Dating agencies in Singapore are set up to help single Singaporeans to find their right partner in life. It also has a dual aim. It is also set up to help Singaporeans socialize. The government has always been worried that as Singaporean progress in their career, Singaporeans will become career minded and they may put marriage on hold. This would lead to declining birth rates. Dating agencies are therefore tasked to help increase the marital rate of Singaporeans. This essay focus on how dating agencies may default in their task accorded to them by the government with emphasis on the theories of Alfred Shultz, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann.
Dating agencies are set up to help single Singaporeans find their life partner. This will help increase the marital rate of Singaporeans. These agencies create social functions like, movie gatherings, wine appreciation courses, sports activities and dinner gatherings cum speed dating activities, for Singaporeans to meet and interact with one another. Social courses are also conducted to teach Singaporeans how to socialise (Singaporeans are nowadays to occupied in their advancement of their career that they have forgotten the essence of dating).
As the achievement to meet KPI settings are just as common as our drive to meet our career achievements, dating agencies would have to meet the government’s KPI target in trying to get Singaporeans to marry.
The purpose of getting Singaporeans to marry and reproduce becomes objectified. The difficulties of Singaporeans interacting with one another ( one of the reasons why Singaporeans cannot find partners ) are ignored.
This also objectifies dating agencies purposes in getting Singaporeans to marry. In trying to meet the KPI set by the government, dating agencies may in-turn lose sight in their purpose of socialising Singaporeans. In this instance, I am not saying that dating agencies will overlook the processes of socialisation. The socialisation process becomes impersonal, only to meet the dating agencies objective.
I shall now explain how this social phenomenon comes about by using the theories of Alfred Shultz, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann.
People interact with each other because they have a shared meaning in life. I know what you know and you know what I know. This is also called intersubjectivity. It is this shared meaning that helps us understand one another. It also helps us to typify a person (stereotyping). Typification of people helps us to “bracket” out of our personality in order to interact with others. “Bracket” here means that we isolate our own characteristic in order to meet the characteristics of the person we are interacting. For example, I might be a successful banker but when I go NTUC to shop, I try to adopt the characteristics of a typical shopper in order to get along with other shoppers.
We are able to typify someone because according the Alfred Shultz, we have a “stockpile of Knowledge”, that we accumulated throughout our life experiences, to help us understand the people that we interact with.
At this juncture, I do know that some of you might disagree to what is being written but I appeal to you to reserve judgement and just read what is written. This essay is not to counter argue the theories of the above mentioned.
Another example is when dating agents meet their clients; they have to adopt the characteristics of their clients so that the process of their interaction would not be impersonal. Dating agents can study their clients profile in order to learn how to adapt to their clients behaviour.
Dating agencies are formed by people who share the same goals of setting up a dating agency to help singles in Singapore to find their life partners. Their shared aims of setting up the agency are their common sense knowledge of one another. Together with the common sense knowledge that they share, combined with the roles and process they develop in the running of the agency, a social institution (dating agency) is formed.
We create roles and habits in our daily life. For example, brushing our teeth and carrying out duties as a dating consultant. These roles and habits are internalized. They become part of our lives and they are taken for granted until someone comes along and question us. For example, there may be a long procedure in processing an employee’s transport claim. The officer in – charge carries out his or her role as a claiming officer and apply these procedures dutifully every day. As this process is repeated every day, it becomes a habit and eventually becomes a norm. These procedures will be taken for granted until someone questions about the procedures.
Therefore procedures are created and carried out for a dating consultant to follow in dealing with his or her clients and for the daily operations of the dating agency. These procedures in time will become the norm for the dating agency. It may also become the vision and mission statements of the dating agency.
All activity is subject to habitualization as repeated action is inevitably become routinized. Action performed repeatedly brings about a stable background.
When the procedures of running a dating agency and the roles carried out by the dating consultant become a habit, objectification might take place. This happens when a dating agency loses focus of it’s goals and is only concern of meeting the KPI set by the government and earning profits. It becomes divorce from the social experiences of those who institutionalized the procedures or originated the procedures that are now regulated.
Interaction between the dating consultants and their clients becomes impersonal. Of course, the dating consultants cannot make it seem that their interaction is impersonal and that the only objective is for the dating consultants to set up dates for their clients and what happens after the date will be the client’s problem. However, in most cases, dating agencies care about their clients’ welfare. They do follow up to see whether their clients did meet their successful partners during the dates that were set up. Dating agencies can carry out these procedures in two ways. One is that they do it because they really care for their clients; the other is for their profit margin. The latter in most cases are detrimental to dating agencies because as humans, we have feelings and indirect impersonality behaviours can be detected. Clients would eventually lose trust in the dating agency that they go to.
The purpose of getting Singaporeans to marry and reproduce more becomes objectified when the government sets KPI for dating agencies to meet. Dating agency also face difficulties in pairing up partners when clients set objectives for them. If these objectives are not met, clients lose interest. Social gatherings planned for singles to meet may also end up in failure if their clients’ objectives are not met.
If the government and clients is target centric, then they may overlook the actual root problem on why they cannot meet their life partner. For example, the reason why singles cannot find partners is because they do not have the necessary skills to socialise. Dating agencies actually help in this area but setting up courses on how to obtain socialisation skills but if clients still remain objective, then these courses would not be beneficial to them.
In summary we are creatures of habit. Every habit we adopt becomes routinize. This is depicted in our roles that we carry out in our daily life. For example, our roles as a dad, banker, fireman and accountant. These roles that are rountinize will become institutionzed. It will become a norm and eventually be regulated. For example, people call Federal Express as FedEX regularly. Soon this became a norm in society and Federal Express change their name to FedEX.
We are able to typify someone because the stockpile of Knowledge”, that we accumulated throughout our life experiences, help us understand the people that we interact with. Typifying a person (stereotyping) helps us to “bracket” out of our personality in order to interact with others. “Bracket” here means that we isolate our own characteristic in order to meet the characteristics of the person we are interacting.
Institutions like dating agencies will eventually objectify their procedures and roles. However, objectification of their roles and procedures may not be a bad thing if dating agencies do not lose side of their main purpose and in still social responsibility in their organisation. Other factors like KPI set by the government may force dating agency to objectify their procedures. If meeting KPI is the only primarily objective set, then the government is not actually tackling the root cause on why some singles cannot find partners no matter how many social gathers or dates they attend to. Clients may also not see the root cause of their problems if their only concern is for dating agencies is to meet their objectives.
On this note, I still hope dating agencies will keep on striving in their mission to get singles paired up. As they say, no pain no gain.
