Mom, Make Me a Match. NewsWire

NewsWire: 9/25/21

• Here’s an area of online dating that’s still ripe for growth: services catering to parents who want to set up their children. So far, the big players in this space have all targeted Jewish moms. (The New York Times)
• NH: These days, it seems like there’s an online dating service targeted to everyone. But it turns out there’s one market that app makers haven’t quite been able to crack: parents.
• Enter JustKibbitz, a dating site that launched last October. It’s aimed at Jewish mothers, who create profiles for their kids, arrange their dates, and even pay for them. The tagline: “Help someone you love meet someone they’ll love.” As of June 2021, about 1,000 parents nationwide have signed up.
• JustKibbitz is hoping to avoid the fate of JMom, a similar site that launched all the way back in 2011 and had tens of thousands of users, but ended up shutting down in 2015. The site’s founders also launched a spinoff, Bharat Mother, which catered to Indian families.
• While most of the U.S.-based players in this field have catered to Jewish moms, the appeal of finding a match for your offspring spans cultures. Duo, a popular, long-established matchmaking service in South Korea, estimates that around 80% of its clients are mothers asking on behalf of their sons.
• Parents trying to set up their adult children is not new, of course. But among late-wave Millennials, parents may have a more receptive audience than usual, since Millennials are generally more open to the idea of arranged marriages and similarly engineered matches than older generations were. (See "Millennials Go for Genetic Romance.") If a trusted source like Mom (or a professional matchmaker, or an algorithm) wants to help, then why not?

Did you know?

• The Best Civics Class: The News. In 2021, 56% of Americans were able to name all three branches of government. This share has increased sharply over the past few years, rising from 51% in 2020 and 33% in 2006, when the survey began. Just 20%—the lowest share ever—could not name any branches. This finding comes from the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which polls Americans annually on their civic literacy. This year, respondents also showed more knowledge of the rights protected by the First Amendment, particularly freedom of religion (56% could name this, up from 47% in 2020); freedom of the press (50%, up from 42%); and the right to petition the government (20%, up from 14%). Researchers labeled this a good news/bad news story: Yes, more Americans know basic civics—but it’s likely due to the fact that all three branches of government were “stress-tested” in 2021.