Some mothers — and some fathers, too — will do just about anything to see their marriage-age offspring settle down, even if that means going where parents ordinarily should never go — online and into their children’s posted dating profiles.
“It’s almost like outsourcing your online dating to your mom,” said Kevin Leland, chief executive of TheJMom.com, a Jewish matchmaking site and one of several Web sites that have arisen to cater to parents, some with more money than patience, who want to see that ideal match made.
Some Korean-American mothers who claim that it is their prerogative, or at least it should be, to be granted the right of first refusal on their children’s marital selections, are known to search the Web for mates on sites like Duo.Duo is a traditional matchmaking service based in South Korea that also has a Web site designed to cater to the hopes and ideals of the parents first and the children second. Some 80 percent of the site’s clients are mothers inquiring on behalf of their sons, according to Julia Lee, whom Duo refers to as a couples coordinator. Often, she said, “the parents pay for the service and give them as a surprise gift for the children.” That gift involves filling out a 160-question survey of a candidate’s characteristics, which is then entered into the company’s matching system.
With Duo, where annual fees can range from $2,000 to $5,000, and include seven to nine introductions, parents monitor the dating progress of their children. “Parents project their lives onto children,” Hyae-Jeong Kim, Duo’s chief executive, said in an e-mail. “Also, parents think that they are one of the decision-makers because they think that the marriage is not only a union between a man and a woman, but also two families.”
... . “Of course it will be my own decision who I ultimately end up marrying,” he said in an e-mail, “but I value and respect my mother’s suggestions on women I might like to date.”
His mother, naturally, also had some thoughts on this. “If your parent is assertive or too involved in your life, this is not what they should be doing. It’s only if there is respect for the child, and the child doesn’t mind.
Rita and Deepak Sarma of Shaker Heights, Ohio, fell in love but married only after both their families approved.CreditMichael F. McElroy for The New York Times
WHETHER arranged marriages produce loving, respectful relationships is a question almost as old as the institution of marriage itself. In an era when40 to 50 percent of all American marriages end in divorce, some marriage experts are asking whether arranged marriages produce better relationships in the long run than do typical American marriages, in which people find each other on their own and romance is the foundation.
Experts also ask whether there are lessons in how arranged marriages evolve that can be applied to nonarranged marriages in the United States. Among them is Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavior Research and Technology in Vista, Calif., and author of a new study, “How Love Emerges in Arranged Marriages.”
He found that one key to a strong arranged marriage is the amount of parental involvement at its start. The most important thing parents of the couple do, he said, is to “screen for deal breakers.”
“They’re trying to figure out whether something could go wrong that could drive people apart,” Dr. Epstein said.
Some couples who have entered into satisfying arranged marriages do attribute the success of their unions to the involvement of their parents. A. J. Khubani was 25 in 1985 when his parents tried to get him to visit Inder Sen Israni and Maya Israni in Jaipur, India, friends of the Khubani family, and meet the couple’s daughter Poonam.
“I just refused,” said Mr. Khubani, who was not keen on settling down because he had just started Telebrands, a company in Fairfield, N.J., that sells inventions via infomercials on late-night television. “I didn’t see why it was so important that I had to fly across the world to see one girl,” Mr. Khubani, now 52, remembered.
Ms. Israni, now Mrs. Khubani, was not ready, either. At the time she was a soap opera star and rising Bollywood actress.
Getting them to meet took some prodding: Mr. Khubani’s father, knowing that his son was going to Asia on business, offered to pay his way if he stopped in Jaipur. The young man and woman both relented, with the casual assumption that they would just please their parents “and that would be the end of it,” Mrs. Khubani said.
When they finally met, neither was impressed. Mrs. Khubani recalled, “It wasn’t love at first sight at all.”