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You seem to believe that a couple should get married before they are able to be responsible for themselves, let alone having children. The parents of such couple can continue to be responsible for them. Agree or disagree?
Disagree. The equation between preparation for marriage and responsibility to maintain the marriage is a false one.
I’m not understanding what you mean. Would you please elaborate?
Just because the boy and the girl are better off not having to deal with the financial negotiations doesn’t mean they’re not ready for marriage.
The same thing can be said for other aspects of shidduchim; for example, the investivations, and decision of who to go out with (although certainly the singles should have the opportunity to have input.
The Chiluk is that the investigations and decisions happen when the child is not yet married. Saying “Harei At” and accepting that ring make you (in my opinion, but I know I’m old-fashioned) instantaneously responsible for all aspects your new family, including financials. Someone who gets married had better be prepared at that point for it. Otherwise, you may have a new “friend with benefits”, but you are still a child with a child’s responsibilities.
The courts (who will require child support & alimony if she gets pregnant that night) do consider the husband responsible financially as well, as would Chazal (who are Mechayiv the Kesubah).
We will have to agree to disagree.
The investigations and decisions who to go out with affect who you’ll be married to for the rest of your life, so how is that less of an issue than the financials?
DY: Makes it that once they are married, they are still not responsible for themselves. You can argue that is not a big deal (and it may not be).
I don’t understand people like you who feel the need to categorize everything. If there is a shidduch crisis, does it really matter if it is precisely one of your 18 different conceptualizations?
It’s a crisis! A spittoon will do!
The cause of the shidduch crisis is lack of unique personalities coming out of the chinuch system.
The shidduch crisis is a crisis in which there are problems regarding shidduchim.
If there is insufficient decisionable information you can’t make a decision which is what occurs when everyone looks the same.
Because being married is transitionally different to being single a decision has to be made to create the transition. The information required to make the decision provides the impetus for the marriage. The problem is people remain in a teenage mind-frame due to the lack of evolving differential in a homogenous society.
I am not defining the shidduch crisis because I am not sure there is one. Chassidim get married because they are told to.
The possible problem is shidduch burn out. Doing the same thing over and over is not very exciting.
Chassidim do not believe in emotional personal living so do not relate to the issue.
Doing the same thing over and over is not very exciting.
Marriage isn’t about getting excited. In life we need to do many things over and over.
Chassidim do not believe in emotional personal living so do not relate to the issue.
Chasidim believe in emotional personal living more than non-Chasidim do.
No, “I have to go on another shidduch” burn out which becomes a drag.
Chassidim form their emotional lives according to the instructions of the Rebbe.
Pcoz: do you actually know any Chasidim?
pcoz might not know many Chasidim but he does read some news media about them to form his opinions.
He also davens in Ger.
Before I go further, are we still working off of that one study which, if memory serves me, was basically a list of girls and boys who had graduated from specific schools/yeshivas and how many of those were single/married? Aside from that not being a complete study, at best, it’s focusing on one cause of the disparity, without giving attention to other very real causes.
Also, were the study to have accounted for all factors (overseas shidduchim, baalei teshuva etc) and is correct, and “they” (still wanna know who that is) decide that the age gap is the fix, what happens with the effects of having younger, less mature people getting married on a large scale?
“by far, than the replacement rate”
Replacement rate? what do the elderly have to do with shidduchim?
“Do you dispute either of these two facts?”
Are these facts? According to the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) the percentage of all children born in the US over the last 15 years is at least 51% male every year, for the last 15 years (more males have been born in the US every year for the last 15 years according to the CDC, they find it so surprising that they have commissioned studies to determine why this is so, the law of averages says it should be 50/50). If the Orthodox Jewish population deviates so much from the overall population (which is does based on your undisputed facts), why is that so?
So you’re assuming (as is very popular, for better or worse) that there are more single girls then boys. What makes you think it’s not the other way around? And there are certainly many unmarried boys and girls, but do we know that it’s a larger percentage than it has been in the past?
In one publication recently, when someone wrote in saying their son’s rebbe did not encourage younger shidduchim, one advocate responded by asking for the name of said rebbe, to avoid him. There’s a huge difference between “when the rebbe supports it” and that.
Even with agreement from a rebbe, do you know of many boys who were dating at 21? From among my friends, (when I paid attention) I can only think of one girl (22) who married a 21 year old, and I hear it was family policy, not based on age gap.
Feel free to explain.
DY. No, I believe it has zero to do with the numbers born. Unless I am misunderstanding you, you are the one who keep harping on it. The “replacement rate” as I now understand you does not drastically change year over year. In fact, if the CDC statistics are correct, that would be a built in correction for the “age gap” which is being billed as the primary cause. Dont take my word for it. All you need to do is register on the CDC website and you can access all the data. Year after year, for more than 25 years more males than females are being born in the US. sometimes the number is 50.5:49:5 and sometimes it is as high as 54:46, but year after year, more males than females were born in the US. If the “statistics” in the jewish publications are factual, why is it that the births in the Orthodox Jewish community are so statistically different (the papers claim 5% more girls every year) that the general population (about 3% more males than females), year after year for so many years?
The info apy posted (which I have seen before) says otherwise. How are you coming to the conclusion that there are more girls than boys (being born and single)?
If I may chime in, simply put the number of frum girls vs. boys REACHING SHIDDUCHIM / DATING AGE every year is supposedly (IIRC) 10% more. If there are 3% more boys than girls being born (according to CDC numbers) there’s still a disparity of 7%.
To explain further, since our population is growing, there are more first graders than fourth graders (with the number of students increasing every year) OF BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS. But, hypothetically speaking, we are trying to match first grade girls to fourth grade boys. The bigger the age disparity, the greater the numbers discrepancy. If we’d match fourth grade girls to first grade boys, we’d have a reverse crisis with more boys remaining “unmatched”, compounded by the fact, if correct, that there are more boys being born every year.
DY, how are you reaching the conclusion that there are more girls in shidduchim than boys?
Also the part about some extra boys being a chessed makes me very uncomfortable hashkafically but I’m not even going there.
Mammele, that doesnt take into account the first grade girls who marry other fourth grade boys who weren’t counted in the original numbers.
I still want to see some proof that there are more single girls than boys and more singles percentage wise than there have been in the past.
You said theres a higher birthrate, and then that your not working from the birthrate. Which one? And how does anyone know there are more girls in shidduchim?
Personally I can think of more single boys than girls. I’m not really sure why I should change to adapt to a system that seems to have no proof (other than an assumed birthrate for our community and takes no other factors into account) especially when my own experience says otherwise.
The paragraph implies that Hashem created extra boys for the sole purpose of an age gap defense (“then the age gap would be worse than it is already”) with the actual people and shidduchim being a secondary goal, and if some people have to suffer because it doesnt match the agenda, then so be it. And I strongly disagree with that implication.
Kapusta: I believe they compared the school aged children/graduates to get the numbers, but perhaps someone can enlighten us. Also, the discussion is mostly about the Yeshivish crowd, so if your experience says otherwise you may hail from a different crowd or it’s simply a “fluke” as statistics aren’t indicative of each individual’s experiences per se.
I think the words DY used you were referring to about different birthrates was “replacement rate”, which he used as shorthand for the whole gender disparity issue, but I’ll let him answer that…
And about the less girls than boys born as a Chesed to allow for a gender gap, it actually makes sense since girls mature earlier and are responsible for Mitzvos sooner because of it. But we’re talking a one year difference, not three or four… So perhaps that year difference between Bar and Bas Mitzvah should be our guide.
I’m speaking of the general yeshivish community, and I’m hearing more and more about it, but it seems to be the dirty little secret that no one is willing to say. Birth rate does not account for those who marry people not included in the original accounting. I’d still like some actual proof that there are more single girls than boys, not based on an assumed birthrate in a specific community or graduation rate. And why should I go on someone else’s say so when my own experience proves otherwise (and most roshei yeshiva, shadchanim and singles do not support)?
I agree with your last paragraph (as I understand it) but I’m not sure how that helps your argument.
DY, I’m still not sure how that translates into more single girls than boys, and that still doesnt account for people who marry baalei teshuva etc who were not originally included in the numbers.
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