls can have the opportunity to (gasp) get a degree. We see the necessity for the woman to work and not everyone can be a teacher. Mathematically this cannot work. Someone will be out of a job because if every mother sent their kids to school, and taught at the school, then there must be incredibly small classes or many mothers without jobs. And there arent that many secretary jobs out there in schools. There are kosher ways, in good environments, to get educated. Thats for a different post tho.
4) closing the age gap, as mentioned previously.
5)girls can mature and grow up without having the pressure that they are “old maids”. They can learn the skills needed to run a house that they were not able to learn while in high school because they were busy with school work, activities, productions ect.
Have some seichel: parents who can’t afford kollel probably can’t afford shana bet.
Some girls have to pay their own way at a certain point – student loans, clothes, etc.
And all I can say to these girls who will be thawing (and hopefully not to freezer burnt in a few years) is that I join you in praying that these boys are worth it!!!
tzippi- shana bet many times is a lot cheaper than kollel, especially if the girls are not coming home for pesach. Many girls do not come home their first year, so it is possible to go 10 months away from home. If she does not want to go to shana bet, she can work, go to school state-side ect. there are many options and they should be considered.
Why the freezer burnt comment? Is getting married immediately after seminary that important for girls? why dont they have self-respect and dignity and realize that their only goal in life should not be to become “a wife” but rather “a mature, thinking, baalas midos who can become (at the right time) a mother to am yisroel.” If she isnt sporting a ring (bracelet), or at least gotten “close” her first year back from seminary, or within two years at the most, she is seen as an aging girl and many will think that there is some sort of problem with her.
Dont force your daughters to start dating immediately post seminary as it could be detrimental for the girl. She needs time to mature, grow up and become a PERSON! Why can’t she develop into a being, besides for becoming a “Mrs._____” ??
tzippi, of course if she is a bessere mentch and no guy in the world is good enough for her she could choose to remain a spinster. But in reality the guys have a tougher time finding a girl at their level. Especially so if he is an accomplished Torah scholar (or business man) and the girls are still stuck to their mommies.
havesomeseichel, becoming a wife and mother is the greatest accomplishment a Jewish girl can make in life.
BTW I find the title of this thread mildly amusing: “Put the Girls in the Freezer”. I was wondering if the girls might not get frost bight if left in too long? Or are they microwaveable once taken out?
OK, my apologies for repeating myself but still don’t have an answer.
What kind of prep are we giving our boys for marriage and life? Any reason that they will be even readier a half year earlier?
Tzippi- you are right about us not giving the proper prep for life. hmm- we dont give them a proper foundation in education, life skills, or character. Why arent the boys required to take some of the classes given at many Bais Yaakov life managing expenses, job-ready skills? Torah is important but dont we need to give the boys the best chances for a successful marriage? Why does it seem like only the girls need to change, improve, do things differently? Maybe we should change things and make them ready a half a year earlier….
Havesomeseichel, you propose giving the boys classes to ready them a half year earlier. Problem is, you seem to agree that boys aren’t as ready as they should be when they do start going out. So being ready a half year earlier might make them more like 24, rather than the 22.5 the Ageists say is needed to alleviate the crisis.
It seems that the process by which we are building the future of klal yisroel is basicly nothing more than a job search.
Available candidate prepares a resume.
Sends it to a headhunter and also circulates it among acquaintances.
If there is something catchy in the resume, the headhunter passes it along to a hiring manager who adds it to their list of candidates.
The hiring manager does some backround investigation and if everything is up to par a 1st interview is arranged.
If the 1st interview goes OK, the headhunter and hiring manager confer and the candidate is called back for a second interview.
If a series of successful interviews is held, the hiring manager brings the candidate to meet the CEO, usually a formality.
The CEO and headhunter work out a financial arrangement acceptable to all parties and an offer is made to the candidate.
Those candidates who do not have influential acquaintances, OR whose resumes do not stand out from the crowd usually end up going on one unsuccesful interview after another and remain out in the available market for a long time.
Not sure if placing those resumes into a freezer will accomplish much. Even items in a freezer get freezer burn after a while. Nobody wants an item with freezer burn unless it is highly discounted.
From my attempts to redd shidduchim, I would say the single biggest cause of the many girls who can not get a date is the fact that the shidduch is always redd to the boys 1st. The average boy seems to have a list of girls to look into thats almost as thick as the Brooklyn phone book. It sometimes takes, weeks, or months for a boy to get around to looking into a girl. If we could somehow get these girls off lists and on dates, we wouldnt have so many older singles. Redd the shidduch to the girls FIRST and I guarantee you will have many more girls going on dates.
jphone— why would redding it to a girl first help??? then the boy will say “no” just as quickly… i’m trying to figure out what that would do…
Its easy to say no, or just do nothing, when nobody knows your wasting their time. When a girl knows that Moshe Shmendrick is supposed to give an answer and he takes his sweet time, he will start to get a reputation. Nobody will redd him a shidduch. the way it works now, give Moshe the name, it will sit on his list for 8 weeks and if he feels like doing the person who gave him the name a favor, and looking into the girls, he will. If he is a tzadik, he may even call back with a yes or no. I dont believe girls will be like that.
As an aside, I think the way weve twisted the shidduch process also dictates the girl should be redd the shidduch 1st.
The gemara uses the analogy of someone who loses an object, as to why the boy goes out looking for a girl. the way we have things today, every boy is the greatest metziah in the world, so its only right that the girls should have the lists and go looking for the boys.
Take 2. This time, please no eating while reading.
Girls dont get dates, because boys are busy collecting lists, not saying yes to a date.
You have 500 boys and 500 girls, the girls are helpless until a boy says “yes i’m interested”, that process takes quite some time because, unless the girl has a quick way to get to the top of the list, she sits around and waits. The guy has 40 names and the girl is on 40 lists. If she is not one of the lucky ones who stand out and get moved to the head of the list, she will stay on the list for a long time. Then when the next grade of girls get put on the lists, you have more girls on lists and the boys figure they have more to choose from.
I believe the tables should be turned. Let the girls collect the names of boys and let them decide who on the list is worth going out with. I dont believe the girls will act the same way as the boys currently do.
jphone: I didn’t want to comment but you are leaving me no choice.
you write
You have 500 boys and 500 girls.
If these were the facts and the problem persisted perhpas we could have a discussion.
HOWEVER these are not the facts and you theory is not accurate. The boys ARE getting married and they are getting married to girls. Yet many many girls get left out.
One more time: If we have 150 girls on an island and 100 boys …….
Do you think it makes a difference whe gets redd first?????
jphone: Whilst you are correct there ARE 500 boys and 500 girls… there is no reason to turn the tables. Because even if you are correct that that is the problem (a big if), it doesn’t provide any solution.
alanschwartz: Please demonstrate the math rather than insisting everyone rely on blind faith that its true. Your theory doesn’t compute.
I agree with the posters that say that we need to prep our girls to be ready for marriage. What we are currently throwing them into is no way to start a new life. The umbilical cord needs to be cut between mommy and daughter long before the chuppa.
This doesn’t mean delaying either boys or girls from getting married. It means having them prepared earlier.
Statistically speaking the number of boys and girls are quite close. We are where we are today, because every year there are a few girls who are stuck on lists instead of going out on dates. The problem compounds itself every year, so that NOW we have way more girls than boys. The proposed solutions are attempts to alleviate this problem but the root cause will remain if we allow boys to maintain lists and girls being stuck on those lists.
Switch things around for a few years and then guys will be stuck on lists with no dates while girls choose who and how often to go out. The numbers will balance out.
What does that solve, nothing really, except perhaps even out the numbers. Everyone is focused on numbers. I dont think my proposal is any more ridiculous than many of the current proposals out there and no less a bandaid than those proposals as well.
If anyone read the mishpacha this past week, in the family first section, there was a nice ad that I saw. I normally do not like quoting from sources such as this one, but the visual was quite simple to understand. It was talking about closing the age gap, which can be done by putting the girls into a freezer. Statistically, there is the same amount of boys and girls born in a year, but the number of births differ in a given year (hence the baby boomer era after ww2).
23 yrs B B G G 23 years
22 yrs B B B G G G 22 years
21 yrs B B B B G G G G 21 years
But if we shift the diagram a little, such that the older boys marry younger girls, more and more girls are left without matches because a 23 year old girl most likely will not be set up with a 20 year old bochur.
But if the girls were put with boys closer to their age, than there would be a similar amount of people in each “marriageable age” and more shidduchim can be made.
By the way, why are the boys interested in girls so much their junior?
We should ban boys from having lists.How does it help shidduchim if girls names are getting recycled over and over?!
As someone who is in the parsha, if anyone really wants to help THEN REDT SHIDDUCHIM.
Coming up with statistics that there are more girls than boys doesn’t solve anything!We all know those statistics already!
Putting girls in a freezer surves no purpose1
How about if both the boys and the girls have lists and each looks into what they want and inform the shadchan. This way, sometimes the shadchan will call up the girl to say that a boy has “approved” her and sometimes will call the boy to tell him that a girl has “approved” him. Once someone is approved, they should look into the one who approved them before the rest of their list.
why have a list? Why cant we look at only one at a time? once a name is given, then dont look into others until this one is resolved (engaged or not). Why not take them as they come instead of having several girls wait for the guy to get back to them, getting their hopes up, only to find out that “he’s seeing someone already”. tell them that before they wait around, not look into others because “he’s doing his part of the research”, and waste time researching into other people’s lives for no reason!
HSS: that would be grossly inefficient.
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