This idea has nothing to do with the age gap, but rather with another math equation: with the slow pace of dating.
It often takes months to get a “yes” and get a boy and girl to date number one these days. If we could increase the frequency of dates, we would increase the amount of marriages in our community.
For example, if an average girl dates 6 boys per year currently, and marries her 24th boy, then she will get married 4 years after starting dating. If, on the other hand, she dates 12 boys per year, she will get married after only 2 years of dating.
One of the reasons for the very long process from the first suggestion until the date, is that we find ourselves dealing with very busy shadchanim.
I challenge you to find me a dozen couples that you know, who have been married for 30+ years, who were set up by a shadchan. I can’t think of any. All the frum couples I know who got married 30+ years ago were set up by friends or relatives.
Now, I challenge you to find out who set up the couples who married in the past dozen weddings you attended. Chances are, that more than half were set up by shadchanim.
Why the major sociological shift in the past generation from friends and family making shiduchim to shadchanim making most of our shadchanim?
That is the question.
I welcome your answers.
When a relative or friend suggests a shidduch, the process can move that much faster, as there is much more trust involved. When a shadchan suggests a shidduch, the process is slowed by the amount of research and verification necessitated by dating a random stranger who has been suggested to you by another random stranger.
One possible answer is that we have become ‘frummer’. 30 years ago a guy knew his sister’s friends and would be likely to set one of them up with his friends. 30 years ago a bachur might have been friendly with his mother’s friends. These days, if a girl has friends over for Shabbos, a yeshiva guy will probably be too frum to stay home and eat at the same meal. These days, a guy is too frum to say “Hello, how are you Mrs. Goldstein?” when the neighbor returns a cup of sugar to his mother. This type of ‘frumkeit’ means that less people in our circles have the ability to redt shidduchim to friends and family, because they have kept themselves so incredibly segregated.
What do you think?