We've had three couples meet at our open invite dinners over the last eight years and get married so far. While welcoming to anyone (we invite families we meet at the library or neighbors walking dogs), most people who have come to our dinners over the years are younger traditional Catholics or seekers in the process of converting to Catholicism.
We have a commitment to stability in this place, building a walkable Catholic neighborhood here. So while some people will come to dinner while they live in this city and then move away, others also want to commit to this location, giving up job opportunities if they would require moving away from the community that's been built here (starting long before we came!).
Many people have come to our dinners (and other community events) multiple times a month for years, allowing for recommending of books and movies and discussions and building of a shared culture here. (When we went to a Halloween costume party and didn't recognize the character another young man was dressed as, we got the response from a spunky friend, "You haven't read Brideshead Revisited?! Are you even Catholic?!" We immediately acquired a copy of the book, read it, watched the miniseries, and liked it so much we named our first child after a character.)
I've had young people reach out to me for help meeting a spouse and asking who will be at one of our dinners on a particular week, to help decide if they will plan to attend. My advice is, Come anyway. Come again and again. Be part of a community with a shared culture, and while there are no promises, other people who are attracted to that culture will see you as part of an existing community that shares their values. It's not easy to find a spouse even if you have community these days, but it's even harder to go it alone.
Your efforts sound exemplary Kate. That kind of stability and careful nurturing of community is irreplaceable - so thank you.
I'd be curious for your thoughts on this piece I wrote a while ago about almost exactly what you're describing (I've comped you a premium subscription so you can access):
Thank you! I remember reading the preview of this article before and discussing it with my husband as exactly what we're trying to do.
I read the excellent three volume biography of Teddy Roosevelt by Morris and the British ambassador at the time was recalled and replaced when he didn't host enough parties. People in DC opined about how the British embassy used to be called just The Embassy, because it was where everyone went for social gatherings and building relationships. Hosting parties can affect international relations!
We share our experience and encouragement to start hosting dinners here:
The dynamics of dating within the Church itself is worth its own series. Secular dating has its own troubles and they get magnified by the small number of Christians and exacerbated by our own issues.
Here are *some* of quite a few issues you may find worth looking into, with the caveat that I am writing this from an American and mainly (but not only) Evangelical context. Apologies for the length, this was longer than I intended. This is ripe essay fodder, like I said.
I) Purity Culture. The "Purity Culture" movement tore its way through many American churches through the late-90s and into the mid-2000s. Its most prominent figure was a Joshua Harris, a young then-21 year old *unmarried* man who wrote a book on dating and marriage about not doing the former while also never having been the latter. Christian parents and pastors listened. The problems it caused are mainly written by women but you see its effects to this day.
That movement led a surprising number of Christians to think you need to ignore physical attraction or taking care of yourself. "It's what's inside that counts. Looking good is vanity." Another is that it put dating off the table for Christian men and women. It did nothing to replace dating. The idea was instead of "dating" you'd have "courtship." What's courtship? Well, you know what it *actually* is, but there's only one Mr. Kurz. In practice it just led to people thinking you already have to know you want to marry someone before you ask them out, which led to no dates, no relationship formation, nothing of the sort. Because to actually know you have to actually *do things* with the prospective partner (which is what a date *is*).
III) High stakes. Really, this is an outgrowth of the first two, but these problems are connected to each other. God has a special One for you, and marriage is (rightly) a big deal, and so no one actually takes the first step of something happening. For many churches here there are problems of low population or heavily skewed sex distributions so one has to be really sure if they want to date someone else. If it does not work out they have a high risk of damaging their social networks. It is common for a man to be the butt of gossip if he asks someone out and gets rejected. This closes off potential relationships with other women at his church and damages his social reputation.
IV) Priorities. The churches themselves seem all but determined to keep relationships from happening, themselves. Singles ministries as an idea are fraught and confused here. You have those who don't want church to be a "meat market." You have those who think churches are *just* places of worship. You have those who want singles ministries to be a place for singles to make friends and fellowship together (which means "obviously" dating is right off the table). At the same time you have those who don't want to make the singles-who-don't-want-to-be-single feel bad about being single.
All of the above is exacerbated by out of touch pastoral leadership, aging/dying congregations, and skewed sex-distributions at the denominational *and* congregational levels.
Very interesting. We (trad-leaning Catholics) don't have all these issues, but we have analogous ones.
For example, on the unattractiveness point, some people seem unable to separate an authentic, traditional, living approach to the liturgy from a kind of ridiculous historical larping.
You see young people at church who are terribly out of shape and dressed like cheap imitations of GK Chesterton in ill-fitting tweed. This has the unfortunate effect of making the latin mass seem like some kind of historical curiosity for eccentrics as opposed to relevant and powerful force for the young.
Obviously I still want these people there, but you slightly want to shake them and say "eat better and hit the gym!"
It's a multifaceted problem. A Gordian knot with no Alexander to cut through it all. I see similar things and yes there is bad teaching, I don't want to downplay that at all, but lack of good parenting (or parenting period) has a role in this too. I see guys in church all the time who just needed an older man guiding him into manhood. And honestly, I was one of those guys when I was younger. Christians (like many Westerners) just dropped the ball there.
He's not a big name but pastor Michael Foster (substack This Is Foster) writes about issues like these. He's some variant of Reformed but he's one of the few pastors who sees these issues and tries to do what he can. Aaron Renn (not a pastor tbf) is another Christian with a platform who writes on these topics. Both worth reading for better insight into the American Christian context.
It's funny to come across this - I run a matchmaking service for Catholics in London for this very reason. Despite the large number of young Catholics, there are few couples. Ladies who would like to be asked out are not being so, or at least not by the gentlemen that they would like to be.
On our profiles, many people specifically wanting to matched with someone from a similar culture/ethnic background. This is especially the case amongst Hispanic/African Catholics. More Western Europeans are less willing to specify a "type" of ethnicity.
I think another large challenge is the average age of women is higher than the average age of men, making the hypergamy element more relevant. Men in their mid-thirties have a much more favourable pool to choose from than women of the same age. I think there is a general mismatch in millennials' gender balance due to men of that age being less likely to practice their faith than women. We have twice the amount of women as men in their thirties.
If anyone is interested in either being matched or helping match others, do reach out to me. I'd love to see more marriages amongst young people.
The number of women in an older age traunch versus men in the younger seems to be endemic across all denominations in the entire western world. I have seen this reported by evangelicals in america and it is very common in my own Catholic experience. I’m not sure there’s much that can be done for the older women, but getting some young women in sure would help…
I would pray. Hard. The stats I'm seeing indicate the problem of "too few men" is starting to flip. Ryan Burge has done some work and it's been covered elsewhere. Essentially, women of the millennials, zoomer (and soon I think) alpha groups are leaving at higher rates than the men (who also leave in large numbers). This leads to more men than women for those groups wrt Christians. The disparity is probably most visible for ☦️ in the US right now, with many marrying-age men there either having to live unmarried or date outside of ☦️, or Christianity entirely. I think this will be a problem that crosses denominational lines.
In my experience it has already flipped in many places. Started with Easter Orthodox, then Catholic, and it's even starting to flip for protestant groups now. I'm just waiting for the data to catch up...
Personally, it's what I'm seeing too. Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian. It doesn't matter the denomination. Even for living in the Bible Belt I see more marriageable men than women. I would be willing to chalk this up to just being in a backwater but I'm seeing too many others saying the same online. I was even at a large Evangelical church and their "Singles Ministry" was all men. Early 20s-mid-40s.
I actually think class might be more important to the matchmaking process than ethnicity in a lot of cases. I've seen plenty of multi-ethnic relationships and marriages go quite well (including my own), but the number of times I've seen men and women from truly distinct economic classes hang together for the long run is vanishingly small, even when they share ethnicity. Obviously, you have to already be a "high openness" individual to pursue a partner across ethnic lines, but it seems to me that it's a lot harder to change one's economic expectations and habits in life than one's cultural expectations. Also, cultural friction often has a tinge of excitement and exoticism, while economic friction mostly degrades trust between partners, and pretty universally feels bad.
I think you're right. Also - Western middle class expectations now have a kind of global cultural dominance, which helps overcome different divides.
Nevertheless, if you look at sources like dating app data, you still find most people express a strong intra-ethnic preference, so I do think this should be the baseline for organized matchmaking efforts to build around
Re: migration issues and the Church, I often feel the same way I felt in elementary school when well meaning teachers tried to prevent bullying (deliberate, intentional cruelty) by making us all be "friends" in the same banal way without permitting sorting or restrictions of any kind. It's just not how people work. Deciding someone is not a good fit for your best intimate friendship (or to date or to marry for that matter) is not a vicious condemnation of everything that person is or stands for, but I think several generations have been socialized to believe that is so.
I was part of the Catholic young adult world for years in a Canadian city and find this article spot on: social awkwardness, lots of ethnicities but good luck finding a girl from your own ethnic group, nothing in common other than religion… and let’s face it, Catholic groups tend to attract people with odd backgrounds or interests or who need help finding friends, so you’re automatically partly disqualified just for being there. Basically the scene repels the people you would want to attend.
I ended up finding someone from the same European ethnic group from a distant suburb online. Incidentally my wife grew up in that milieu and only about half the young people married within the community. My wife basically educated herself out of the community to the point there were no matches left. So Catholic online dating was a godsend and worked exactly as intended for us.
I always envied people from our homogeneous mother European country who could theoretically find a spouse easily, but then again the birth rate is very low there so clearly even ethnic similarities aren’t enough.
Ethnic similarities are not enough it seems. Countries with very little immigration have very low birth rates look at Japan, South Korea, Italy, Poland, Hungary etc. None of these countries had multicultural empires.
Two thoughts occur. The effort to strengthen extended family and friendship networks, including socializing together. Then, the women in particular from these family and friend networks should be seeking opportunities to match up younger eligible people from the the outer circle of their acquaintances. I recently met with a younger friend who married and has a young child, and his family network made the introduction. Strengthening the family networks would be first step, then they could begin to function in this way.
We have the good fortune of belonging to a reasonably large community with some semblance of a shared culture (about 30 Catholic homeschooling families). Even that scale can't address all the demographic challenges to family formation - the high-schoolers are all boys at the moment. I'll report back in 10 years when the larger group of younger children has grown up together and hopefully managed to pair off.
Remember: The miracle of the loaves is the model for everything. If we give all we have and use all the human means, God will make up the difference. Do what you can, start now, and pray for, demand, and expect miracles. That is the only way our culture and our world will puke out the poison and get healthy again.
My friend told me she was praying for a husband. I said, "You need to get out more! You only stay home or come to dinner at our house, God isn't going to drop a husband for you from the sky!"
A few weeks later, a new guy came to dinner at our house, was immediately smitten with her, and asked her out to coffee. They're married now with two kids. Oh, me of little faith!
Thank you for this essay on pair-bonding, or rather the lack of it. I am Dutch, and the Netherlands has been a religiously speaking profoundly devided country since the 16th century. One of the root causes for the strive between Catholics and Protestants lay in the 80 Years War against Spanish rule.
As a result people who remained Catholics were not only frowned upon, but in the end Catholicism became a forbidden religion and went underground for over 200 years.The Protestants had won the war, and practically all high-status jobs and politics were dominated by Protestants.
In the late 18-hundreds Catholicism experienced a revival, the so-called contra- reformation, and the Catholic church did its utmost to help Catholics to regain their positions. However, the schism remained, even among 'ordinary' civilians; the so-called 'zuilenmaatschappij' (pillar society) was the result. At least two parallel societies existed next to one another. Each faith (and there were many large and small protestant domniations) had their own schools, unions, sport clubs, and people did their shopping within their own domination. People knew which baker, butcher or owner of a drugstores was Catholic or protestant.
Moreover partners for marriage were chosen within the same religious groups, which was true for almost all layers of society.
When my father wanted to marry a well-bred, but protestant girl, his father wanted to break all the ties with his son. My father, however, did marry my mother, and in the end my grandfather could not but accept this marriage which took place in 1950.
Since decades, demigraphy has changed enormously in The Netherlands, and religion does not play a dominant role in society. But...as I myself worked in various regions in my country I noticed profound differences in social and personal culture. Catholics and Protestants still have a different world view, a different way of interaction, especially when the two religious backgrounds meet in professional surroundings, but also private ones.
Raised a Catholic I feel more connection with other people who were raised being Catholics as well. In my career I wasn't even surprised anymore when I as a manager and director could much easier understand and collaborate with someone, whereas I only found out later that the other person was raised as a Catholic.
Politicians and even sociologist say that the 'pillar society' ended in the '60's. However
The Netherlands nowadays counts over 135 nationalities, so new pillars are being built, in which ethnicity plays an important role. Left-wi g politicians adhere to a multi- cultural society, but I think, given our history, it will be a 'multi- multi pillar society.
Heh, this rings true. It was a big controversy when my Anglican grandmother accepted my Catholic grandfather's proposal and converted, even though he was a well-bred Englishman
Been feeling this as well, dealt with my church in NYC, organizing matchmaking to help facilitate future marriages but everyone that did join had vastly different classes and races that the only thing we all had in common was the faith but that’s about it.
At least you tried and even managed to get buy-in from your church! You'd be amazed (or not) how many either don't see the issue, or don't see the issue as the church's problem.
I took part in Catholic young adult groups and choirs in Central London between 2012 and 2016 for prayer, friends, and potentially marriage. I found a few good friends. The pairing issues that you mention already existed. I must add another significant one: relative to men, few women under 30, some between 30 and 35, numerous past 35. Finding a partner there was quite improbable. I do not know of any success there during those years.
I met many disillusioned young Catholic men like me. I mentioned this general failure to my parish priest and he said that he saw many young happy couples at mass hence the issue must be with me and others like me : go and see a psychologist was his answer. Taken aback I spoke frankly to another priest that supervised a prayer group : God may be calling you to religious life was his answer. I spoke a third time to the priest of one of the churches used by another prayer group : he did not say anything.
I ended up using Tinder and meeting my now wife. Not a Catholic but accepted a Catholic marriage and Catholic education for our children. Far from ideal but at least I have a family.
I know of one Catholic couple that resulted from Catholic activities : out of tens of young men looking for Catholic women over more than a decade in Central London. It happened after a pilgrimage to Chartres. The others are still single or used Tinder and the like.
In the Latter-day Saint world, the BYU's do a lot of heavy lifting here but outside of that, your Trad Catholic singles event sound an awful lot like ours.
Any indication that the BYU's are becoming less effective for this? I've heard a lot of fuss about leftward drift and I've wondered if any negative secondary effects have been felt yet. My hunch is that leftward drift --> female/male political polarization --> difficulty in couple formation
I haven't spent significant time on campus in more than a decade but people I know who are around campus a lot more than I am say that yes, some effectiveness has been lost for the reasons you mention and the general atomization of society, etc.. Probably still way better than a state school for matchmaking.
to say the least! It will be interesting to see what happens with the BYUs. There is certainly a top-down effort to retain the cultural and religious distinction of the University. What concerns me most is the matchmaking preparation, or lack there of, that students get before they come to campus.
Isn't this all downstream of the disappearance of WASP culture? The Georgian marriage season idea is wonderful, but it requires a bunch of like-minded parents already having a tight-knit community. Many non-WASP communities do have traditions like this, and some go as far as arranging the marriage! There are lots of practices that non-WASPs do which encourage paid bonding (ethnic enclave neighbourhoods, ethnic/religious schools, ethnically homogenous places of worship, summer camps, group trips for young people to mother countries) but it requires HAVING an ethnicity, or something else that a group can proudly identify as, and that seems to be the challenge for people of anglo descent. You touch on this at the end, but I think it's the main issue.
In anglo countries, you still see distinct cultures and intramarriage among people of non-WASP white European backgrounds such as Italian, Greek, Jewish, etc. I can speak to Canada, but I am sure this is broadly true. For example, third generation Canadians whose families are from Italy still proudly call themselves Italian (before Canadian), and not in an anti-Canada way, just in a way that shows pride in their culture and ethnicity. There are Little Italy's in major cities, and a massive Italian street festival every year celebrating Italian culture. There are Italian neighbourhoods where all the kids go to the same schools. This is also true for Portuguese/Greek/etc. Obviously, these connections are fading, but they are still significant today.
Almost nobody proudly calls themselves anglo or white or a WASP, there are no WASP neighbourhoods or schools, no WASP festivals, and most people of this descent, if asked, will sheepishly say they are "just white," in a way that says they don't have an ethnicity. Since it has become toxic to identify in a way that has a whiff of "white nationalism" (even though all other nationalisms are OK), I am not sure what the solution is.
Class sorting, yes. Race sorting... is less strong in some places, has been for a long time now, and both class and religious culture can overcome it. Noticed it throughout the US deep south (with its legacy reputation for intense racism) in the early 2000s, relatives doing the state-fair circuit and meeting lots of rural people. The thing they noticed-- and confirmed by talking to people-- was that the rural areas had experienced decades of brain drain: all the promising intellectual young people went off to college, moved to the big city, never returned. The kids left behind... were not a great dating pool. But that pool still included a small number of decent, hardworking people who were stable, well-adjusted, clean-living, and wanted families. What these people discovered was, if you wanted to maximize your odds of finding an eligible spouse, you had to drop the race thing and laser-focus on just "people who would be good parents". The result was... a really noticeable subgroup of nice young married working-class families with clean, well-dressed, well-behaved kids in these areas, where the husband was white, and the wife was black. Because that's how the numbers fell out, more often than not. More women than men went off to college, and more white gals than black gals went to college, so among those left back home... and it seemed to be working out OK for them. Those kids are adults now.
It's certainly possible to have stable and happy mixed-race couples, especially where there is strong alignment on subjects like faith. Nevertheless, what you're describing are relationships of necessity as people adapt to extrinsic and artificial pressures from a dysfunctional society - while I wish every individual family well, at a systemic level it's far from ideal
I grew up and live in a Bible Belt state. It's like this even in our urban/suburban areas. I stuck around due to economic considerations and still managed to work my way to a professional degree and career where I put it to use. As more women than men left, the odds of finding a good Christian woman now that I'm in my 30s is rough. I completely get dropping race as a factor. Among the whites here you're otherwise left with the drug addicts, the divorced, and the mentally ill. You even start considering the women who aren't Christian. The prospects are that grim.
The good women who are here and attend church generally left for college and came back once they were married. Most never return.
Thank you for writing this. This topic can be very challenging for often the obvious observations make many the most uncomfortable. Ultimately, people want to marry people who look and think like them socially. I like that you encourage us to take it upon our selves to set people up within our social spheres—that is the best way until organizations are able to be more exclusive—albeit in maybe uncomfortable ways that political correctness has all but forbidden.
We've had three couples meet at our open invite dinners over the last eight years and get married so far. While welcoming to anyone (we invite families we meet at the library or neighbors walking dogs), most people who have come to our dinners over the years are younger traditional Catholics or seekers in the process of converting to Catholicism.
We have a commitment to stability in this place, building a walkable Catholic neighborhood here. So while some people will come to dinner while they live in this city and then move away, others also want to commit to this location, giving up job opportunities if they would require moving away from the community that's been built here (starting long before we came!).
Many people have come to our dinners (and other community events) multiple times a month for years, allowing for recommending of books and movies and discussions and building of a shared culture here. (When we went to a Halloween costume party and didn't recognize the character another young man was dressed as, we got the response from a spunky friend, "You haven't read Brideshead Revisited?! Are you even Catholic?!" We immediately acquired a copy of the book, read it, watched the miniseries, and liked it so much we named our first child after a character.)
I've had young people reach out to me for help meeting a spouse and asking who will be at one of our dinners on a particular week, to help decide if they will plan to attend. My advice is, Come anyway. Come again and again. Be part of a community with a shared culture, and while there are no promises, other people who are attracted to that culture will see you as part of an existing community that shares their values. It's not easy to find a spouse even if you have community these days, but it's even harder to go it alone.
Your efforts sound exemplary Kate. That kind of stability and careful nurturing of community is irreplaceable - so thank you.
I'd be curious for your thoughts on this piece I wrote a while ago about almost exactly what you're describing (I've comped you a premium subscription so you can access):
https://becomingnoble.substack.com/p/women-have-an-essential-role-to-play
Thank you! I remember reading the preview of this article before and discussing it with my husband as exactly what we're trying to do.
I read the excellent three volume biography of Teddy Roosevelt by Morris and the British ambassador at the time was recalled and replaced when he didn't host enough parties. People in DC opined about how the British embassy used to be called just The Embassy, because it was where everyone went for social gatherings and building relationships. Hosting parties can affect international relations!
We share our experience and encouragement to start hosting dinners here:
https://faithandwitness.org/2024/07/16/how-about-dinner/
Great article and blog—thank you for sharing it!
The dynamics of dating within the Church itself is worth its own series. Secular dating has its own troubles and they get magnified by the small number of Christians and exacerbated by our own issues.
Here are *some* of quite a few issues you may find worth looking into, with the caveat that I am writing this from an American and mainly (but not only) Evangelical context. Apologies for the length, this was longer than I intended. This is ripe essay fodder, like I said.
I) Purity Culture. The "Purity Culture" movement tore its way through many American churches through the late-90s and into the mid-2000s. Its most prominent figure was a Joshua Harris, a young then-21 year old *unmarried* man who wrote a book on dating and marriage about not doing the former while also never having been the latter. Christian parents and pastors listened. The problems it caused are mainly written by women but you see its effects to this day.
That movement led a surprising number of Christians to think you need to ignore physical attraction or taking care of yourself. "It's what's inside that counts. Looking good is vanity." Another is that it put dating off the table for Christian men and women. It did nothing to replace dating. The idea was instead of "dating" you'd have "courtship." What's courtship? Well, you know what it *actually* is, but there's only one Mr. Kurz. In practice it just led to people thinking you already have to know you want to marry someone before you ask them out, which led to no dates, no relationship formation, nothing of the sort. Because to actually know you have to actually *do things* with the prospective partner (which is what a date *is*).
II) "The One." There is a lot of garbage teaching floating around about how God has a Plan for you and that you *will* get married and it's all on God's Plan© and God's Timing©. This leads to people waiting for God to personally DM their mind that this or that person is who they'll marry. It also means they don't feel they have to put any work in. It'll happen eventually, after all. God wills it. Just ignore all the divorcees and people who actually did things (like going out on dates).
III) High stakes. Really, this is an outgrowth of the first two, but these problems are connected to each other. God has a special One for you, and marriage is (rightly) a big deal, and so no one actually takes the first step of something happening. For many churches here there are problems of low population or heavily skewed sex distributions so one has to be really sure if they want to date someone else. If it does not work out they have a high risk of damaging their social networks. It is common for a man to be the butt of gossip if he asks someone out and gets rejected. This closes off potential relationships with other women at his church and damages his social reputation.
IV) Priorities. The churches themselves seem all but determined to keep relationships from happening, themselves. Singles ministries as an idea are fraught and confused here. You have those who don't want church to be a "meat market." You have those who think churches are *just* places of worship. You have those who want singles ministries to be a place for singles to make friends and fellowship together (which means "obviously" dating is right off the table). At the same time you have those who don't want to make the singles-who-don't-want-to-be-single feel bad about being single.
All of the above is exacerbated by out of touch pastoral leadership, aging/dying congregations, and skewed sex-distributions at the denominational *and* congregational levels.
Very interesting. We (trad-leaning Catholics) don't have all these issues, but we have analogous ones.
For example, on the unattractiveness point, some people seem unable to separate an authentic, traditional, living approach to the liturgy from a kind of ridiculous historical larping.
You see young people at church who are terribly out of shape and dressed like cheap imitations of GK Chesterton in ill-fitting tweed. This has the unfortunate effect of making the latin mass seem like some kind of historical curiosity for eccentrics as opposed to relevant and powerful force for the young.
Obviously I still want these people there, but you slightly want to shake them and say "eat better and hit the gym!"
It's a multifaceted problem. A Gordian knot with no Alexander to cut through it all. I see similar things and yes there is bad teaching, I don't want to downplay that at all, but lack of good parenting (or parenting period) has a role in this too. I see guys in church all the time who just needed an older man guiding him into manhood. And honestly, I was one of those guys when I was younger. Christians (like many Westerners) just dropped the ball there.
He's not a big name but pastor Michael Foster (substack This Is Foster) writes about issues like these. He's some variant of Reformed but he's one of the few pastors who sees these issues and tries to do what he can. Aaron Renn (not a pastor tbf) is another Christian with a platform who writes on these topics. Both worth reading for better insight into the American Christian context.
It's funny to come across this - I run a matchmaking service for Catholics in London for this very reason. Despite the large number of young Catholics, there are few couples. Ladies who would like to be asked out are not being so, or at least not by the gentlemen that they would like to be.
On our profiles, many people specifically wanting to matched with someone from a similar culture/ethnic background. This is especially the case amongst Hispanic/African Catholics. More Western Europeans are less willing to specify a "type" of ethnicity.
I think another large challenge is the average age of women is higher than the average age of men, making the hypergamy element more relevant. Men in their mid-thirties have a much more favourable pool to choose from than women of the same age. I think there is a general mismatch in millennials' gender balance due to men of that age being less likely to practice their faith than women. We have twice the amount of women as men in their thirties.
If anyone is interested in either being matched or helping match others, do reach out to me. I'd love to see more marriages amongst young people.
A much needed service! I hope some people reach out. Thank you Harry
The number of women in an older age traunch versus men in the younger seems to be endemic across all denominations in the entire western world. I have seen this reported by evangelicals in america and it is very common in my own Catholic experience. I’m not sure there’s much that can be done for the older women, but getting some young women in sure would help…
I would pray. Hard. The stats I'm seeing indicate the problem of "too few men" is starting to flip. Ryan Burge has done some work and it's been covered elsewhere. Essentially, women of the millennials, zoomer (and soon I think) alpha groups are leaving at higher rates than the men (who also leave in large numbers). This leads to more men than women for those groups wrt Christians. The disparity is probably most visible for ☦️ in the US right now, with many marrying-age men there either having to live unmarried or date outside of ☦️, or Christianity entirely. I think this will be a problem that crosses denominational lines.
In my experience it has already flipped in many places. Started with Easter Orthodox, then Catholic, and it's even starting to flip for protestant groups now. I'm just waiting for the data to catch up...
Personally, it's what I'm seeing too. Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian. It doesn't matter the denomination. Even for living in the Bible Belt I see more marriageable men than women. I would be willing to chalk this up to just being in a backwater but I'm seeing too many others saying the same online. I was even at a large Evangelical church and their "Singles Ministry" was all men. Early 20s-mid-40s.
A large Evangelical church with an all-mens singles ministry would've been unheard of even five years ago. Crazy stuff...
I actually think class might be more important to the matchmaking process than ethnicity in a lot of cases. I've seen plenty of multi-ethnic relationships and marriages go quite well (including my own), but the number of times I've seen men and women from truly distinct economic classes hang together for the long run is vanishingly small, even when they share ethnicity. Obviously, you have to already be a "high openness" individual to pursue a partner across ethnic lines, but it seems to me that it's a lot harder to change one's economic expectations and habits in life than one's cultural expectations. Also, cultural friction often has a tinge of excitement and exoticism, while economic friction mostly degrades trust between partners, and pretty universally feels bad.
I think you're right. Also - Western middle class expectations now have a kind of global cultural dominance, which helps overcome different divides.
Nevertheless, if you look at sources like dating app data, you still find most people express a strong intra-ethnic preference, so I do think this should be the baseline for organized matchmaking efforts to build around
Yeah, It's a real pisser to realize your partner has no idea what it's like to feel vulnérable in a matérial way
Re: migration issues and the Church, I often feel the same way I felt in elementary school when well meaning teachers tried to prevent bullying (deliberate, intentional cruelty) by making us all be "friends" in the same banal way without permitting sorting or restrictions of any kind. It's just not how people work. Deciding someone is not a good fit for your best intimate friendship (or to date or to marry for that matter) is not a vicious condemnation of everything that person is or stands for, but I think several generations have been socialized to believe that is so.
I was part of the Catholic young adult world for years in a Canadian city and find this article spot on: social awkwardness, lots of ethnicities but good luck finding a girl from your own ethnic group, nothing in common other than religion… and let’s face it, Catholic groups tend to attract people with odd backgrounds or interests or who need help finding friends, so you’re automatically partly disqualified just for being there. Basically the scene repels the people you would want to attend.
I ended up finding someone from the same European ethnic group from a distant suburb online. Incidentally my wife grew up in that milieu and only about half the young people married within the community. My wife basically educated herself out of the community to the point there were no matches left. So Catholic online dating was a godsend and worked exactly as intended for us.
I always envied people from our homogeneous mother European country who could theoretically find a spouse easily, but then again the birth rate is very low there so clearly even ethnic similarities aren’t enough.
Ethnic similarities are not enough it seems. Countries with very little immigration have very low birth rates look at Japan, South Korea, Italy, Poland, Hungary etc. None of these countries had multicultural empires.
Thanks Reckoning - very glad you found your wife!
Similar problems in my Protestant Bible study.
Two thoughts occur. The effort to strengthen extended family and friendship networks, including socializing together. Then, the women in particular from these family and friend networks should be seeking opportunities to match up younger eligible people from the the outer circle of their acquaintances. I recently met with a younger friend who married and has a young child, and his family network made the introduction. Strengthening the family networks would be first step, then they could begin to function in this way.
Absolutely
We have the good fortune of belonging to a reasonably large community with some semblance of a shared culture (about 30 Catholic homeschooling families). Even that scale can't address all the demographic challenges to family formation - the high-schoolers are all boys at the moment. I'll report back in 10 years when the larger group of younger children has grown up together and hopefully managed to pair off.
Remember: The miracle of the loaves is the model for everything. If we give all we have and use all the human means, God will make up the difference. Do what you can, start now, and pray for, demand, and expect miracles. That is the only way our culture and our world will puke out the poison and get healthy again.
My friend told me she was praying for a husband. I said, "You need to get out more! You only stay home or come to dinner at our house, God isn't going to drop a husband for you from the sky!"
A few weeks later, a new guy came to dinner at our house, was immediately smitten with her, and asked her out to coffee. They're married now with two kids. Oh, me of little faith!
Keep having dinner parties! They are working!
Thank you for this essay on pair-bonding, or rather the lack of it. I am Dutch, and the Netherlands has been a religiously speaking profoundly devided country since the 16th century. One of the root causes for the strive between Catholics and Protestants lay in the 80 Years War against Spanish rule.
As a result people who remained Catholics were not only frowned upon, but in the end Catholicism became a forbidden religion and went underground for over 200 years.The Protestants had won the war, and practically all high-status jobs and politics were dominated by Protestants.
In the late 18-hundreds Catholicism experienced a revival, the so-called contra- reformation, and the Catholic church did its utmost to help Catholics to regain their positions. However, the schism remained, even among 'ordinary' civilians; the so-called 'zuilenmaatschappij' (pillar society) was the result. At least two parallel societies existed next to one another. Each faith (and there were many large and small protestant domniations) had their own schools, unions, sport clubs, and people did their shopping within their own domination. People knew which baker, butcher or owner of a drugstores was Catholic or protestant.
Moreover partners for marriage were chosen within the same religious groups, which was true for almost all layers of society.
When my father wanted to marry a well-bred, but protestant girl, his father wanted to break all the ties with his son. My father, however, did marry my mother, and in the end my grandfather could not but accept this marriage which took place in 1950.
Since decades, demigraphy has changed enormously in The Netherlands, and religion does not play a dominant role in society. But...as I myself worked in various regions in my country I noticed profound differences in social and personal culture. Catholics and Protestants still have a different world view, a different way of interaction, especially when the two religious backgrounds meet in professional surroundings, but also private ones.
Raised a Catholic I feel more connection with other people who were raised being Catholics as well. In my career I wasn't even surprised anymore when I as a manager and director could much easier understand and collaborate with someone, whereas I only found out later that the other person was raised as a Catholic.
Politicians and even sociologist say that the 'pillar society' ended in the '60's. However
The Netherlands nowadays counts over 135 nationalities, so new pillars are being built, in which ethnicity plays an important role. Left-wi g politicians adhere to a multi- cultural society, but I think, given our history, it will be a 'multi- multi pillar society.
Heh, this rings true. It was a big controversy when my Anglican grandmother accepted my Catholic grandfather's proposal and converted, even though he was a well-bred Englishman
Been feeling this as well, dealt with my church in NYC, organizing matchmaking to help facilitate future marriages but everyone that did join had vastly different classes and races that the only thing we all had in common was the faith but that’s about it.
At least you tried and even managed to get buy-in from your church! You'd be amazed (or not) how many either don't see the issue, or don't see the issue as the church's problem.
Yeah it’s a completely different frame to reality they are going by.
I took part in Catholic young adult groups and choirs in Central London between 2012 and 2016 for prayer, friends, and potentially marriage. I found a few good friends. The pairing issues that you mention already existed. I must add another significant one: relative to men, few women under 30, some between 30 and 35, numerous past 35. Finding a partner there was quite improbable. I do not know of any success there during those years.
I met many disillusioned young Catholic men like me. I mentioned this general failure to my parish priest and he said that he saw many young happy couples at mass hence the issue must be with me and others like me : go and see a psychologist was his answer. Taken aback I spoke frankly to another priest that supervised a prayer group : God may be calling you to religious life was his answer. I spoke a third time to the priest of one of the churches used by another prayer group : he did not say anything.
I ended up using Tinder and meeting my now wife. Not a Catholic but accepted a Catholic marriage and Catholic education for our children. Far from ideal but at least I have a family.
I know of one Catholic couple that resulted from Catholic activities : out of tens of young men looking for Catholic women over more than a decade in Central London. It happened after a pilgrimage to Chartres. The others are still single or used Tinder and the like.
Replace “partner” with “spouse” in your future writing.
Fair suggestion
In the Latter-day Saint world, the BYU's do a lot of heavy lifting here but outside of that, your Trad Catholic singles event sound an awful lot like ours.
Interesting! I know little about LDS but I (perhaps naively) assumed you were fare more homogenous
Any indication that the BYU's are becoming less effective for this? I've heard a lot of fuss about leftward drift and I've wondered if any negative secondary effects have been felt yet. My hunch is that leftward drift --> female/male political polarization --> difficulty in couple formation
I haven't spent significant time on campus in more than a decade but people I know who are around campus a lot more than I am say that yes, some effectiveness has been lost for the reasons you mention and the general atomization of society, etc.. Probably still way better than a state school for matchmaking.
Hopefully the BYUs can reverse course. Atheist exmos are something else...
to say the least! It will be interesting to see what happens with the BYUs. There is certainly a top-down effort to retain the cultural and religious distinction of the University. What concerns me most is the matchmaking preparation, or lack there of, that students get before they come to campus.
Isn't this all downstream of the disappearance of WASP culture? The Georgian marriage season idea is wonderful, but it requires a bunch of like-minded parents already having a tight-knit community. Many non-WASP communities do have traditions like this, and some go as far as arranging the marriage! There are lots of practices that non-WASPs do which encourage paid bonding (ethnic enclave neighbourhoods, ethnic/religious schools, ethnically homogenous places of worship, summer camps, group trips for young people to mother countries) but it requires HAVING an ethnicity, or something else that a group can proudly identify as, and that seems to be the challenge for people of anglo descent. You touch on this at the end, but I think it's the main issue.
In anglo countries, you still see distinct cultures and intramarriage among people of non-WASP white European backgrounds such as Italian, Greek, Jewish, etc. I can speak to Canada, but I am sure this is broadly true. For example, third generation Canadians whose families are from Italy still proudly call themselves Italian (before Canadian), and not in an anti-Canada way, just in a way that shows pride in their culture and ethnicity. There are Little Italy's in major cities, and a massive Italian street festival every year celebrating Italian culture. There are Italian neighbourhoods where all the kids go to the same schools. This is also true for Portuguese/Greek/etc. Obviously, these connections are fading, but they are still significant today.
Almost nobody proudly calls themselves anglo or white or a WASP, there are no WASP neighbourhoods or schools, no WASP festivals, and most people of this descent, if asked, will sheepishly say they are "just white," in a way that says they don't have an ethnicity. Since it has become toxic to identify in a way that has a whiff of "white nationalism" (even though all other nationalisms are OK), I am not sure what the solution is.
Yes, I think you're on to something here. 'Arranging' marriages only really makes sense when there's a community to preserve
Class sorting, yes. Race sorting... is less strong in some places, has been for a long time now, and both class and religious culture can overcome it. Noticed it throughout the US deep south (with its legacy reputation for intense racism) in the early 2000s, relatives doing the state-fair circuit and meeting lots of rural people. The thing they noticed-- and confirmed by talking to people-- was that the rural areas had experienced decades of brain drain: all the promising intellectual young people went off to college, moved to the big city, never returned. The kids left behind... were not a great dating pool. But that pool still included a small number of decent, hardworking people who were stable, well-adjusted, clean-living, and wanted families. What these people discovered was, if you wanted to maximize your odds of finding an eligible spouse, you had to drop the race thing and laser-focus on just "people who would be good parents". The result was... a really noticeable subgroup of nice young married working-class families with clean, well-dressed, well-behaved kids in these areas, where the husband was white, and the wife was black. Because that's how the numbers fell out, more often than not. More women than men went off to college, and more white gals than black gals went to college, so among those left back home... and it seemed to be working out OK for them. Those kids are adults now.
It's certainly possible to have stable and happy mixed-race couples, especially where there is strong alignment on subjects like faith. Nevertheless, what you're describing are relationships of necessity as people adapt to extrinsic and artificial pressures from a dysfunctional society - while I wish every individual family well, at a systemic level it's far from ideal
Just saying: it works if people have got their priorities straight.
I grew up and live in a Bible Belt state. It's like this even in our urban/suburban areas. I stuck around due to economic considerations and still managed to work my way to a professional degree and career where I put it to use. As more women than men left, the odds of finding a good Christian woman now that I'm in my 30s is rough. I completely get dropping race as a factor. Among the whites here you're otherwise left with the drug addicts, the divorced, and the mentally ill. You even start considering the women who aren't Christian. The prospects are that grim.
The good women who are here and attend church generally left for college and came back once they were married. Most never return.
Thank you for writing this. This topic can be very challenging for often the obvious observations make many the most uncomfortable. Ultimately, people want to marry people who look and think like them socially. I like that you encourage us to take it upon our selves to set people up within our social spheres—that is the best way until organizations are able to be more exclusive—albeit in maybe uncomfortable ways that political correctness has all but forbidden.
Thank you Jenny - and thanks for speaking up