Three years ago I listed the reasons people give for the “shidduch crisis:” Singles are too picky, there aren’t enough good boys, or there aren’t enough boys (period, aka: the pyramid problem).
I also hosted some NASI back and forth on the subject. Their original article on the 10% crisis, my follow-up response, and a third reply from the boys, all on the subject of our lonely doom.
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a number of alternative explanations for the shidduch crisis. Some I agree with. Some I don’t.
I link to some of them here:
– Nobody wants to marry a career-woman, and since most women are career women, they can’t get married
– Men are slowly degenerating into slightly squishy couch-cushions whom women would rather sit on than date
– Jewish men don’t wear wedding bands, thus preventing Jewish women from striking up conversations with apparently single Jewish men because there are no apparently single Jewish men
– Jewish women don’t wear red, and red attracts men, so Jewish women don’t attract men
– There aren’t enough idealistic Jewish men for all our rational Jewish women
– Too many of us are friends with my old pal E, who is a segula for not getting married
– There are fewer men being born in the western world than ever before so there really are too many women around
– We don’t pay shadchanim just for dates so why should they bother to set us up?
– People place too much importance on hats, which casts shade over more important issues, like essential hashkafic compatibility
– Women won’t marry down, and most men are down these days (and the ones that aren’t don’t want successful women [see bullet-point #1]), so women won’t marry and it’s all their own picky fault
Work your way through those for a bit. Next week I’ll post some of the solutions I’ve posed over the past few years.
Bad for Shidduchim 