PASADENA — Four years ago, match site eHarmony quietly launched a new initiative, eHarmony4Kids, to help parents find mates for their children. The new program, whose tagline is "Play Dates, Life Mates. eHarmony for Kids," has worked so well that the company is rolling it out nationally this year."People want to steer their kids toward compatible potential life partners at an early age," says an eHarmony spokesman. "Core beliefs are in place at a young age so we can help them do that."
Parents in Nashville, Seattle, Sacramento and Boston were secretly invited to participate in the field testing. They had their kids, ages 5 to 17, take the online personality test. Then eHarmony matched them up with other kids they deemed compatible.
The parents did not tell the kids what was happening but encouraged email friendships, play dates and online chatting.
"We told her it was like having a pen pal," says one mother whose daughter was 8 when she joined the test program.
eHarmony also encouraged parents to form "affinity clusters" of half a dozen or more kids, any two of which were likely to pair up and marry, according to eHarmony's test results."Working in clusters allows your child to have some modicum of choice, instead of just ramming them at one other person and hoping for the best," says the spokesman.
One set of parents colluded to have the kids in their affinity cluster attend the same college. One of them, Kate Dockery, 19, enrolled at Azusa Pacific University where she and several classmates later found out they'd been "eHarmony-ed" by their parents.
"I felt ripped off," Dockery says. "They'd been parading suitors before me for four years."
She does admit that the people in her cluster "are all very good friends. It's kind of eerie how well we get along," but she says she would have rather found that out on her own than through eHarmony.
"I don't mind the whole semi-arranged marriage thing, as long as I'm an active participant," she says.
eHarmony does not expect the program to be controversial.
"We're just refining what parents do already," says the spokesman. •
