Recently, a respected community member lamented that our boys don’t even have the courage to propose. Many enter marriage without ever facing real responsibility—sheltered, financially dependent, and untested—while young women gain independence, work experience, and life skills. Many girls feel they are ahead of the boys, creating frustration, imbalance, and tension in the shidduch system.
Society plays a major role. Cultural messages labeling masculinity as “toxic” discourage boys from embracing initiative, courage, and accountability. Today, it often feels as though responsibility is something to avoid, rather than recognize as what shapes us and defines character.
Contrast this with previous generations. Our grandparents and great-grandparents faced real challenges from a young age. Many fought in wars, immigrated to new lands with nothing but courage and determination, and built families and communities from scratch. They were tested by hardship, taught to work hard, make sacrifices, and solve problems independently. Leadership, resilience, and initiative were part of daily life, whether running a household, starting a business, or mentoring others. In the past, young men also learned responsibility through community roles, serving as Pirchei leaders or counselors in camp, where they guided others, managed challenges, and developed critical problem-solving skills. These experiences forged men capable of handling the pressures of marriage, parenting, and community leadership.
Parents play a critical role today. Instead of giving credit cards and financial support blanketly, boys must earn their own money, take on small jobs, and face real responsibilities that teach discipline, independence, and accountability. Without these experiences, many marriages struggle when crises arise, leaving young men unprepared and young women frustrated.
Raising responsible, courageous, and capable boys directly addresses the shidduch crisis. Men who have faced challenges, worked for what they have, and developed leadership and emotional maturity are ready to propose, support, and build strong families. They restore balance to dating and marriage, allowing young women to feel partners in equality, not ahead of the boys.
If we want to strengthen our shidduch system and raise thriving families, we must take both practical and cultural action. Teach responsibility, foster courage, encourage work and challenge, and guide boys toward independence. The time to act is now. It is time to make our boys men again.
Sincerely,
C.G.
Lakewood
The views expressed in this letter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of YWN. Have an opinion you would like to share? Send it to us for review.
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13 Responses
Yeah it is a problem when you have a whole generation of young people that never did anything in their life that includes responsibility. Everything was always paid for them, they never had to work, and many start their marriages with a home handed to them already. If you at any point take away the financial cushions, the family collapses and the marriage breaks apart. They never had to handle stress before and are completely unprepared when it shows up. Maybe it’s time people stop propping up the Next Generation and allow it to develop on its own before they get spoiled
How about make our girls women again. The trend over the last 50 years, slowly but ever so surely, has been to follow the goyishe velt in making women into men. We need to reverse that and let women be women and girls become women instead of morphing into a working, outdoor, all busy “guy”.
Women were created to be stay-at-home. The Torah, Gemorah, Rambam, Shulchan Aruch and all the Seforim Hakedoshim say women are not allowed to go outside the home too often. They shouldn’t be going to college or having “careers”. The same Torah, Gemorah, Rambam, Shulchan Aruch, etc. command women to be submissive to their husbands and follow his commands. This is explicit; even it today it is an unpopular fact that causes some people to lash out when hearing this truth.
Since you mentioned masculinity – I think we need to be careful to emphasize the Torah view of masculinity, because there is cultural messaging from different places either denigrating masculinity or promoting a version that is incompatible with building a healthy relationship. I very much agree that we must provide our young men with opportunities to show responsibility and initiative.
I’m all for solving the crisis but I don’t think there’s only one issue causing the crisis.
Everything you write is correct except one thing. The cause of the Shidduch crisis has nothing to do with these points rather than an uneven amount of boys and girls in the parsha. Only way to address this is to even the amount in the parsha as has been discussed numerous times. But you are still correct about everything you say.
I’d like to ask the writer if he is suggesting that the current system of bochrim learning full time and then entering kollel is a problem? I’m not offering an opinion. Just want to clarify the writer’s opinion.
This applies to girls too stop spoiling people and then they become selfish and have no idea how to handle a difficult situation when it arises
This is not going to happen as long as the yeshivas continue to push the boys to be long term learners.
Then the dependence and reliance on others will continue.
First off no thanks for the AI generated content.
It seems like you just can’t escape it these days.
To the main point of the article that girls for some reason have, “more life experience than boys when it comes to managing their own life and finances” I call trash.
The amount of couples coming into my practice where the wife has horrible credit card debt, terrible car loans,
banks in over draft and a total lack of basic Financial understanding
is astounding. The boys may be uneducated but the girls are miseducated.
The issue of children unable to adult in the modern world is more of a parenting issue then a girl versus boy issue. Boys and girls both have the exact same problems just the girls have tens of thousands more in debt to show for it.
Some of your points are valid, however they have nothing to do with the shidduch crisis. The crisis arose from the age gap between young men and woman in shidduchim. The result is more girls than boys. Teaching responsibility can not change the census.
C.G. – You may have explained the differences between the way our children are growing up, vs. the way our parents and grandparens grew up, and tried to connect this to the Shidduch Crisis.
However, you in no way have brought a solution to this “problem”.
If you want our boys to be raised as our grandfathers, let’s raise our girls as our grandmothers. They stayed at home, learnt to sew and cook and raised children of ehrlicher doiros.
B”H our boys are growing ehrliche and innocent bnei Torah, and we are proud of this. The girls that are marrying yeshiva bachurim, are proud of their innocence and are willing to sacrifice for it.
The only issue may be, when the girls really don’t want a learning boy, but her father wants a learning son-in-law. Here there may be the issue you brought up.
Excellent letter.
Furthermore, if I may add but a small addendum, our boys, in the crazy yeshiva system we’ve developed, can’t even master any worthwhile skills. General education is looked down upon, not just merely frowned upon; it’s outright looked down upon. In many yeshivos systems, grade 7 is the last grade of any meaningful education development. Our bachurim lack the wherewithal to enter the world as they lack basic skill and oratory finesse. This should be reversed. Our girls are educated and know both in לימודי קודש and לימודי חול far more than our boys. Granted they don’t learn Gemarah: but do our boys if all they reach is דף ט in a winter zeman with a חודש עיבור?
If a 12 year old in Lakewood asks his father if he can drop out of English because in his yeshiva it isn’t mandatory, are we doing our job right in preparing these boys?
Unfortunately, this is very true. However, as a parent please recommend to me personally and us as a klal practical solutions how to address without being labeled by your own children as an abusive parent. Try telling your kid in Yeshiva that he is different than everyone else and that he needs to work being hasedarim in order to getting spending money for his own dates. The good boys who are learning, we don’t want to take them away from learning, and the ones who are not learning , we are scared of pushing them OTD. Any point that requires a major societal change must be followed up with “and therefore I am going to….”. If not it is nothing more than coffee room conversation.