Dating Russian women: what the marriage agencies never tell you
An old essay argues that agency advertising paints one picture of Russian women while ordinary life shows another. Its instinct is sound; some of its numbers are not.
Last reviewed: 2026-11-06
This article comes from the earlier life of this site. The Internet Archive captured the page on 18 October 2016, and the text dates from around 2007. We removed the original byline, reader testimonials, promotional passages and sentences that the old capture had broken. The remaining wording is the original’s, lightly corrected for typography. Where a statement is outdated or wrong, the fact check below says so.
The archive text
This causes many foreign men to dream about the perfect family! A family that they have already built up in their own imagination.
Every man who has seen the Russian online dating services ads and believes in them completely, has built up in his mind and has created his own fantasy of what a future family with a Russian women will be.
If the man’s dreams are based on a foundation the marriage agency has constructed and no on a healthy dose of common sense, then most likely the relationship is at great risk of disappointment and inevitable failure. The dating services help bring you together, they do not help you to stay together!
It is not their job to make your relationship last, so they don’t bother to warn you of the many pitfalls that can become you and destroy your marriage. What do you expect of your new Russian bride and what do you really know about her?
Go to any marriage dating agency and following their procedure to join.
Look at Russian girls from 21 to 25 years old…
Pay close attention to what these girls have written in their bios…
Ninety percent if not more of them have written that they have a bachelor degree. They just finished or going to finish their educational requirements.
If all the dating agencies are telling you that all Russian women are very family oriented and in most cases live to serve their husband and children, why would they spend 10 years in school and from 5-7 years at the university, getting a degree?
Why would these young girls spend the biggest part of their young life studying so hard?
Why not, instead, go take domestic courses such as cooking and sewing and child rearing?
In Russia, to see a family with three children would be quite a shock! It is even unusual to see a Russian family with two children!
That each couple produces only one child, does not allow the population to grow but rather stagnate.
To be honest, it is not only a problem for Russia, but for most European countries.
Are you wondering why most Russian couples have only one child if Russian women are so extremely family oriented as the dating agencies promise you?
Why don’t they want to have more children?
The reason is not because of a difficult economical situation.
Fact check and what has changed
“If Russian women were so family-oriented, they would not spend years getting a university degree.”
The essay is right that agency ads often reduce women to a stereotype of the devoted housewife. The inference does not hold: higher education and family life are not opposites, and many women pursue both. It is better to say that agency stereotypes are a poor guide to any individual woman, who may have a profession she intends to keep.
“The average American family has 2.7 children.”
The World Bank series gives a total fertility rate of about 2.05 births per woman in the United States in 2004 and about 1.63 in 2024. The figure in the archive text was wrong when it was written and is further off now. We have kept the sentence out of the restored text and flagged it here.
“Russian couples have only one child.”
Russian fertility is low: about 1.34 births per woman in 2004 and about 1.42 in 2024. It is a rate, not a rule. A rate of 1.4 is consistent with many families with one child and many with two or three. The essay is right that low fertility is a documented fact, and wrong that it settles anyone’s attitude to family.
“Dating services help bring you together but do not help you stay together.”
This is accurate about the minimum. The US statute that regulates international marriage brokers concerns what must be collected and disclosed before contact details are exchanged, not support after a marriage. Some agencies offer post-arrival help; the law does not require it. If you want it, ask for it in writing.
Source: 8 U.S.C. § 1375a(d)
What to take from it today
The essay’s best advice is its last: learn about the culture of the woman you hope to marry. Add three habits. First, ask what an agency actually promises in writing rather than what the advertisement implies. Second, look up the number behind every statistic, as our toolkit shows. Third, remember that she is an individual with her own history and plans. For a fuller treatment of the family stereotype see myth 3.