Posts from the ‘General’ Category

Dr. David Pelcovitz

The Impact of Working Mothers on Child Development: Empirical Research

Implications for the Orthodox Jewish Community

Over the last five decades, there have been numerous empirical studies that systematically investigated the impact of maternal employment on a child’s cognitive and emotional functioning. While, to my knowledge, similar studies have not been conducted on working mothers in the Orthodox Jewish community, the results of the more general studies should help inform decision making both by individual families and by leaders in the community who are seeking to guide young families.

In recent years, full time employment of mothers has become the norm in the United States. Recent statistics indicate that 75% of mothers work full time in the first year of their child’s life.[1] Since most jobs in the United States only offer maternity leave for the first four to six weeks of a child’s life, the reality is that mothers are generally back to work when their child is still an infant. By definition, the realities of kollel life typically include a mother needing to return to full or part-time work while their children are still young and the financial demands of an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle often make it necessary for both parents to work in non-kollel families.

Research on the Long-term Impact of Maternal Employment

The research on the long-term impact of maternal employment seems to tell a consistent story. In 1991, the National Institute of Child Health and Development initiated a comprehensive longitudinal study in ten centers across the United States to address questions about the relationships between maternal employment, child-care experiences and various outcomes in children. The leaders of this study were among the most respected researchers in the field of developmental psychology, making the conclusions of this research particularly worthy of attention. In a recent review of their findings, they drew the following conclusions:[2]

In terms of the behavioral adjustment of children of middle class or upper middle class mothers who worked when they were infants:

• Full-time maternal employment begun before the child was three months old was associated with significantly more behavior problems reported by caregivers at age 4½ years and by teachers at first grade;
• Children whose mothers worked part time before their child was one year old had fewer disruptive behavioral problems than the children of mothers who worked full time before their child’s first birthday. This increased risk for behavioral difficulties was apparent at age three, and during first grade;
• The pathway through which those protective effects of part-time work operated was through increases in the quality of the home environment and in the mother’s sensitivity.

With regard to cognitive difference in the middle and upper middle class sample, the study found that:

• Children of mothers who worked full time in the first year of that child’s life received modestly lower child cognitive scores relative to children of mothers who do not work on all eight cognitive outcomes examined. Associations at 4½ years and first grade were roughly similar in size to those at age three;
• Mothers who worked full time were more likely to have symptoms of depression;
• Lower cognitive scores were not found in children of mothers who worked part time during the first year of their child’s life.

While these findings point to the need to consider the impact of ful- time maternal employment on children, particularly before they are three months old, some benefits of full-time work were found in the area of the mother’s ability to be sensitive to her child.

Mothers who worked full time tended to use higher-quality substitute childcare and to show higher levels of sensitivity to her child. The researchers speculate that the higher levels of maternal sensitivity seen in employed mothers might have stemmed from their having greater financial security.

Another reliable source of synthesizing the relevant research in this area is to look at the conclusions of meta-analysis – a technique that involves systematically analyzing a group of studies that address the same question, thereby allowing one to discover the common threads of findings of well-designed studies conducted on a given topic. A recent meta-analysis of 69 research studies spanning five decades,[3] evaluating the impact of maternal employment, came to similar conclusions as those summarized above. Early maternal employment was found to be associated with beneficial child outcomes when families were at risk because of either financial challenges or as the result of being single-parent families. In those families, children of working mothers showed higher levels of achievement and lower levels of internalizing behaviors such as anxiety and depression. These benefits are generally explained by a compensatory hypothesis that views work in those families as providing added financial security, lower levels of family stress and enhanced learning opportunities for children who would otherwise be home with a parent who is dealing with the ongoing stress of poverty and child-rearing challenges with little external support.

Employment was associated with negative child outcomes, however, when children were from intact, middle class families that were not at risk financially. In those families, early full-time employment (relative to mothers who were not working outside the home) was associated with later risk for child behavioral difficulties. This finding supports the lost resources hypothesis, which posits that increases in family income do not offset challenges introduced by maternal employment in terms of less supervision, and potentially inferior substitute care. It should be noted, however, that this increased risk was not the case when mothers worked full time when their children were toddlers or preschoolers. It appears that working full time when the child is an infant – a critical period in terms of attachment and emotional and cognitive growth – is more likely to be associated with subsequent difficulties.

Another meta-analysis of 68 studies spanning four decades of research[4] concluded that adolescents whose mothers were employed fared worse on measures of academic achievement. It is hypothesized that this increased risk is related to lower levels of parental supervision in families of employed mothers and points to the need for more structured activities after school.

In summary, the consensus of the empirical studies on the impact of maternal employment finds that child adjustment is tied to a number of relevant variables. In the case of single-parent families, or families otherwise facing poverty, the impact of maternal employment appears to be mostly positive. In the case of middle class or wealthy families when the mother is working full time, particularly in the early months of a child’s life, there appears to be a mildly increased risk for later behavioral problems and subtle cognitive impact relative to mothers who aren’t working or are working part time.

It is very important to note, however, that these conclusions cannot necessarily be generalized to our community. There are numerous variables that may differ. For example, in the case of kollel families, the possibility of a more flexible schedule may result in fathers having the potential of greater involvement in their child’s life than in the case of a father who is employed full time in a traditional job. Similarly, grandparents might be more actively involved in caring for their grandchildren – a factor that is generally associated with improved childcare and improved outcomes.[5]

Research on the Impact of Substitute Childcare

Longitudinal studies of the association between child academic and behavioral functioning and type and frequency of childcare when they were younger finds that both quality and quantity of childcare is associated with a child’s later behavior and achievement. For example, when the sample studied in the NICHD longitudinal study referenced earlier is evaluated a decade after leaving childcare,[6] the researchers found that childcare quality was associated with improved cognitive and behavioral functioning at age 15, with escalating positive effects at higher levels of childcare quality. Similarly, in that study, higher quality care predicted higher cognitive academic achievement (e.g. better vocabularies) at age 4½, as well as during elementary school.

At 4½ years of age, the number of hours in childcare was associated with higher levels of externalizing behaviors such as non-compliance and aggression. The more hours spent in childcare, the greater the likelihood of difficult behavior. Similarly, more hours of non-relative care in the first 4½ years of a child’s life predicted greater risk-taking and impulsivity at age 15.

In a fascinating series of studies,[7] researchers found that childcare quality is related to a child’s cortisol levels (a hormone released by the adrenal gland in response to stress). When children receive high-quality childcare, characterized by high levels of emotional support and cognitive stimulation, they are less likely to have increased cortisol levels over the course of the day. Such children showed cortisol levels that were more similar to children who spend their day in the less stressful environment of their own homes.

Guidelines for Evaluating Quality of Childcare

Given the enduring impact the quality of childcare has on child adjustment, it is important for parents to understand what researchers have determined are the core characteristics that define a high-quality program. The NICHD research team developed the following set of nine caregiver behaviors that can guide a parent who is observing caregivers on a typical day in their program[8]:

If parents are trying to assess a particular program, they should pick out a child in the program who reminds them of their own child and in half-minute intervals observe whether the caregiver:

1. responds to the child’s vocalizations;
2. reads aloud to the child;
3. asks the child a question;
4. praises or speaks affectionately to the child;
5. teaches the child;
6. directs other positive talk to the child;
7. has close physical contact with the child;
8. is occupied (as opposed to doing nothing), or
9. is occupied actively with the child as opposed to watching television.

While all nine of these behaviors were found to be associated with quality of care, the most important was the kind of verbal interaction used by the caregiver. Those who asked questions, praised, taught and, in general, created a warm, enveloping atmosphere by interacting with the child as an individual rather than only with the group and by talking to the child in positive ways contributed to the high level of quality that later predicted more positive cognitive and behavioral outcomes for these children a decade later. Other important caregiver characteristics include a disciplinary style that is characterized by offering children choices and gentle suggestions rather than harsh and punitive ultimatums.[9]

In addition to the quality of caretaker-child interactions, the characteristics of the physical space of the childcare environment has also been found to be relevant. Researchers have found that having at least twenty-five square feet per child is important. Day care settings that have less space are more likely to have children who are aggressive and less intellectually stimulated.[10] Since orderly and predictable environments are so important for children, it is not surprising that researchers have documented the importance of settings that allow children privacy and separate space for quiet and loud play.[11] Having a wide variety of age-appropriate play materials has been found to maximize the intellectual challenges in daycare settings.[12] When materials are limited in quantity and variety, children have been found to fight more and to show less progress in language and social development.

Another important characteristic of daycare is the balance between structure and free play. Programs that provide all structure with no time for unstructured play have been found to result in defiant, stressed and unhappy children. In contrast, programs that completely lack structure result in children with lower levels of social skills. Researchers therefore conclude that the ideal is a balance between adult-initiated group work that is educational in nature and free play that is directed by the child, yet includes activities that promote exploration, thinking and social interaction.[13]

The opportunity to play with even one other child on a regular basis is associated with more gains in both social and cognitive areas. This finding argues for the benefit of giving young children the opportunity to have repeated play sessions with the same group of children. The staff-child ratio is an important component determining the optimal size of a childcare center. Research finds that in the care of infants, the staff-infant ratio should be one to one. The sensitivity of staff to the infant’s needs often deteriorates when the ratio goes to one staff member for two or more infants. Obviously, as children get older such intensive ratios are no longer essential. In one study, when the ratio for toddlers improved from 8:1 to 6:1, teachers relied less on negative discipline and became more responsive to the toddler’s needs.[14]

Implications

1. Awareness about Full Time versus Part Time

Although based on relatively small levels of statistical significance, the findings of a number of well-executed studies suggest that when parents have a choice early in their child’s life (particularly during the first three months), they should consider working part-time. During that critical period, when there is an option, the father should make an effort to be present in as active a parenting role as possible. Similarly, if at all feasible, grandparents should be more actively recruited to take care of their grandchildren when they are infants and both parents are working full time. This has an added benefit since research has found that actively-involved grandparents serve a crucial role as a protective buffer against the potential harmful influences of parental stress.[15] It is important to note that the potential dangers of full-time versus part-time work are only found in middle and upper middle class families. This recommendation is therefore most relevant for the segment of our community that falls in that category.

The finding that full-time mothers are at times at greater risk for depression should not be taken lightly. Researchers have found that infants are clearly impacted by their mother’s depression. Infants of parents with depression have been found to have difficulties with self-quieting, lower activity levels and decreased ability to attend. Relative to the children of non-depressed parents, their affect tends to be more negative, as typified by increased likelihood of expressing sadness and anger.

Equally important are the studies on the role of chronic stress in parenting.[16] Powerless parents more likely to:

• be hyper-vigilant with their child;
• focus on the negative, while ignoring improved behavior;
• engage in coercive and punitive parenting;
• misread neutral child cues as malevolent, and
• derogate child in efforts at power repair.

This style of parenting frequently engenders high levels of resistance and at-risk behavior in the adolescent.

The implications of this body of research are that high stress levels, and particularly depression in stressed-out parents, can have long term implications on child development. The community needs to take this into account when prioritizing the need to provide young parents with support.

2. Adolescent Risk

The finding that adolescents in families with two working parents might be at somewhat increased risk for difficulty points to the need to support working parents of adolescents in providing adequate supervision of their child. It is essential that parents of adolescents receive support in learning how to monitor their adolescent in a manner that strikes the balance between love and limits. It is appropriate to require adolescents:

(a) to describe where they intend to go and with whom;

(b) to get permission before going out, both on school nights and on weekends, and

(c) to explain where they have been, what they have been doing, and with whom.

Working parents need to attend to and track their adolescent’s whereabouts and activities by regularly asking them about their school and leisure-time experiences. It can be helpful to keep in touch with the parents of their children’s friends so that they can be used as a source of information.

Such effective monitoring of adolescent activity needs to take place in the context of a close relationship that is nurtured by open parental communication and attention to their adolescent. It is important to keep in mind the body of studies that found that for every night a week that parents have dinner with their children there is a corresponding decreased risk for substance abuse in that child.[17] Teens who have dinner with their families five or more times a week are almost twice as likely to receive A’s in school compared to teens who have dinner with their families two or fewer times a week (20 percent vs. 12 percent). Teens who receive A’s and B’s are at half the risk of substance abuse as those who receive grades of C or lower.

3. Quality of Substitute Childcare

Perhaps the most important lesson of the research is the importance of high-quality childcare for children. The key elements of what matters in substitute care have been clearly demonstrated. Unfortunately, parents in our community are given very little in the way of evidence-based information on how to evaluate a quality program. The guidelines summarized above should prove helpful in providing parents with a cognitive map of what to look for.

Data from a recent survey of parents of adolescents in the Orthodox Jewish community did not find any differences in adolescent outcomes for those mothers who reported being at-home mothers as compared with mothers who held other professions[18]. However, this was just a first glimpse of the subject. Additional research needs to be done to determine how the various issues addressed in this paper might present differently in the Orthodox Jewish community. It is clear that we need to do a better job of guiding the next generation of parents on how to navigate the challenges of young parenthood. Perhaps chosson and kallah classes can include a segment on some of the guidelines discussed in this paper and rabbinic leaders can set a more mindful agenda about how to marshal the resources of our community to prioritize the importance of provision of high-quality childcare. I can think of no priority as important as helping parents nourish their young child’s developing mind and soul by better equipping parents to manage the balance between work, parenting and marriage.

 

David Pelcovitz, Ph.D. holds the Gwendolyn and Joseph Straus Chair in Psychology and Jewish Education at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education.

Briendy Stern & Dr. Frimi Faye Walkenfeld

The Akeres Habayis: Changing Times, Redefined Roles

 It is 10:00 pm on a weeknight and a class of college students has just been dismissed. Although this seems to be a normal occurrence, the differences between these students and the average college student in the United States are quite significant. This class is made up predominantly of “Charedi” Orthodox Jewish mothers who are juggling multiple roles. For many of these women, attending college in pursuit of a better job is having an impact not only on their own lives but on their families, as well. As a researcher (Stern) and professor (Walkenfeld) working with these women, the authors of this article have gleaned insight regarding some of the new challenges confronting both these women and the broader community. Based on research both from the general population and from an ongoing study with the aforementioned student population, this article highlights the impact that changing roles are having on family dynamics.

Growing up in the traditional Orthodox Jewish family, both boys and girls are taught that their respective roles are prescribed. Boys are taught that it is the man’s role to be the breadwinner, as it states in Beraishis, “b’zeias apecha tochal lechem” (by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread). Girls are taught that their role is to be an “akeres habayis” (principal of the home), having and raising children and caring for their husbands. The historical roles traditionally played by men and women in the general population reflect these expectations. However, due to both economic and social change, the gender roles in secular society have shifted, affecting the Orthodox Jewish community as well. As challenging as these shifts have been for general society, it has been that much more challenging for an Orthodox community with its added set of expectations, higher cost of living, greater family size and need for private education (Longman, 2008). In addition to these pressures, imposing a need for dual income is the emphasis on men learning in kollel full-time, which often necessitates that women take on the role of breadwinner (Shai, 2002). Parents, mechanchim and mechanchos (educators, male and female) are faced with the dilemma of asserting that women’s role is to be at home for their families, while acknowledging in the next breath that women need to enter the workforce to support their husband’s learning.

These tensions regarding a woman’s role are not unique to the Orthodox community. Research conducted on the general population has shown that in order to cope successfully with multiple roles, women depend on familial support, both emotional and tangible (e.g., Kasworm, 1990; Van Meter & Agronow, 1982; Zimmerman, et al, 2008). The Orthodox community must begin to recognize these trends and to support women and men alike, whether in kollel or not, as they adjust to their changing roles.

These changes have had a significant effect on the sense of identity of both men and women. Men can no longer view themselves as the “provider” and women have compromised their “caretaking” role. This raises a number of questions. What changes are observed in family dynamics when a woman becomes a “provider,” whether due to financial needs or for personal fulfillment, or when a man becomes a “caretaker,” whether because his wife is pursuing her education or is at work? How do these shifting identities impact relationships and are these changes necessarily “bad” or “good?” More importantly, how can we, as a Torah observant community, prepare our children for these new, less-defined and dynamically shifting roles?

Many of these questions relating to changing prescribed roles and their effect on identity and family dynamics have already been, or are currently being, addressed in the research literature.

For example, an area that has generated much research relates to the impact that a mother’s employment has on her children. The research is rife with conflicts to the extent that it has been coined the “Mommy Wars.” On one side of the coin, Nomaguchi and Milkie’s (2006) research found that children whose mothers were employed most of their lives reported receiving less support and less discipline from both parents compared to children with stay-at-home mothers. Other research comparing such children found that a mother’s working outside the home has either no influence or a positive influence on her children (Hoffman & Youngblade, 1999). Another factor that impacts children is the number of hours, along with the degree of stress, in the mother’s employment. Children reported that they received less attention and suffered greater conflict with their mothers during their mother’s more stressful periods of employment (Crouter, Bumpus, Maguire & McHale, 1999; Repittia & Wood, 1997). Lefevre (1972) reported that, contrary to popular belief, working mothers were found to enjoy a better relationship with their children, despite parent-child conflicts. Similarly, Gerson (2002) found that children whose mothers were employed regarded their mother’s employment as beneficial to their lives. Though the above research is surely inconsistent, it needs to be closely examined to delineate what contexts foster what outcomes. Unfortunately, such efforts are beyond the scope of this article.

In addition to secular research, there are studies being conducted regarding the shifting role of women within the Orthodox Jewish community (e.g., Longman, 2008; Shai, 2002). Additionally, as mentioned previously, the primary author of this article is currently conducting research on the effects of attending college on married women. Though distinctions can be drawn between mothers working outside the home and mothers attending college, the study is nevertheless instructive. This research has not been completed, so any firm conclusions would be premature. However, snippets of the interviews offer insights into the changes taking place in these Orthodox families that should aid parents, mechanchim and mechanchos in equipping children for the new economic and social challenges. All names have been changed to ensure anonymity.

The “Good Mother”

Research literature regarding society’s view of motherhood observes how little has changed regarding the dominant motherhood ideology in the United States since the 1950’s. Motherhood is still perceived as “natural” for women, and those perceived as “good” women tend to be mothers with a primary focus on their children (Hays, 1996; Russo, 1976). Mothers who are working, or who have other additional roles, are commonly seen as not “good” mothers and are characterized as “lesser,” “deviant” and/or “bad.” The “ideal” mother is one who has given over her identity to motherhood, without dividing her time among any other roles (Sears, 1999; Smith, 1993). For many women who, whether by choice or necessity, are not stay-at-home mothers, this construction of the “good” mother often creates feelings of loss, sadness, or guilt.

The idea of being a “good” mother in the Orthodox Jewish community is reflected in the very powerful and religiously hallowed image of the Eishet Chayil, the “woman of valor.” From early on, Orthodox Jewish women are taught that to live up to the ideal of the “Eishet Chayil,” the woman must support her husband, help with – or even carry – the responsibility of financially supporting the family (“mimerchak tavi lachma” – “from afar does she bring sustenance”), while also nurturing her children (“vatiten teref l’veisa” – “she gives food to her home”). This is the Jewish version of the “good” mother, and it is the “ideal” of what a Jewish mother is intended to be. Unfortunately, little if any attention is given to the question of how women are to carry out these multiple roles, which has only become more challenging in today’s complex environment.

Changing Roles & Ensuing Conflict

Whereas Orthodox Jewish women traditionally define their role as an altruistic caretaker and homemaker, the emerging role of the contemporary Orthodox woman is difficult to define. Gitta, a working mother with four young children, described this shift in the role expectations as the community being “confused.” She feels that while it is understood within the community that women are expected to be mothers while husbands are expected to be providers, today’s economy often requires that women attain degrees securing them a higher salary than their husbands. At the same time, Naomi said that members of the community who have heard that she is going to college and plans to start a career have told her, “You’re crazy. Look what you did. You’re losing your kids.” Thus, she is stuck between helping to bring in a parnassah (livelihood) while being viewed as a bad mother by members of her community and by society.

General research regarding the changing roles of women working outside the home indicates that, despite their additional responsibilities, their roles at home are not substantially altered. Women continue to complete most of the household chores and family care-giving, despite working outside the home. This has imposed Hochschild’s (1989) “second shift,” as women return home after a full day’s work to begin their “second shift” at home in addressing the needs of the family.

In the Orthodox Jewish community, where the role of mother and wife are instilled not only as a cultural norm but also as a religious obligation, the tensions inherent in these multiple roles appears to exacerbate women’s internal feelings of conflict and guilt. Women who take on other roles often begin to question their assumption that care-giving is solely their responsibility, and not one to be shared with their spouses. For example, women interviewed about the effect college has had on their home roles initially described their husband’s participation using terms such as “he babysits” or “he watched the children for me.” After using this wording, many stopped midsentence and questioned their own use of the terms “babysit” or “helping me,” recognizing that the children should be a shared responsibility. As Itta stated, “…he’s not the babysitter, he’s the father.” This clearly illustrates shifting expectations which have an effect on marital relationships. This often causes anger, self-reflection and possible disrespect for one another as each spouse independently feels that the other is not fulfilling his or her role in the marital relationship.

Though the choice for women to enter the workforce or enroll in school is usually a joint decision between spouses, conflicts arise in day-to-day living, as the ingrained expectations from childhood are difficult to overcome. Although this is understood by both spouses on an intellectual level, it is difficult to deal with on a practical level.

Bina, a mother of five who is in her forties, highlighted these feelings. She explained the difficulty of the transition on the marriage relationship:

At the outset of our marriage [my going to college] wasn’t the plan. He supports it but, on the other hand, sometimes he feels like I shouldn’t be going out at night. But why am I leaving the kids at home? I’ll say, if I’m going to a wedding it wouldn’t be a question.

Bina is using the wedding to indicate a double standard in her husband’s expectations of her role; it is “expected” in our society for women to go out for a social occasion such as a wedding, but not “expected” to go out for college or work. She further explains the conflict with her divided responsibilities at home:

If I am doing [my own] homework sometimes he’ll say that even if I’m home, I’m not really with the kids. Or when it comes crazy time like finals and I’m up late hours, it can get to him. But otherwise, he’s supportive. He also obviously sees the reality of it, and that this is the only way to advance.

Lest one think this is an isolated case of a husband’s questionable behavior, Naomi, a mother of six, described a transition in her relationship with her husband:

I think up until now I was like a worker. I don’t mean a worker getting paid, but I was like the wife taking care of the kids. Now [that I have additional roles outside of the home, his view of me is] ‘she’s her own person, she has a goal in life.’ It has somewhat equalized the relationship.”

For Naomi, this new respect and responsibility came with challenges. She explained that since she began attending school, her husband feels “gypped.”

He’s used to “my wife is always home and my supper is always there.” I don’t compromise on that part, but he doesn’t have the automatic presence that he’s used to. There are times when I have finals that I’ll say, “I’m sorry, please take the children.” He has more responsibility now at home. It’s a challenge.

These scenarios reflect everyday conflict and may seem trivial to the reader. However the reality is that even when both spouses agree to such arrangements, they fail to fully grasp the repercussions of their new lifestyle. This often causes conflict as couples need to compromise their expectations to make their plans work.

Conclusion

As the shifting roles of men and women become more acute, our children rely on parents, mechanchim and mechanchos to clarify how these changes may impact them. Many women interviewed lamented that the Chareidi schools are not preparing their children for the outside world or for their new roles in these changing times.

In our view, the community’s infrastructure must confront the societal and economic pressures that are changing the family dynamic. Rather than ignoring these new realities, the changes should be recognized and dealt with. Having guilt-ridden and conflicted spouses results in marital strife, and can lead to depression in both children and parents. If there is acceptance, we can be more open about the challenges women face in the workplace and in college and can better address them. Our community is resilient and often identifies solutions to formerly unrecognized issues, once the problems are acknowledged. Similarly, recognition of the new role of women would allow for a greater focus on identifying practical solutions and making necessary adjustments. This would be an important first step in alleviating the widespread difficulties being experienced as families confront a changing world.

 

References

 Crouter, A.C., Bumpus, M.F., Maguire, M.C. & Mchale, S.M. (1999). Linking Parents’ Work Pressure and Adolescents’ Well-Being: Insights into Dynamics in Dual-Earner Families. Developmental Psychology, 35, 1453-1461.

Gerson, K. (2002). Moral Dilemmas, Moral Strategies, and the Transformation of Gender: Lessons from Two Generations of Work and Family Change. Gender & Society, 16, 8-28.

Hays, S. (1996). The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, New Haven, CT. Yale University Press.

Hochschild, A.R. (1989). The Second Shift, New York. Avon Books.

Hoffman, L., &Youngblade, L.M. (1999). Mothers At Work: Effects on Children’s Well-Being, New York. Cambridge University Press.

Kasworm, C.E. (1990). Adult Undergraduates in Higher Education: A Review of Past Research Perspectives, Review of Educational Research, 60, 345-372.

Lefevre, C. (1972). The Mature Woman as a Graduate Student. The School Review, 80, 281-297.

Longman, C. (2008). Sacrificing The Career or the Family? Orthodox Jewish Women Between the Secular Work and the Sacred Home. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 15, 223.

Nomaguchi, K.M. & Milike, M.A. (2006). Maternal Employment in Childhood and Adults Retrospective Reports of Parenting Practice. Journal of Marriage & Family, 68(3), 573-594.

Repetti, R.L. & Wood, J. (1997). Effects of Daily Stress at Work on Mothers’ Interactions with Preschoolers. Journal of Family Psychology, 11, 90-108.

Russo, N.F. (1976). The Motherhood Mandate. Journal of Social Issues, 32, 143-154.

Sears, W. (1999). Nighttime Parenting: How to Get Your Baby and Child to Sleep, New York. Plume Books.

Shai, D. (2002). Working Women/Cloistered Men: A Family Development Approach to Marriage Arrangements among Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 33, 98-115.

Smith, D. (1993). The Standard North American Family SNAF as an Ideological Code. Journal of Family Issues, 14(1), 50-65.

Van Meter, M.J.S., &Agronow, S.J. (1982). The Stress of Multiple Roles: The Case for Role Strain among Married College Women. Family Relations, 31, 131-138.

Zimmerman, T.S., Aberle, J.T., Krafchick, J.L. & Harvey, A.M. (2008). Deconstructing the “Mommy Wars”: The Battle over the Best Mom. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 20, 203-219.

 

Briendy Stern, MSW, is currently in the Social Welfare doctoral program at The City University of New York working on her dissertation.

Frimi Faye Walkenfeld, PhD, is a Deputy Chair of Psychology at Touro College.

Abby Lerner

Aishes Chayil: Lost or Found?

As a young elementary school student, I arrived home each day at 5:00pm. As I walked in the door, I would behold a table set for supper, with little wedges of cantaloupe at each setting, waiting for us to sit down and eat. Some nights, when my father was teaching a late-night course in college, he wasn’t there with us, but most nights we were all there together. My mother, a brilliant, cultured woman who never attended college, seemed quite content running our home and taking care of our physical and psychological needs. Our home was calm, with everything in its place. Once, a friend of my mine, describing Friday afternoon said, “Did you ever notice that no one is ever just sitting around waiting to light candles?” Not true. In my childhood home, that’s exactly what it was like. And I suspect that my experience was not unique.

Fast forward to a discussion I had just recently. I was speaking with someone about shidduchim (matchmaking) in the yeshiva world. “Well,” she said, “the girls must have some sort of skill or profession.” She recounted that someone she knew – a mother of a family without a lot of money – recently brought her daughter to meet a shadchan (matchmaker). When the shadchan heard that the family had no means and that the young woman was not in college, she told this mother that she simply could not even accept the name of her daughter. Apparently, there are no prospects in the yeshiva world for a young woman of no means and no profession. If you want to “just” be a mother, you are out of luck.

Our world has changed dramatically. It’s not just about feminism. Tzipporah Heller, of Neve Yerushalayim, speaks eloquently and brilliantly about the technological changes of the last half century (Our Bodies Our Souls. Audio recording, Aish HaTorah, Jerusalem, Israel 1988). Much of the very necessary work that women did at home has been taken over by machines. Washing machines and dryers, wrinkle-free clothing, dishwashers, crockpots and microwaves have changed the lives of women more than any ideology.

As for ideology, the Akeidat Yitzchak (Rav Yitchak Arama of the 15^th century), speaks compellingly of the need for women to contribute to the world in roles beyond that of mothering. Indeed, he remarks that Yaakov’s angry response to Rachel’s “Give me children or else I die” (Genesis 30:1) can be explained in the following way: “The two names – ‘woman’ (isha = from man) and ‘Eve’ (chava = mother of life) – indicate two purposes. The first, which teaches that woman was taken from man, stresses that, like him, she may understand and advance in the intellectual and moral fields. This was evidenced in the matriarchs, other prophetesses and in many righteous women, and it reflects the literal meaning of Proverbs 31 about the ‘woman of valor’ (eshet chayil). The second alludes to the power of child bearing and rearing, as is indicated by the name of Eve – the mother of all living. A woman deprived of the secondary power of childbearing will be deprived [only] of the secondary purpose but will be left with the ability to do evil or good, just like a man, who is barren” [italics added].

Yaakov expressed anger toward Rachel “in order to reprimand her and make her understand this all-important principle – that she was not dead as far as their joint purpose in life simply because she was childless, just as it would be true in his case if he had been childless” (Akeidat Yitzchak, Breishit Sha’ar 9. English Translation by Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Bereshit, Jerusalem, Israel. p. 334). Of course, the ancient text of Eshet Chayil, (A Woman of Valor, Proverbs 31:10-31) itself testifies to the fact that women have long been involved in many roles in addition to parenting.

Is it possible that the idyllic scene that I described from my childhood was a passing moment in history, unique to the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties in post-World War II America? Perhaps it was only at that special time that, because of technological advances, women experienced freedom from many of the traditional duties at home and, thanks to an aligning of the economic stars, had no financial obligations outside the home. Tzipporah Heller suggests that it was this very idleness that may have contributed to the women’s movement of the nineteen-sixties.

Like the Akeidat Yitzchak, she claims that everyone is responsible to make a contribution. Of course women felt worthless if they were doing “nothing” most of the time! It is no wonder that women started to feel a need to do “something.” “Something” may be volunteering in community organizations or school PTA’s or political organizations. “Something” may be higher education in the secular world or the world of Torah studies. “Something” may be a career or a job. When the economy demands it, and women are not required to be home all day, women will want and need to do “something.”

I recall when a part-time job fell into my lap just as my youngest child began attending a playgroup two mornings a week. I was about to be home alone most of the time and here was this teaching job – two mornings a week! Until then I had been very meaningfully engaged in volunteer work at my children’s school, but I was ready now to really prove myself. Nothing, however, can compare to the feeling I had several years later when I saw the look of relief in my husband’s eyes when I told him that the opportunity I had to work for more hours was going to remove most of the burden of paying high school tuition for our children.

Women have gained tremendously by the changes that have occurred in the last several decades. Our housework is easier, and we feel better about ourselves because we are making serious contributions to the world at large, to the economic well-being of our families, and to the world of Torah (I remember when there was no such thing as a woman principal of even a Bais Yaakov school. Now there is almost no such thing as a male head of a girls’ school!). We are no longer afraid that if we find ourselves alone, G-d forbid, that we will be destitute.

But there are losses. We still want to do it all at home. We want to be there to teach our children to make brachot (blessings before eating food), we want to make sure that we are home when the school bus arrives, we want to feed our children the sumptuous suppers our mothers fed us, we want to listen patiently as our children speak, we want to be known as the ones who do the homework, we want to be home when our children have fever, we want the house to smell of challah and chicken soup each Friday, we want to extend ourselves to families in the community, we want the house to be spotless. And we find we just can’t do it… We become harried, impatient, filled with guilt. We remember how someone once told us about quality time – but we found that there can be no quality time when you are thoroughly exhausted.

Having said this, there is no question that the culture has changed. There is no doubt, for example, that fathering is different today than it used to be. I have seen fathers, even in yeshiva communities, involved in a way that they almost never were when I was a child. I know men who have organized their job responsibilities and hours around the school bus departure and arrival. I know young men who are comfortable taking care of even the smallest needs of their children.

Nevertheless, there is a frantic, frenzied tone in the voices of some of the young women I speak with. As women, we seem to be hardwired for care giving, and when we are not convinced that everything is perfect at home, we suffer inside – even as we feel proud of our accomplishments and our ability to provide income. I think all women are struggling with this. I think observant Jewish women are struggling even more.

What are some of the solutions that are available to us? There are many things that will have to happen in our observant world in order to effect real change. Let’s begin with three things that can begin to make a dent.

Expectations

How do we define success? For many families in all parts of the observant community, success is defined materially and almost always includes a large, beautifully-furnished home, a beautifully-coiffed wife (wigs costs thousands of dollars!) and extravagantly clothed children. Bar and bat mitzvah celebrations cost tens of thousands of dollars, and weddings (despite Agudas Yisrael’s published list of limitations) can cost as much as a home. An acceptable vacation destination used to be the Catskills, or New Hampshire. Now, one is expected to experience, at least once in one’s life, a cruise to an exotic location or a trip to an unusual European city or the Caribbean Islands. It is certainly anyone’s right to spend their money as they wish, but this sort of spending is simply not responsible. We are all under enormous pressure to live beyond our means. Some parents feel that if they do not provide luxury for their children they are not doing their job. In turn, their children feel that if they do not meet these standards of luxury in their own lives, they have failed their parents’ definition of success.

Success is raising a beautiful family even in an apartment or in a small attached home. We must re-emphasize our core values to ourselves and our children. We must remind ourselves that our definition of modesty is not just about halachic standards of dress but a preference for a more low-key style of living and celebrating. Perhaps we need less “oohing and aahing” over houses and more “oohing and aahing” over kind, sincere and respectful children. A Jewish community that has lower material expectations will also be satisfied with more dignified and less extravagant buildings for our Jewish institutions. All this will create an atmosphere where people feel under less pressure financially and will remove some of the burden from working men and women.

Our wealthier community leaders and members must be called upon to tone it down. This, more than anything, will begin a downward spiral of material expectations. Take the extra money and put it into scholarship funds or an across-the-board reduction in tuition at the yeshiva of your choice. Rabbis and educators can work to convince these leaders to begin the process – but without the cooperation of the wealthier among us, little progress will be made.

Education

In our high schools, seminaries and kollelim, we must begin to educate our young people about the realities of marriage, money and parenting. We are fortunate that our children are under our educational influence even in their post-high school years. Let’s take advantage of that.

Sholom Task Force has created curricula for high school boys and girls to educate them about the dangers of domestic abuse. We need to develop marriage and parenting curricula, as well, for the same population. We need to inform young women of the best career choices and how to best access a higher education. We need to prepare young women, who are used to being surrounded by friends, for the sense of isolation that may follow after marriage when they find themselves alone and lonely with only their bashert. What is marriage really like for a young woman who is going to school and/or working?

Young women need to be taught about the ideal of being a Jewish mother but also about the difficulties of parenting, even without working outside the home. They must be taught the parenting skills and strategies that are needed in this generation. In high school and in seminary we need to prepare young women for the challenges they will face in a world where they will likely be working even when they have small children.

Post-high school Torah-study programs for single young men should address realistic expectations from marriage in a serious, organized and pedagogically sound way. Young men need to be prepared to contribute to housework if their wives are working (and even if they are not). They need to learn that a young wife who works is tired and needs help. They need to be taught even about cooking and certainly about helping with children. Young men have to learn what their obligations are – as listed in the kesubah.

Before marriage, engaged couples must be encouraged by kallah and chassan instructors and others to attend the carefully-designed marriage classes of Sholom Workshop. The curriculum intelligently and sensitively discusses expectations and roles, financial planning, “how to argue” and how to make sure there is ongoing dialogue even in the busiest of households. Young couples need to be taught that their relationship comes above all else, even if some preconceived ideas regarding roles have to be sacrificed to preserve that relationship.

Ongoing Programming

In addition to education before marriage, the Jewish community – especially synagogues and schools – must conscientiously and consistently provide programming for men and women regarding the complex roles of each, both at home and in the workplace.

We need to plan ongoing opportunities for men and women to attend classes on marriage and parenting. We must bring rabbis and psychologists into our communities on a regular basis. This will provide education as well as support – not just from outside, but from one another. Through open dialogue, perhaps we can begin, together, to arrive at solutions.

Important issues need to be discussed:

• Part-time vs. full-time careers for women, particularly when children are small
• Proper child care for when parents are not present
• Parenting skills
• Dealing with guilt when leaving children
• Finding quality time with children despite one’s own exhaustion
• Finding quality time for marriage
• The yeshiva tuition crisis
• Viable, low-cost summer camp options
• Halachic considerations regarding birth control for women who are “doing it all”
• Realistic expectations for husbands to have of their wives
• Halachic considerations regarding minyan (praying with quorum of ten men) and Torah study when a husband might be needed at home
• When full-time Torah study must be replaced with an income-producing profession
• Taking a break from our busy lives – whether alone or together

I don’t think we are going back to the halcyon days of childhood in the nineteen-fifties and sixties. I do believe that the observant Jewish world must confront the changes that have occurred in almost every segment of our community. A small moment in history, when most women were home and only caring for children, cannot be considered the normal baseline against which everything which has followed is judged. At the same time, we must return to some greater level of sanity and calm in our households – the calm that I felt as a young child.

I spend a lot of time with young, working, observant women. They are overwhelmed – and I worry that they and their children are paying a price. And that their husbands are paying a price. Together as a community, we must find a way to restore a balance that will create healthy households even in these very complicated times.

 

Mrs. Abby Lerner is the Rebbetzin of the Young Israel of Great Neck, and the Director of Admissions at Samuel H. Wang Yeshiva University High School for Girls in Holliswood, NY, where she also teaches the senior course, Women in Jewish Law.

Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Weinreb

 Expanding Women’s Roles While Maintaining Halachic Boundaries

 

 There are several points which need to be made, and emphasized, when considering the role of women in the Orthodox Jewish community. First of all, it cannot be denied that the Orthodox Jewish community is in need of all of the human and capital resources that can be mustered. Women constitute at least 50% of those human resources. It is commonly assumed, though very possibly incorrectly, that in the traditional Jewish society the role of women was pretty much limited to mothering. Whether or not this is historically accurate, that model is surely no longer realistic, and indeed, no longer exists.

It therefore behooves the community to appreciate the role of women as resources to the general community in ways that far transcend the roles of wife and mother. For example, women in society at large control an increasingly significant portion of financial wealth, and women within the Orthodox Jewish community are no different. Quite often, however, this source of communal support remains largely untapped due to preconceived notions of the role of women. I have been involved with a wide variety of Orthodox Jewish organizations for many years, and I have been repeatedly amazed at how even professional fundraisers stumble in this regard, proceeding as if only men can be important philanthropists.

But the loss to the community extends far beyond the forfeiture of potential donations. Much has been written about the dearth of leadership within the Orthodox Jewish community. Many women possess extraordinary leadership skills, often as a result of the excellent religious and secular educations that they have been afforded by the community. Nevertheless, the community, to say the least, underutilizes women as a resource in leadership capacities. It is not heretical to suggest that the voice of women needs to be heard in the governance structures of our synagogues, schools, charitable organizations, and national movements.

Many women possess enormous intellectual gifts. The pool of intellect available to the Orthodox community, if open to female participation, can be doubled. We are already beginning to see an increased openness regarding the role of women in intellectual projects. It is an open secret that a significant number of women are involved as translators and editors of mainstream Orthodox Jewish publications. Again, the use of female intellectual resources is not heresy. There are ways to allow women to participate in intellectual projects without compromising basic halachic parameters.

Currently, there is a spectrum of practice with regard to the utilization of women in leadership roles. This spectrum parallels the range from liberal to centrist to charedi Orthodoxy. Each point on the spectrum, should it choose to consciously expand the role of women in its leadership ranks, will have to identify halachic parameters with which it is comfortable. This author is in no position to define those parameters. However, he has observed how often the exclusion of women is based less upon purely halachic considerations than upon an attitude of condescension toward women’s intellectual prowess and political skills. There are those who are convinced that this attitude itself finds justification in halachic sources. For those, I have no further advice. But for those who are willing to modify this attitude so that it is more in line with reality, halachic solutions appropriate to each section of Orthodoxy could readily be identified, as indeed they have been in certain settings, particularly in the world of publishing, and in various charitable endeavors and human service delivery systems.

I emphasize that I am by no means advocating a dilution of halachic standards. I am simply encouraging that women’s contribution to Orthodox Jewish leadership, long an important factor and now a growing factor, be explicitly acknowledged and purposefully utilized.

In the interests of stimulating the creative search for halachically acceptable modalities within which women’s leadership roles can be expanded, I point to modern technology. Electronic communications offer a superb context within which all sectors of the community can be brought into verbal contact with each other, with no breach of any standards of tzniut.

Until now I have been addressing the community’s need for various sorts of resources, and suggesting that looking toward women to meet more of these needs is essential.

I now move on to a second point. Women in almost every sector of American Orthodox Judaism have dramatically different expectations than they purportedly had in the past. To some degree, this evolving attitude may be attributable to the egalitarian Zeitgeist and the influence of the feminist movement. More significantly, however, it is also clearly attributable to the superior education that women increasingly receive. The single greatest revolution, nay reform, in the Orthodox Jewish world in the past century has been the development and proliferation of religious schools for girls, in even the most extremely conservative sectors of our community. It is no wonder, then, that our women have an entirely different self image than did our grandmothers, along with a different set of – often conflicting – expectations to live up to.

We erroneously assume that many women enter the workforce nowadays because of financial pressures necessitating dual income. I am convinced that this is but one factor in the phenomenon. Women enter the workforce because it is there that they can find satisfaction for the expectations that we have cultivated in them and continue, implicitly or explicitly, to encourage.

I submit that there is a third important consideration, as we contemplate the changing role of women in the Orthodox Jewish family. This issue’s questions assume that it is only women for whom a career causes role conflict. But, are only women the ones who face daily and ongoing dilemmas as to whether their family roles or their professional roles take priority? Do not men face the same dilemma? Does not a father have considerable paternal responsibilities? Does his work, or overwork, not threaten his ability to be an adequate father or husband? Are the various difficulties currently observed in our children not primarily attributable to faulty fathering, perhaps, even more than to faulty mothering?

The questions under consideration in this symposium are vital questions indeed. But the questions are not limited to the role confusion of one gender. Both genders suffer from the role confusion which is imposed by the forces of modernity and an open society, and not just by the pressures of finances.

I take issue in particular with the assumption implicit in question three. Are we considering it necessary only to guide and advise women about the conflict between their roles at home and their other interests and aspirations? Do not men need that guidance and advice, as well, and perhaps even more urgently?

Similarly, are we to limit our focus on the relevance of our educational curricula to “workforce participation” to women’s schools? It can certainly be argued that the curricula to which women are exposed in areas such as halacha and hashkafa are far superior to the curricula of most men’s yeshivas. If “adjustments” are due in girl schools, “overhauls” need to occur in schools for boys.

There is no question that we live in a world in which the very notion of family is under fire. Parenting skills need to be taught in a wide variety of creative ways. Jewish children need both their fathers and their mothers to excel in their respective roles. The changes within our social environment and within our religious context are both substantial, imposing upon us a plethora of demands that undermine proper parenting. Coping with those changes is the name of the game. And it is a game which involves men as much as, and maybe even more than, women.

 

Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, PhD is currently the Executive Vice President, Emeritus of the Orthodox Union.

Zlata Press

Women Working Outside the Home – How Serious a Problem?

The questions posed to the respondents are carefully, even-handedly worded but they are based on the premise that the fundamental problem to be addressed is that of the women’s employment outside the home. How different would this conversation be were we to frame the question to center on the economic challenges faced by today’s Torah-observant community and the concomitant problems which arise from these challenges.

The major drivers of women’s out-of-the-house employment are true economic need – or the sense of such need because of the community’s standard of living (two cars, decent shaitlach, seminary for the daughters, baalebatishe simchos – and tuitions! Of course, tuitions). My conversations with young women lead me to believe that the feminist influence is overrated as the motivation for women to work outside the home. Perceived financial need is a much stronger motivation.

What price do we as a community pay for a woman’s extended time out of the home?

Day-to-day tension in the house almost certainly increases. A woman must be a master organizer and function on little sleep to provide for her family’s needs while adhering to her own work schedule. When mothers have to be out of the house at 8:15 A.M. and the kids have to be roused and prepared for the day at the same time, there is little “give” to spare for a misplaced school book, a last-minute signature on a permission slip, or the white shirt that must be ironed for picture-taking. If a working mother doesn’t learn thoroughly the lessons of keeping a family calendar, checking knapsacks regularly, preparing clothing, breakfast, and bagged lunches the night before, the morning air will resound with screams and tears (mother’s and children’s).

Stress and its concomitant snappishness, is very, very unpleasant. It diminishes the quality of family life. And the schedule of a working mother does add stress. It is important to note, however, that the increased level of household stress we experience today has many causes – a mother’s working outside the home is only one of them.

Consider the following list of activities and ask which of them absorbed time and attention in the 1960’s (the list is written in no particular order and deliberately mixes noble and mundane activities):

1) The simcha of a close relative requires that we attend the l’chaim, vort, wedding, sheva brochos.

2) Parents and grandparents are urged to attend many school functions, PTA meetings, teas, science fairs, brochos fairs, siddur parties and chumash parties.

3) We are offered a rich array of shiurim, speeches, classes on child rearing, audio-visual presentations and fund-raising events many nights a month.

4) Do you have a child in shidduchim? Enough said.

5) Jewish holiday celebration has expanded. Consider Purim mishloach monos, Chanukah gifts and trips, and elaborate Shabbos and Yom Tov meals requiring hours of preparation encouraged by contemporary cookbooks.

6) When our children are having difficulty in school we are encouraged to avail ourselves of a specialist or therapist – reading, speech, occupational, psychological. A few such services are provided in school and not at our expense but most require that we pay and drive.

7) And hovering over it all, the need to “parent” well.

True, throwing a full-time or major part-time job into the mix is an added stressor. But the demands of contemporary frum life can easily overwhelm even the lightest schedule. As desirable as it is to minimize stress, and as pleasurable for the family at it is to have a woman focus single-mindedly on her family’s schedule and needs, stress is a part of life, and it can be managed. There is a more important point to be considered:

What long-term effect does a mother’s more limited availability have on the children she is raising and on the adults she wants them to become? Is the woman who is working outside the home doing so to the detriment of her children? Are they being raised less well?

I am very uncomfortable saying what I am about to say, but say it I must. I have been in chinuch ha’banos (girls’ education) for forty-five years. I have taught about 3,000 high school girls. I cannot draw any clear lines of cause and effect between a mother’s out of the house employment and the quality of the daughter I see in front of me. Some of the finest, most mature, happiest, most productive, most thoughtful young women were raised by women who worked outside the home for many hours a week. And needy, irresponsible immaturity can be found among girls who had the benefit of a stay-at-home mother.

I am not saying that the working mother necessarily raises the first while the stay-at-home mother produces the second. I am saying that I see no patterns.

Children like having a mother home. They say with pride, “My mother didn’t work until I was in the 6^th grade.” But wonderful young adults are being raised by women across the spectrum of no employment, full-time employment, part-time employment.

What does matter in raising children well?

Here is what I have heard as a consensus from the women I have talked to – grandmothers, young mothers, mechanchos (educators) and housewives. The overriding need is for women to like being with their children, to enjoy their company, to take pleasure in being mechanech them, and also, to have the self-confidence to define standards and to maintain them.

Many have observed that those who have much discretionary time available do not necessarily spend it with or for their children. A graduate of my school, raising children in Israel told me with pained surprise that all children are expected to start gan (pre-school) at 2½. Her choice to keep her toddler home was seen as a bit odd. Assured by well-meaning friends that Morah Tova was great at teaching middos, my graduate reported to me her reaction. “My little girl accompanies me to the market. She hears me say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to store keepers. On the way, we stop in to visit an elderly neighbor in case there is something we can pick up for her. We hurry home to prepare the midday meal for Tatty who is coming home after long hours of learning Torah. We play quietly so as not to disturb Tatty while he catches a short nap. And these interactions are not teaching middos?” Keep in mind in which society formal school at two-and-a-half is the norm. These mothers in Israel are not by and large running off to jobs as business analysts and occupational therapists.

Similarly, a graduate living in an economically well-off community outside the New York metropolitan area where many mothers do not work outside the home tells me that part-time (rather than full-day) kindergarten for her 4 ½ year old is not available because there is no demand for it in their area.

The school day for many 4½-5 year-olds runs from 8:15-3:45 (and don’t forget bus or car-pool travel time.) What compels this system of early formal education? In the late 1950’s, we all started kindergarten at 5½ and first grade at 6½. Nurseries for four-year-olds were rare. Playgroups for three-year-olds were non-existent. While we are concerned with the problems of mothers out of the house, what of the more widespread problem of children out of the house? Early education has not been simply a response to working mothers.

Where is the husband-wife relationship in all this?

It is unrealistic to discuss the effects of the wife’s role as breadwinner without considering the role kollel learning plays in contemporary, Torah-committed life.

Yes, the balance has shifted. Women who contribute to the family income take a more even share in family decision-making. But “el ishaich t’shukasech v’hu yimshol bach” is built into the fabric of creation. Women want husbands to be the respected head of house. When tensions do arise as a result of the wife being the breadwinner, I would venture to say that in most cases those tensions are primarily adding stress to a pre-existing fault line.

One of the unintended consequences of the kollel life is the necessity – and ultimately the pleasure – of the husband’s involvement in child rearing. Ask the wife of an aspiring surgeon, lawyer, accountant or business owner how much time her husband has for family life. Kollel families are very often partnerships with both spouses sharing involvement in all areas.

Yes, women are overburdened, overworked and stressed. Our hearts go out to them. In a solid marriage, they are lauded and aided by attentive, caring husbands who appreciate their extraordinary contributions.

Too often, however, these husbands are underemployed. While this is not a problem unique to the Torah world (lawyers, actuaries, social workers, nurses, academics are trained for positions which just aren’t available), it is a problem which we should address in our community.

The young man who knows he isn’t cut out for a life devoted solely to Talmud Torah, chinuch or rabbonus finds his way to college or a program for professional preparation early in the game. He spends a solid two or three years in the bais medrash and then turns his attention to preparing for a parnassah (livelihood). This pattern is true of hundreds if not thousands of our young men.

But what of the young man who learns well? Nafsho chashkah b’Torah – his soul thirsts for Torah. He has enjoyed a deep sense of accomplishment for a decade or more of his life. This young man hopes beyond hope that he will merit one of the very limited “shtellers” (rabbinic positions) within the Torah community. And when he is not? Here is where the tensions mount. An exhausted wife, a sizeable family, mounting expenses and waning parental subsidies – now what? This young man is not 22 or 23. He is 32. He needs to earn a parnassah now. Long-term preparation for a career is no longer possible.

This is the question to which I have no answer. How does one offer – sooner rather than later – empathetic, realistic life guidance to the very strong learner without sending the young man a message of failure or of second-class citizenship?

Some would recommend that yeshivas sort and track early on. The yeshivas in America can rightly take pride in their outstanding success in building a strong community of serious Torah learners. Are we now to ask them to change their mission to produce solid baalei batim (homeowners)? That sounds absurd, unfair and certainly detrimental to the best interest of the Torah-committed world.

So what can be done? None of the women I spoke to – and many of them were highly-regarded mechanchos – thought we could turn back the clock to an era when women were primarily at home. Even if we could, though I don’t know very much about pre-WWII American society or about the lives of Jews in Eastern Europe, I am sure that viewing their all-day presence in the home as having enabled attentive care to any but the essential survival needs of the family would be an anachronism.

Some obvious and not-so-obvious thoughts: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could accustom ourselves and then our children to needing fewer things, eliminating shopping as a recreational activity and spending very, very carefully? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the word “frugal” re-entered our vocabulary as a lauded virtue? High fixed expenses are not ours to control – but isn’t it our expectations as consumers that drive up some of the costs of camps, schools and seminaries – and, in some communities, schools? Living poor is no longer an option!

Wouldn’t it be nice if our parents, and more so our sons’ rebbeim, would courageously counsel individual young men honestly and realistically as to what hard choices they had to make – sooner rather than later – to provide for their family’s parnassah? No, the yeshivas cannot and should not institute a formal program of triage (the Chazon Ish warned us of the dangers of institutionalizing beinonius – mediocrity). But caring parents and revered rebbeim might be more proactive in guiding individual young men appropriately into the world of parnassah well before the wolf starts howling at the door.

Finally, and this is the easiest, the hardest, and certainly the most controversial suggestion: all of us – especially those of us in chinuch ha’banos (girls’ education) as well as chinuch ha’banim (boys’ education), from pre-school moros to seminary rebbetzins – might broaden our vocabulary and the range of role models we hold up to our students. A prominent mechaneches shared the following story with me: Asked by a student to reconcile the emphasis of a wife’s supporting Torah financially with the emphasis on a mother’s being home with her children, she wrote a moving piece about the many derochim (approaches) in hachzokas haTorah (supporting Torah) and the many shevatim (tribes), each with its own derech. She was gently reprimanded for introducing the possibility of less than “ideal” choices to her students at their tender age. Time enough later on, she was told, for “compromises.”

For over sixty years, pure Talmud Torah had to struggle to establish itself as a desideratum in America. The ideal had to be made real for our sons and daughters for only with the primacy of Torah learning could even our baalebatishe way of life survive this golus (exile). Are we secure enough now, perhaps, to send a slightly modified message? Can we send powerful messages of the grandeur of Torah-committed Jews in the marketplace? Can we tell stories of their yiras shamayim (fear of G-d), ahavas Hashem (love of G-d) and kiddush Hashem (sanctifying His name), alongside the stories of the chashivus (importance) of Talmud Torah? Or do we consider that as soon as we allow “equal time and respect” many of our best and brightest will choose to leave the bais medrash? I don’t know.

“Are we preparing our daughters sufficiently in such areas as hashkafa (beliefs and values), halacha and limud Torah to succeed in this new environment?” I would like to address this question as the principal of a Bais Yaakov high school.

I occasionally hear from graduates that “nobody told us. I wasn’t prepared.” We do tell them, all the time. In halacha class, hashkafa class, Chumash, Navi and historia we tell them. “V’lo sasuru acharei l’vavchem v’acharei eineichem” – do not turn after your hearts and eyes. We teach them hilchos yichud (seclusion). We tell inspiring stories of those who overcome trials, holding firmly onto their trust in Hashem. We talk of kedushas Am Yisroel (the holiness of the Jewish People) and tznius (modesty). We talk of the sanctity of the Jewish home. We talk, we have workshops, we conduct panel discussions, we bring in powerful speakers.

Are we successful in preparing our students? Much less than we would like to be. The reason is simple. We are talking to fifteen and sixteen year-olds. The young women in front of us are literal and focused on the here and now. If the message doesn’t apply obviously and immediately, it gets quickly forgotten as something that was interesting to learn but not imperative to absorb as a guide to lifelong conduct.

We could make many of these lessons more memorable by telling stories. But many stories of life outside our four walls are warnings that titillate. I am one of the more outspoken women in chinuch today. I would rather be less effective than buy effectiveness at the price of the purity of the child sitting in front of me – even if this same child will be in need of this message a few years hence.

Having said this, there is something we can do once we acknowledge – without an accompanying message of disapproval – that our young women will be out there. We must balance the conversations, workshops and panel discussions that are aimed at preparing our daughters for the nisyonos (challenges) of the work place with conversations which extol the value and the joy of raising children. These conversations should not be set in opposition to each other. The conversations should center not on work/no work but on the vitally important ways in which our interaction with our children is fundamental to creating the adults we want them to become.

Both “derech eretz kadmah la’Torah” (proper ways preceded Torah) and “raishis chochma yiras Hashem” (the pinnacle of wisdom is the fear of G-d) are instilled in countless minute, repeated interactions between parents and young children. The maamin (one who believes), the m’dakdek b’mitzvos (one careful in mitzvos), the reader and the scientist are sparked in the following moments:

A toddler giggles in merry disbelief as he listens to his mother’s bedtime story. “The people in Avraham’s time worshiped avodah zarah dollies? And they thought those dollies could do what Hashem does?” How absurd!

A three-year-old walks out of the bathroom mumbling, “flush, wash, asher yatzar” (the blessing of appreciation following use of the bathroom). And so both derech eretz and Torah are embedded in the habits instilled by a mother’s repetitions.

A bright-eyed little girl snuggled near her father on the couch avidly drinking in one story after another asks, what does “regret” mean, what does “ecstatic” mean? And so, the foundation of a lifelong pleasure in language develops.

On a walk, the mother of an 18-month-old names the first flowers of spring – crocus, tulip, daffodil. A father or a mother retells midrashim, comments on the halachic requirements of the moment, makes a brochah carefully and loudly.

We spend so much time seeking to provide in later years – artificially and through the cold medium of formal education – that which should have been implanted organically, rooted in the loving warmth of interaction with parents.

Emunah, dikduk b’mitzvos, fundamental yedios (knowledge), kavod ha’briyos (respect for others), literacy and love of language and curiosity about the physical world are some of the values we embed in our children as we spend valued time talking with them, being with them and modeling for them!

Do all our adult children embarking on their own lives as parents know how important and how pleasurable are these interactions? Many do, as their own parents model and verbalize this. But in our age, many of our high school students need to be taught “artificially,” through education. We address these lessons not just to those who will one day work outside the home but just as necessarily to those who – not working outside the home – are preoccupied with the myriad distractions of contemporary life.

More and more we should invite into our high schools, for workshops, graduates who are out there in the working world, savvy in the use of technology, balancing work, home and family, models of thoughtfulness, tznius and yiras shamayim. More and more we should invite in for presentations women who will present with verve, warmth and passion the joy and the value of motherhood.

I want to close as I opened. The problem is not limited to the woman’s assumption of greater breadwinner responsibilities. Like the mythical Hydra, each question we address leads us to “yes, but,” “on the other hand” and three more problems. If we are to engage in a conversation, I recommend that we take the question of women working outside the home off center stage and replace it with a discussion of the entire economic underpinnings of our community.

Mrs. Zlata Press is the principal of the Bnos Leah Prospect Park Yeshiva High School.

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Rabbi Moshe Hauer

Restoring the Values of Home and Responsibility

Nothing is particularly new about women serving as breadwinners.  The Mishna (Kesubos 59b) considered it incumbent upon active homemakers to contribute to the family income in order to avoid the spousal tension bred by his earning money and her spending it.  The Mishna also recognized that even absent economic pressures, it is important for women to use their talents productively.[1]  While the Mishna’s version of “women working” meant spinning wool at home, the considerations addressed by the Mishna remain completely relevant, even as they present differently today.

My parents both worked and were involved parents, yet they had a very clear sense of their respective roles.  My mother, whose work was driven partially by economic necessity but even more so by her desire to use her natural gifts productively, was first and foremost the akeres habayis, the active and present mainstay of our home.  By contrast, my father, a congregational Rabbi, defined himself by his work outside the home.  This work was not only a fulfillment of his desire to use his gifts to serve the community, but also a fulfillment of what he saw as a basic responsibility of fatherhood: supporting his family.  Their approach worked well and demonstrated that mothers can work outside the home and raise wonderful families if they and their husbands “get it right.”

But it appears to me – as a parent, as a teacher, and as a communal Rav – that too many families are not getting it right.  The classic values that informed our parents’ approach have gone by the wayside, with very serious implications for our families. Today, fathers often do not assume the responsibility of being the ultimate provider and mothers are frequently less focused on their critical role in the home.  And I believe we are paying a very steep price for this – in terms of the health of our families and in the proper development of our children.

Some suggest that these challenges mandate a radical rethinking of communal approaches.  Perhaps the yeshiva world needs to reconsider the broad promotion of kollel life and the modern Orthodox world needs to revisit its broad encouragement of women’s pursuit of careers as a central source of self-fulfillment.  While this may be beneficial, I don’t think we can expect immediate, radical change.

Instead, I would like to propose ways that we can effectively restore these classic values to their rightful place.  Accomplishing this alone would constitute a huge step forward.

Motherhood and Engaged Parenting

A widely-discussed study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University[2] concluded that the parental undertaking most effective at reducing the risk of children pursuing inappropriate behaviors, such as alcoholism and substance abuse, is the family dinner.  This reflects what many of us observe – that children provided with the presence and the attention of engaged parents absorb their values and almost invariably enjoy a greater sense of security, confidence and self-worth.

While both parents share the responsibility of providing children with a sense of security and self-confidence, this role is the mother’s primary task (ביתו זו אשתו)[3].  The same mother who was granted by G-d the unique physical capacity to carry, protect and nurture the child through infancy, was also granted the unique emotional capacity to protect and nurture the child into adulthood.  In fact, the husband needs his wife’s support and care as well, since his involvement in the competitive and confusing world outside the home tends to leave him vulnerable and distracted.  It is essential to have a secure home to return to, where he is appreciated and supported and where he can reconnect to the core values of the family.   And the challenge of creating such a nurturing and wholesome home environment has grown increasingly daunting for a number of reasons:

• In today’s hi-tech, hi-connectivity world that boasts of universities, stores, schools and synagogues without walls, the walls of our homes have grown increasingly porous, penetrated by both personal and mass communications to the point where it is increasingly difficult for parents to define their own home environment.
• Parents of larger families face greater difficulty in devoting the necessary attention to each of their children such that he or she will not have to struggle or compete for it.
• When economic demands or career responsibilities draw mothers into the world outside the home, it increases the difficulty of creating the proper home environment.  The demands on a mother’s time and attention affect her ability to be both physically and emotionally present for her family.

To properly address these challenges, the community and its parents, educators and rabbonim need to focus far more attention on the importance of building a solid and secure home life, on parents being there for their children and on spouses being there for each other.  Men – young and old – need to be taught about their personal responsibility to support and assist their wives, to participate actively as husbands and fathers in the home, and to enhance their appreciation of the irreplaceable role their wives play within the home.  Young women’s high schools and seminaries from right to left should invest more time, energy and resources on educating and imbuing their students with an understanding and an appreciation of their students’ eventual critical role as engaged wives and mothers, alongside whatever other aspirations they encourage.  In this framework young women will be better equipped to make their life choices balancing Torah and career aspirations with the incorporation of a primary and irreplaceable role within the home.

This educational process and restatement of communal values should include sustained discussion of specific, achievable and practical matters including the following:

• Identifying careers and work schedules that allow mothers to be present when children leave to and return from school
• Weekday family dinners
• Husbands considering establishing their learning seder or working overtime early in the morning to allow for more evenings at home
• Seriously limiting personal and work-related telephone calls and smartphone use while at home with  the family
• Limiting teens’ connectivity to enhance their being in touch with the lessons and messages of the home; and
• Using Shabbos as a time to strengthen home and family, rather than for limitless programming and social opportunities.

Fatherhood and Responsibility

The Rambam (Hilchos De’os 6:10) provides an invaluable description – in the form of a negative definition – of the role of a husband and father.  He writes that the halachic category of an orphan (towards whom we must act with extra sensitivity) applies to orphaned children until they reach the age at which “they do not need an adult to rely on, to raise them and to take care of them.” As the Torah consistently groups together the widow and the orphan, it seems fair to say that both as a husband and as a father, a man’s role is to be reliable and responsible – a source of strength and material security to his wife and children.  Yet I see too many of our young men insufficiently prepared to assume that role.  Why is that?

A prerequisite to being a source of support and security to others is to first establish one’s own sense of personal responsibility and independence.  These are values that are being encouraged neither in the world at large nor in our religious society.  Rather, we seem to be carrying the next generation as financial, emotional and spiritual dependents.

Well-meaning parents, for example, freely provide their children with everything they themselves never had.  And in the religious realm, the average young man or woman studying in a yeshiva or day school is not making a conscious decision to “choose life,” but is simply following the path of least resistance.  This does not bode well for them as individuals, nor does it provide them with the necessary experience and character to position them as providers and supporters for their own families.  A resultant phenomenon is an increasing number of failed marriages because of couples’ unwillingness or inability to work through the inevitable challenges confronting a developing relationship.

While this over-dependence is a concern all around, given man’s role as the provider and the one upon whom his wife and children are to rely, it would seem exceptionally important to provide young men with specific direction in this area.

I would suggest that certain specific practical adjustments are in order:

• Across the spectrum of the observant Jewish community, young people should be given the chance to start out with less reliance on parental support.
• Even when parents provide for their children, they can build their children’s sense of responsibility by the manner in which their support is provided.  Instead of credit cards and late model cars, children can be given a fair but limited budget and can be taught to do without the so-called finer things they may see their parents enjoying, and learn thereby that such luxuries are the rewards of one’s own hard work.
• All those involved with young people should stimulate their sense of responsibility by giving them spiritual or material responsibilities, within the family, school or community.
• Educationally, the community and its parents, educators and rabbonim should focus far more attention on the importance of self-sufficiency, personal responsibility and leadership as core values and as critical factors in decision-making, be it regarding education, career, lifestyle or family.  Thus, for example, sustained emphasis can be placed on the aforementioned values of living within one’s means and of limiting financial dependence on parents, government programs and others.
• Students should be encouraged to formulate personal ambitions and to set goals beyond simply going with the flow of communal expectations.
• Individuals should identify how they can contribute meaningfully to the betterment of others.

Separate and apart from the financial realm, an excellent illustration of the encouragement of a mindset of personal responsibility can be found in a system established by the father of the yeshivos, Rav Chaim of Volozhin, zt”l.  Even as Rav Chaim created the framework to significantly expand the population of older yeshiva students, he imbued them with a sense of mission in their studies, that through their Torah learning they were actually sustaining the entire world.  Thus, Rav Chaim established a schedule whereupon Torah was being studied by some students of the yeshiva during every single hour of the day, so that they would “keep the world going.”  They thereby understood that they were not escaping the world to study for themselves, but that they were actively engaged in the world’s most vital activity.[4]

In more recent times, Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, encouraged Yeshiva students to tithe their time, dedicating part of their day to helping weaker students.[5]  The Klausenberger Rebbe, zt”l, in a program expanded recently through the Dirshu movement, instructed his followers to set specific goals for themselves in their studies, and created a system of tests and degrees (Chaver, Moreinu) that would encourage meeting those goals.  Others more focused on in-depth learning encouraged their students to produce written summaries of their learning and novella – Chiddushei Torah.  And Rav Aaron Kotler, zt”l, in an address at the founding of the Philadelphia Yeshiva, spoke of the task of the yeshiva students becoming role models for the world around them in their outstanding dedication to Torah.[6]

One way or another, it seems that these leaders understood that Torah study will produce a student of stature specifically when the student studies in a framework that encourages his personal productivity and responsibility.  We must seek similar approaches in order to create more fully developed and responsible young men.

It seems clear, however, that in addition to identifying areas of broader responsibility and impact, young men must address their more immediate personal responsibilities.  In Torah-only yeshivos that do not include a career track, young men should be encouraged – by their Yeshiva and by their parents – to discuss how they intend to support their families.  They need to take seriously the language of the Kesuba marriage contract in which they commit to “serve, honor, feed and support their wives, as is the loyal custom of Jewish men.”  It must be made clear that it is not the responsibility of their parents’ or in-laws’ to support them, and that if their idealistic bride wishes to follow the path of the wife of the sainted Chafetz Chaim and manage the store so that her husband can study, she will not be fulfilling her own responsibilities but rather she will graciously be doing her husband’s job for him.

Summary and Conclusion

Shifts in bread-winning responsibilities do not account on their own for the recent negative trends in family life and structure.  The greater issue is the neglect of certain core values.  As such, much can be accomplished by restoring these important values as part of our children’s education, and our familial and communal mindset.  Specifically, we must cultivate a heightened awareness of the integral value of a strong home life, and of the indispensable role of engaged parents – especially wives and mothers – in creating that home.  Likewise, as a community and as individuals, we must build character, and specifically the character of our young men, to celebrate the values of independence and self-sufficiency, and to cultivate a sense of responsibility for themselves and others.

I will conclude by sharing a letter that expresses these values simply.

Our Dear Son, עמו”ש,

Mazel tov on your engagement!  We are so pleased and happy.   We want you to know that as you build your home and family, we will be there for you in any way we possibly can.  We have limited resources but we have an unlimited desire to be there for you.

We are extremely proud of your commitment to the study of Torah.  Torah is our life – כי הם חיינו – and your engagement in learning and living Torah will fundamentally uplift every aspect of your family life, now and, bez”h, forever.

We have only one request of you.  Please tell your kallah every chance you get that you value first and foremost her role as your wife and as the mother of your children.  Tell her that you view her as your בית, as the one who is tasked with making your home a place of security, tranquility and purity for you and for your children.  Tell her that you – as the man of the house – are the one responsible for going out and providing for the family, and that if she wishes to help in that realm you will appreciate it and accept it only to the extent that it does not materially detract or distract from her main task as the עקרת הבית, as the anchor and mainstay of your home and family.

This is a tried and true formula.  Our fathers conveyed this message to our mothers, and we have lived our lives in the same way.  We are very happy with the results.  בעז”ה you will be too.

Mazel tov.  We love you.

אבא ואמא

 

I would like to thank מו”ר Harav Yaakov Hopfer, שליט”א, Rav of Congregation Shearith Israel in Baltimore, Maryland, for his support and guidance in preparing this article.

 

Rabbi Moshe Hauer is the Rav of Congregation Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion in Baltimore, Maryland.

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Debbie Fox

The Expanding Roles of Contemporary Orthodox Wives and Mothers

Addressing changes that have affected traditional marriage within the Torah world is a daunting challenge. So many couples within the community struggle with financial stresses and various other challenges. Each situation and each relationship differ, and the effects of these factors further vary with each couple. In seeking descriptive information to better define the actual stresses and their possible connection to changing roles in the marital home, I interviewed a number of religious couples, each of whom was committed to live within their selected Torah environment. The couples varied in age; some of the husbands were in kollel full time, while others have entered the workplace. In each instance, however, the wife was the primary source of family income.

Mutual Respect

Some of the wives interviewed reported that they viewed their husbands’ Torah scholarship and dedication to full-time learning as the pride of their families. As one woman said, “I may have a Ph.D. in genetics, but in my home, my husband is the crowning glory!” They reported that neither their degree nor their professional achievements reduced the respect they had for their husbands. Higher earning power is seen merely as a means to support Torah learning. They made a point as well to model these values for their children, encouraging their daughters to pursue a career that could enable their own husbands to dedicate themselves exclusively to Torah.

Interestingly, some husbands pointed to an additional factor that, together with their wives’ careers, left them feeling concerned about earning their wives’ respect. They noted that their studies did not include sufficient grounding in the practical halachos that are most relevant to families, such as Shabbos and kashrus. In the words of one husband, “Sometimes it seems that wives know more than their husbands about the everyday halachos that apply to families, since that was a focus of their education but not ours. We are becoming Torah scholars and learning all day, but when our wives need us to answer a simple question at home we don’t know how to answer it.”

Couples who reported a sense of satisfaction and personal growth tended to be those who were able to take pride in their contribution to the Jewish world – whether through their reputation in learning, leading classes or chaburas (study groups), doing outreach or joining community kollelim that provided salaries and other benefits. One husband in an out of town kollel said, “I make a comfortable living for my family – the kollel pays my rent and provides me with a generous monthly stipend. With my wife’s part-time teaching job we are able to live and afford the life we dreamed of.”

Based in part on the personal input shared by the couples interviewed and in part on my professional and community experience, I would propose the following set of themes and observations to consider in creating a plan for preparing the community’s children for marriage.

Life Guidance

Prior to marriage, couples need help identifying their own interests, goals and “passions.” Many young couples (both husbands and wives) describe having followed the socially-acceptable path, simply because it was being followed by “everyone else.” Ultimately, choices on this basis may risk breeding a lack of satisfaction and stimulation down the road. Some girls (and boys) are getting academic degrees online. This may be more convenient (and economical) but forfeiting the opportunity for the kind of experiential education that can prepare students for the workplace often leaves them feeling ill-equipped to take on responsibilities. Others admit that they have pursued a “popular” degree – but that they are really not interested in speech therapy or one of the other standard careers!

Similarly, many young men have not sincerely thought out their future goals, desires and wishes. Some young men express discomfort about discussing their future, fearing the disappointment of their parents, wives, peers or rabbeim.

In the words of one young man, “Our wives are becoming more professional and more accomplished every year. After five years of learning, when we need to support our families…we have no job, no leads and no guidance… We are afraid of being judged for leaving learning…how could our wives respect us then?”

Specifically, some young men need assistance developing their passions and setting goals. They need a non-judgmental environment in which to speak to a supportive rebbe or parent who knows and respects them and can provide responsible life guidance: When and how should they look into a community kollel? How can they know if that is a good option? What would come next? Or, for those interested in pursuing careers, how can they retain a close connection to the yeshiva world? How can they explore whether their interests can lead to a successful career? Many young men long for a system that would train them to become working talmidei chachamim (Torah Scholars) but, absent that, they are unsure of an appropriate path.

Some couples described how important it is to have modest and realistic expectations when making choices for their future. “I always wanted to marry someone who would learn for a very long time. I have a been married for 30 years, have a good job, I live in a rented apartment, we share one yeshivishe car, and I don’t own any designer clothes or furniture… This is the life I chose and I don’t regret a day.” Another young woman shared that she works solely to support her husband. She is neither interested in a career nor in bringing work home, and finds that her job as a bookkeeper is perfect for her needs and her family life. In both cases, clear goals and realistic expectations helped pave the way for fulfilling lives.

Simply put, parents need to take responsibility and engage in safe and honest planning discussions with their children before marriage and career choices are explored. Parents need to ensure that their children feel free to express their interests and passions and to allow them to develop a realistic plan for their lives with realistic expectations. Most importantly, parents need to teach their children communication skills to continue those discussions throughout their marriage so that decisions become more fluid. And, perhaps most difficult, parents need to learn how to refrain from judging. Each child is unique and has a unique path appropriate to them. Whether the child chooses to remain in learning or klei kodesh, go to an out of town kollel or enter the work force, the child needs parental encouragement and support as well assistance in creating realistic expectations for the subsequent phases of their lives.

Keeping Up

Talk to any Orthodox woman and you will hear how busy life is in the “frum lane.” Wives describe themselves as having to be “superwomen,” trying to take care of children, shop, cook, clean, do errands, make shabbos and yom tov, be a good wife and a good bas Yisrael and maintain a part-time or even full-time job – all while balancing community and chessed activities. Husbands, having their own very full learning sedarim or work schedules, come home and try to pitch in and help as much as possible, while attempting to keep up with their night seder and myriad other responsibilities.

Couples who feel they cope best with their busy day-to-day lives identify four coping skills; (1) planning as a team and setting priorities; (2) “success is in the little tips” – adopting good ideas observed in other homes; (3) weighing carefully which community obligations justify the sacrifice to self and family (it is often difficult to keep in mind that family needs come first. That instinct to be the “community superwoman” is a powerful one); and (4) learning how to let your spouse know when you need their help.

Family Time

Jewish home life has changed. Our homes once offered the nutrients and ingredients that shaped our children. Due to parents’ work and learning schedules, children may be in daycare, after school events and play dates from earlier ages and for longer periods. For these and other reasons (such as the intrusion of technology), even when everyone is home, family time has been significantly compromised. Awareness and appreciation of the current challenges to the family unit can empower parents to be more proactive in developing and preserving a family environment in their homes by bringing everyone together socially, intellectually, recreationally and spiritually. The key focus is to prevent daily life from taking over by making the active choices necessary to be a family.

Marriage Comes First

All couples interviewed, regardless of educational or professional status, clearly articulated that multiple commitments translate into greater domestic pressure. Couples overall describe being more stressed and having less time for their relationships and their children. They typically cope with these competing demands by prioritizing children’s immediate needs, and then work and other responsibilities, before attending to their marriage. This order needs to be seriously reconsidered. Marriage cannot afford to be relegated to the end of the list, regardless of how stressed a couple may be. The marriage relationship needs to remain on top of the list, since all else flows from its success. When a couple is connected and working together, everything else works more smoothly. When they are not connected – or when there is friction or conflict – not only is the stress multiplied, but their family’s direction is placed at risk.

Many of the topics addressed in this article are not at all unique to the frum community, but rather reflect dynamics and challenges in society at large. In an article in USA Today (September 3rd, 2009), Dennis Cauchon noted that women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time in history. Gigi DeVault, in an article entitled Dual Career Couples – Tips for Making It Work (The Glass Hammer, July 27, 2010), states, “Story after time-bound story relates extraordinarily long work days followed by grueling sets of errands and household chores….even on days when nothing went wrong, it seemed an unsustainable pace.”

The world is far more complicated than it once was, and our couples face even greater struggles, with serious financial stress and many other day-to-day stressors. Yet, it is refreshing to note that our deepest value remains our families. Parents and educators need to find ways together to educate and communicate with our youth in setting up homes steeped in Torah values while providing them with the ability to make active and realistic choices for their future.

This article ends with a challenge. Ours is a large and complicated system – let’s begin by each committing to make a difference in the lives of our own children.

 

Mrs. Debbie Fox, LCSW is Director of Aleinu Family Resource Center and Child Advocacy in Los Angeles.

Rabbi Shneur Aisenstark

Why Can’t We See that the “Jewish Home” is in Crisis?

Five thousand seven hundred and seventy-two years ago, Hashem created woman to be an “aizer kenegdo,” a help-mate, to her husband, to bear and raise children and to bring up the next generation. This was no small task by any means. The woman has performed this task for 5772 years with a different emphasis and in different forms during different eras. Until roughly the beginning of the 20th century, the woman’s role was clearly defined as the homemaker.

Our Yiddishe Mamme was not only the creator of the next generation, she also served as the conduit of our mesorah (tradition) and of Yiddishkeit, causing it to flow midor le’dor (from generation to generation), passing on the torch of Torah.

This was all wonderful until the Jewish woman was exposed to the outside world and its influences – in as far as the role of the woman is concerned – and she wanted a taste of the same. This exposure caused her to look down on the yeshiva bochur (student) and to perceive him as an archaic “lo yutzlach” (good-for-nothing), a relic from another age whom she would most certainly not wish to marry. And so she began drifting away from Torah.

Frau Sarah Schnierer, a”h, stemmed the tide by creating the Bais Yaakov school system, with the teaching of Torah for all Jewish girls at the core of its curriculum. She taught them what their role in the world was to be and what it means to be an ovedes Hashem, to serve Hashem in accordance with His will. She taught how the woman can feel fulfilled, that the raison d’etre of woman was to become an aizer kenegdo, a support, to a husband by managing and directing their family and being the akeres habayis, the homemaker and anchor of the Jewish home.

Sarah Schnierer was so successful with the methodology of Bais Yaakov that our gedolim credited her with the greatest innovation of her time, as it saved Yiddishkeit for all future generations. Frau Schnierer was given such accolades because Bais Yaakov uniquely instilled into its young charges the infinite value of building a bayis ne’eman beYisrael, a home true to its inception as an undiluted, proper Jewish home based on Torah ideals. The young woman could accomplish this through her aspiration to marry a Ben Torah who would dedicate his life to Hashem and to His Torah and mitzvos.

The mesiras nefesh (selflessness) of the Bais Yaakov graduate to build a bayis ne’eman beYisrael knew no bounds. She not only created and nurtured a home true to Torah and mitzvos, she also instilled in her offspring the desire to build their own such home, notwithstanding the insidious influences of the all-encompassing world that surrounded her.

And if this phenomenal and extraordinary accomplishment of this aishes chayil (capable woman) was not enough, she went on to seminary, showing an indifference to university and to a “career track.” She became more accomplished in Torah u’mitzvos in order to do a better job as a wife, mother, homemaker and as a true akeres habayis in accordance with our mesorah and to follow the will of Hashem.

Our bas Yisrael was so dedicated to a Torah way of life that she would take educational courses in seminary so that she would be able to teach children other than her own in the ways of our mesorah and tradition.

However, she never lost sight of her goal – to have a husband, a head of the household, who was steeped in Torah. To achieve that end, above and beyond her work as a wife, homemaker and mother, she became a sort of “super mom,” undertaking to teach part time in order to absorb at least some small amount of the household financial burden so that her husband could devote himself as long as possible to full time learning in kollel. Without her help, this would have been an impossibility.  She was able to become this “super mom” because her teaching was only part time – three or four hours a day and only 180 or 190 days a year. Her dedication and drive for Hashem and His Torah made it all possible, as this was a labor of love – an extension of her deeply felt values and beliefs. Otherwise it would have been an impossible task.

With all of this, she was literally saving Torah learning. Yeshivos and kollelim exist only because of her mesiras nefesh. The Jewish women, our neshei chayil were literally saving Yiddishkeit.

But all of this is history.

During the past half-century, we have seen the world around us change in an ever-so-subtle, sinister and menacing way – and at such a fast pace that we don’t have the time to stop and reflect on where it is taking us.

The western world has created a situation where to be mistapek, to be satisfied with what Hashem wants for us, does not seem to be possible any longer. We live in a world in which extravagance has become necessity – despite the fact that tuition alone for a family of five children necessitates an extra full-time job.  And what about housing and the need (I underline the word need) for a large family to have two cars? The list of growing expenses is unending. Someone must earn the money to pay for all of this. At the same time, keeping up with the emotional and physical needs of children in our present-day society is not getting any easier.

Sadly, the accomplishments of yesterday’s “super mom” are insufficient for today’s needs. No longer can families get by with the akeres habayis preserving a Yiddishe mishpacha (true Jewish family) while helping to get by with a part-time teaching job. She is called upon to extend herself even further – at what sacrifice?

Torah ma tehei a’leha – what is going to become of the global growth of Torah that the past few generations have been so fortunate to experience? Are we perhaps blinded by the wonderful explosion of Torah learning into every nook and cranny of our lives, whether it is the multitude of shiurim, the daf yomi, the unbelievable growth of our yeshivos and kollelim the likes of which we have not seen since Bavel (Babylonia)? Do we tend to forget that all this only became possible because of the aizer kenegdo?

Because of the situation in which we find ourselves, both frum homes and schools are trying ever more to instill into our daughters the chashivus, the supreme importance, of Torah learning. I think the schools are doing as good a job as was done in Frau Schnierer’s time. However, our girls are now finding it increasingly rare to find teaching jobs; the market is quite saturated. Even when they do find a job in teaching, assuming that they are capable of being educators, the pay is extremely dismal, and certainly nowhere near sufficient to sustain even a frugal, kollel lifestyle.

Yet they are not giving up and they continue to search for any means of employment – in addition to their duties in the home – that will allow them to continue to help support a learning lifestyle in these trying times of excessive materialism. They seek employment in other fields of endeavor with greater earning power, even if it means attaining at least a B.A. degree, or even an M. A. These are not always attainable in a “kosher way” that is reflective of our lifestyle.

Additionally, many areas of employment require full-time work, which translates into a new reality as far as the home is concerned. The wife enters a career that brings her into a new environment which may not be appropriate to her way of life. Though she may start her career for the Torah’s sake, she will often continue it long after her husband leaves kollel. Even though the wife’s motives were certainly at one time leshaym shomayim, it seems that the western culture and lifestyle has crept into our lives and has taken on a life of its own.

It has been heard again and again that the kollel style of life is the cause of our present day family crisis. Perhaps this is only being said because it is easier to stop kollel than to give up life’s non-essentials, which have caused the home problems in the first place. We don’t seem to want to make a 180 degree turn and change our lifestyle.

However, I maintain that thanks to our noshim tz’idkonyios, our righteous women, we have Torah. They saved Klal Yisrael at least twice: “bishvil noshim tzidkoniyus nigalu avosaynu miMitzrayim” – Chazal tell us that we were redeemed from Egypt in the merit of our women folk. Torah was then saved again during the 20th century – also in the merit of our women folk, as we explained.

I don’t believe that they are able to do it a third time – certainly not by exchanging the “Jewish home” for a career.

This crisis is taking place primarily because we have allowed the western lifestyle to creep into our Torah homes. We must therefore look for solutions in our relationship with the general society and hope and pray that our children will not, chas ve’sholom, learn from us by choosing the new lifestyle over the Torah lifestyle. Both cannot be maintained. They are a contradictory. The proof in the pudding is that the pressure in our homes cannot be alleviated by our wives. Except for the very few who are significantly gifted, the average woman cannot and certainly should not be expected to do it all.

Bais Yaakov teaches to marry the best ben Torah that one can find, be moser nefesh for a Torahdike life style, but never to cross the “red line” by choosing a whole career outside the glorified one you were given by Hashem.

We have always asked and continue to ask our Roshei Yeshiva, gedolim and dayanim every type of shayla (question), imaginable. It seems that the shayla of how to provide for a home in a balanced way has been swept under the rug. Not enough of our yungerleit (young men) are asking these types of questions. I have observed over the past fifty years that those who have asked this personal shayla, have received a satisfactory answer which suits their personal situation in terms of the needs of their Jewish home.

I think it is the responsibility of the chinuch community to inculcate into our bnei Torah that in order to achieve nafshi choshka ba’Torah (“my soul hungers for Torah”), it is very important to ask for and receive proper direction. We should really say nafsheinu (plural) choshka ba’Torah, as wives are the major components in the shayla (question). This type of shayla cannot be answered with a “one size fits all” type of answer. It must also be handled in an individual manner relating to the circumstances of that particular family situation.

If we are successful in encouraging our bnei Torah to ask these types of questions, then our Torah homes will no doubt become more emotionally and spiritually healthy.

 

Rabbi Shneur Aisenstark is t he Dean of Bais Yaakov Bnos Raizel Seminary of Montreal.

Debbie Greenblatt

The Changing Role of the Mother and Wife in Orthodox Society

Mama Rochel – the image conjures up the comfort and embrace of our mother, ever tuned to her children’s pain, continually beseeching the Almighty on our behalf.  Even her place of eternal rest emphasizes her role as mother, rather than as Yaakov’s wife.  The original image of Kever Rochel (Rachel’s Tomb) is a symbol of the Jewish people’s hope for, and belief in, their ultimate redemption.  Today’s image, with the fortress that surrounds it, is an apt symbol of the contemporary Jewish mother: deep inside is the mother we once knew and counted on – but the outside has been altered.  The bunker speaks of her need for protection from hostile, outside forces, and perhaps hints at the fact that her newly configured exterior may increase her challenge in understanding her own essence.

The Jewish mother is under pressure in American Orthodox Jewish society. Some of this pressure is internal, as the pull between who she thinks she should be and who she enjoys being erupts. Some of the tension is imposed externally – by the shift in the mores of frum society, which now require most women to work outside the home and which often leave them feeling it is impossible to be both a good wife (that earns income either out of need or to support her kollel family) and a good mother. As a result, she is suffering – and there is an impact on her husband, children and the community at large.

I don’t presume to have solutions.  Even the ability to completely articulate the problem eludes me.  I will therefore share some observations of the shifts in society that I think are important for us to consider in addressing this issue.

At a shalom-bayis (marital harmony) class I recently gave to a group of young mothers, I took a question from the audience: “What about the fact that I feel like a person and I have satisfaction when I am out doing kiruv, teaching classes and speaking to college students?  When I am home with an endless parade of diapers and dishes, I am just not happy.”  There was passion and frustration in her words.

As much as we proclaim the all-important value of internal, spiritual development, and no shidduch was ever agreed to without some assurance of the excellent middos of the prospective match, these words are too often nothing but lip service. The value of internal development – though perhaps accepted on an intellectual level – too often fails to travel that huge distance from the head to the heart. Emotionally and practically, we value concrete and objective achievements.  Even in serious yeshivas where Torah is learned on a high level and is revered as the ideal, the administration will often honor and speak with great pride of the alumni who went to Harvard.

Our educational system reinforces this by constantly rewarding achievement with tangible prizes that are meant to create delight in the recipient.  In preschool, it is smiley faces and stickers, in middle school bicycles and electronic gear and in high school the feel-good rewards are often trips.  This creates a subtle reinforcement in which concrete or objective accomplishments are rewarded with a tangible prize.

I can’t comment on how this affects young men but the negative effects on young women are significant.  We have been training young women in a system of prizes and thrills. The measure for achievement is quantifiable and the rewards offered connected with physical pleasure.  When she comes home from seminary and is either working or in school, disposable income (which is usually whatever she earns or has saved from gifts and the like) is used to keep herself comfortable and happy. Clothing, trips with friends and personal grooming are all on the list.  It is not that any of these activities are problematic on their own.  Of concern is the conditioning that there are “food pellets” as a reward for every task successfully performed in the challenging course called life.

When a few short years later, if she is fortunate, she finds herself with the 24/7 responsibility of a home and children, she realizes that there are no tangible prizes in the game that is motherhood.  She often feels depleted by the daunting responsibility and the incessant demands.  If she has a particularly tuned-in husband, his awareness of her constant efforts, and his ability to be appreciative of them, will serve as something of a balm to that need for recognition and reward.  If there is some disposable income that she can spend on personal items, they may soothe her to an extent. But what if he is less emotionally responsive, and/or they are just scratching by financially – which is so often the case? And what of the need to see satisfaction from measurable achievement, which is what she has been trained for?  What has prepared her to invest years of sleepless nights and to confront challenges for which the rewards are intangible and not guaranteed?[1]

Clearly, part of the chinuch of our daughters has to be a cultivation of an appreciation for the reality of what spiritual development looks and feels like.  As Rebbetzin Heller recently put it, “The biographer of Avraham Avinu’s (our forefather) life would have written of fiery furnaces and wars with kings. Yet Rashi teaches us that when Avraham sat at the entrance to his tent waiting for guests to appear on the horizon – at that moment he was sitting at the entrance to Gan Eden.” What was he doing? Waiting, yearning to fulfill Hashem’s will and take care of His creations, while gently imparting to them knowledge of profound truths.  Spiritual development is a myriad of small, patient steps, inglorious and often repetitive, with time spent yearning and waiting, sometimes for guests that never show up, or for children that never quite fulfill our expectations.  It looks and feels like what a mother’s day-to-day life is about.

Spiritual sensitivity is an acquired taste – one we cannot expect will emerge spontaneously with marriage and motherhood.   An appreciation for the value of the small steps, the patience to defer our own needs for the sake of a spiritual goal without resentment and the sensitivity to find pleasure in intangible spiritual accomplishments needs to be cultivated.  As a highly-intelligent young woman remarked, “I was taught the value of motherhood.  I know it is an important job.  I was not taught, however, how to find the joy in the daily experience that is motherhood.”

Our mesorah (tradition) was always transmitted Rav to talmid (mentor to student), father to son, mother to daughter. It was never only about the message.  For that, books suffice.  It was, and is, also about the messenger, whose impact is twofold.  Firstly, our values and sensitivities are transmitted on the wings of relationships.  In kiruv rechokim (outreach, and kerovim – inreach) it is the same.  Well-thought-out classes may open a door to spiritual exploration, but it is mostly through the vehicle of caring relationships that a person garners the strength to change. Secondly, the role modeling of the messenger is essential as well.  As one woman, who became observant after living in a religious neighborhood, once told me, “I saw all those religious women and they looked so happy, so I asked myself, ‘what do I have to do to get into that club?’”

Are we putting messengers in front of our daughters who embody the message we want to convey?  We have learned how to combine ‘with it’ and ‘knowledgeable’ in our teachers, group leaders and camp counselors so the girls will be inclined to learn and imbibe the values and materials being taught.  But what about being developed as individuals, embodying compassion, joy and inner serenity?

When a woman in today’s world is asked, “what do you do?” answering, “I am a wife and a mother” is not a respectable response.  People may be polite, but, mostly, they seem to be thinking, “too bad, that’s all you get to do with your life.” This recalls the parable of the man who leaves his family to make a living for them.  Shipwrecked on a remote island, he discovers that diamonds are as common as sand.  He cannot believe his good fortune!  As time passes and he is not rescued, he realizes that the natives disdain the diamonds, for which they have no use.  What they value most is salt, of which there is a shortage.  Slowly the man adapts to his environment, until some years later, as he sees the ship that will rescue him on the horizon, he makes sure to fill his pockets with large quantities of salt, leaving behind troves of diamonds.

We are living in a world of people who value salt, and who see no use for diamonds.  But in our value system, diamonds are priceless. It is imperative that we do a better job educating young women not only in the value of our holy Torah, but in the long-term value of their contribution to the continuity of the klal, and in their unique ability to bring the Divine Presence into our homes on behalf of the Jewish People.

To this end, here are some hashkafic points that could use emphasis in our curriculum:

• The value of a human being. If a human being is the most valuable entity in the world (e.g., vatachs’reihu me’at mei’Elokim – You have made (man) only somewhat lesser than G-d: Psalms 8), then the opportunity to bring someone into the world and raise him or her to carry on our tradition is an invaluable privilege.  Many women want to have children for many emotional reasons, but how many are clear on the spiritual grandeur of the endeavor?
• The unique ability of the (wife and) mother to actualize the potential of the (husband and) children.  Again, we are not speaking about giving Saraleh piano lessons to actualize the budding wunderkind, but rather gearing a woman to use her multifaceted intelligence and talents to cultivate the character of Saraleh so she will have the tools to become an ovedes Hashem (servant of G-d). This cannot be accomplished by a babysitter.
• Middos development as it relates to the role of wife and mother. One of the frustrations of motherhood is the huge amount of time demanded by their children, and the accompanying feeling that she has so much else she has to do.  A curriculum should be developed to cultivate menuchas hanefesh (peace of mind), based on the principle  that every moment has its tafkid (purpose), and a moment well spent becomes spiritual energy that lives on for eternity (Sifsei Chaim, Rabbi Chaim Freidlander, quoting his mentor, Rabbi E.E. Dessler, quoting the Vilna Gaon).  The vital lesson here is that each moment has only one tafkid, and we can achieve that inner sense of harmony and satisfaction when we bring all of our energy and focus to bear on the task at hand, out of a realization that this is what our Creator wants of us at this moment.

What I have described until this point is the challenge from within.  Another challenge to the Jewish mother of today is the expectation that she will be able to manage her triple role of wife, mother, and earner.  The role of wife needs its own focus, but suffice it to mention here that it was never harder to create a satisfying marriage. Many observant people have lost the vision of what a Torah marriage is even supposed to look like.

One thing is clear: marriage is an institution that is built day by day through the continued effort of husband and wife.  We are accustomed to the image of the exhausted husband coming home from his day of slaying the dragons, in whatever realm that might be.  Add to that image an exhausted wife waiting for him (or not home yet), and you have a recipe for marital difficulty.

A woman’s job taking care of a home and children is no less exhausting than any other.  But going out into the world requires a certain recharge that a home provides, as the world outside blurs the distinctiveness of the individual.  A Nobel laureate waiting for his train in Grand Central Station is only another commuter.  It is in a person’s home that his individuality and uniqueness need to become evident and be appreciated. It is where he needs to be acknowledged for who he is in his relationship with his Creator, and for the essential qualities he has, not just for how he makes a living.  This is a nurturing a woman can provide for her husband IF she herself is sufficiently nurtured.  Home is more than a place to take a break and rest up from work. It is meant to provide an environment in which the potential of the soul can have an expression. When she comes home equally weary and in need of the same restoration and rebalance, who will pick up the slack?

The statement of R’ Yossi in the Talmud that l’olam lo karasi l’ishti ishti, ella baysi (I have never called my wife anything but my home) speaks of a reality in the Torah’s perspective of a home.  A home is the vehicle for translating the precepts of Torah into the reality of this world.  A Torah-based home is meant to be the entity that resolves the paradox of Hashem’s infinite presence in a finite world.  Creating this arena is a critical part of the spiritual job description of the wife and mother in the home.

If one studied the entire meseches Shabbos, one would not yet know the taste and texture of Shabbos.  The lashon rakka (soft speech) that Rashi explains was directed to the “Bais Yaakov” (the women of Israel – identified here as “the home of Jacob”) at the time of revelation is the calling to translate eternal truths into experiences that can shape the next generation within the context of their homes. Kugel, chulent, Shabbos treats and the warmth of a Jewish home are the tools we have to transmit our mesorah (tradition) to the next generation, as well as to the uninitiated of our own generation.

Another point to consider: There is spiritual benefit to the man when he engages the challenges of the outside world and overcomes them, as it says, “It is good for a man (gever) to carry a burden in his youth” (Eichah 3:27). “Good” in the Torah indicates that something is in harmony with the purpose for which it was created, just as the word is used in the creation narrative. But what is the burden?  The Midrash on this verse (Eichah Rabba) illuminates:  the burdens of Torah, of a wife and of work (melacha).

There may be a need for the woman to work in the world, or she may desire to do so, but there is no spiritual benefit accrued to her as a result.  Her Divinely-ordained ability to create an environment in her home that is conducive to the spiritual, emotional and physical development of those who enter that home was not an exemption from the challenges of the world, or a restriction on her participation in society; it was rather a mandate that the Jewish woman direct her considerable talents and abilities primarily toward the building of that home.  In the process, she ensures her own spiritual development, and makes possible the actualization of the potential of a husband and children.  When the mother of the Vilna Gaon was about to depart this world, she asked her son what she should say to her Maker when He asks her what she did with her life.  He is reported to have answered, “Just say you were a wife and a mother.”  Have we fallen prey to a system in which everything else in a woman’s life gets the best of what she has to give, and her family is getting only the shirayim (leftovers)?

A positive step would be to develop creative initiatives within the community that can provide a framework for women who have to, or wants to, work, that offer modified hours that allow her to be emotionally and physically available to her family. There are several U.S.-based companies that outsource work to kollel wives in Israel – they could serve as a model that can perhaps be transferred to different industries.

We cannot eliminate the need for today’s women to contribute to, or in some cases carry, the financial burden of their families without a major shift in the structure of Orthodox life.  What we can do is educate our young women to understand the bigger picture.  That would enable her to appreciate more deeply her role in the transmission of our heritage and in bringing the Shechinah (Divine Presence) into our homes. It is vital that she not lose sight of the primacy of that role as the basis of her identity, whatever her involvement outside the home, whether work or community related.   A woman who has internalized that vision will find a myriad of ways to convey this to her family.  And finally, we need to better educate young men as to the value of what women contribute in their role as wives and mothers – not only to the functionality of the home, but to the Jewish family as the building block of the Jewish People.

 

Mrs. Debbie Greenblatt is a founder of the Women’s Division of Gateways and lectures often across the country.

Rebbetzin Feige Twerski

The Red Mark on My Forehead

A story is told of a king who was advised by his minister of agriculture that the wheat crop had become contaminated and that whoever would eat of it would become insane. The minister cautioned the king to be vigilant and not to partake of the crop. The king appreciated the warning but insisted that despite the minister’s attempt to protect him, he did not wish to be excluded from the fate that would befall his people. He did, however, have one request of the minister: that each of them should place a permanent red mark on their forehead so that when they looked at each other, they would at least remember that they were insane.

There are those who suggest that the superwomen of today, who both work outside the home and attempt to be effective wives and mothers, have in fact assumed both of the primal “curses.” They have to deal with the “b’etzev teldi banim” – the challenge of giving birth to and raising children – as well as the curse of “by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread.” An objective observer, new to the scene and unbiased by current values and mores, might look around for a “red mark” on someone’s forehead; there is something intrinsically insane about this picture. The problem is that we have all eaten of the poisoned produce and have come to accept what we are at a loss to change.

Arguably, a stay-at-home mother is in a position (if she so chooses) to give both her children and her husband what her hassled and stressed counterpart could not. Dennis Prager, a social commentator, astutely notes, “The human ability to rationalize is infinite. When well-educated parents choose dual-career marriages, instead of acknowledging that a price in childrearing has to be paid for this choice, some of them develop the notion that what children really need from their parents is ‘quality time’ and not quantity of time… Fathers and mothers need to acknowledge that when it comes to time with children, quality cannot be fully separated from quantity. What does ‘quality time’ even mean? That a parent and child who spend little time together will have a very meaningful conversation for an hour? Children open up when they want to, which is usually after much “non-quality” conversation and time have been spent with their parents.”

At a convention for educators a few years back, HaRav Ahron Feldman, Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Yisroel, stated that the caliber of children raised in our times is vastly inferior to those of his day and age. The reason, he cited, was that mothers were working out of the home and not raising their own children – albeit, he quickly added, for economic reasons. It cannot be denied that the unbelievable burgeoning of Torah learning in our times has been made possible, in large measure, by kollel women who, with great mesiras nefesh, try to do it all. The caveat, however, is that this is a humanly impossible undertaking. Despite all the advances in technology, nobody has yet figured out how to be in two places at once, and to be everything to everyone.  The fallout – the price exacted from children raised by babysitters or daycare centers and the unmet needs in the marriage relationship – are huge.

In my many travels lecturing and counseling over the last number of decades, I have encountered the same scenario over and over again. After my talk on the imperative of being an engaged and forthcoming wife, women invariably line up and, with little variation, describe their grueling schedules. Their day begins with preparing children for school, dressing and feeding them, dropping them off at daycare or babysitters, running to work, rushing home to prepare supper, cleaning the house, doing homework with their children and getting them ready for bed.  Finally, exhausted and spent when their husbands come home at 11:00 PM from night seder, they are expected to be interested and attentive to their needs. With what energy, they want to know? They confess that they are living on the edge, stressed and burnt out, barely keeping their heads above water.

Additionally there is the psychological issue of diminution of respect for husbands who function within the circumspect daled amos (four ‘cubits’) of Torah while the wife has stepped out into a secular world that has no boundaries. What’s more, she is now the one that brings in the money, and that is of no small consequence. Arguably, in an ideal world, we would hope that the value of Torah learning would outweigh all other considerations. In reality, however, this is, unfortunately, seldom the case. In my experience, these have been just some of the extensive occupational hazards faced by women who are compelled to carry the burden of employment outside the home.

A number of years ago at an educators convention, I suggested to a hall full of women that, in view of the above-articulated concerns, perhaps our communities and schools should consider reinstating the honorable place that Zevulun had enjoyed in Torah hashkafa and in the Torah text. Yissachar, the tribe of Torah learning, and Zevulun, the merchants who supported their Torah, were on a par – equally valued for their contributions. Implicit was the acknowledgement that neither could exist without the other. It was a partnership.

Unquestionably, it was in an effort to save Torah in the postwar years that the “kollel for everyone” system was devised and launched. In the process, however, the Zevuluns have been marginalized. Young girls in seminaries have been indoctrinated to believe that their life’s calling requires dedication and self sacrifice to a long-term learner exclusively. Concerns about how it will play out down the line with a houseful of children are seldom, if ever, addressed. Young men, on the other hand, are instructed to seek either a father-in-law willing and able to support them or a young lady with enough earning power to facilitate his lofty Torah endeavors.

Suffice it to say that in prior generations, the principle that Torah can only be acquired through mesiras nefesh was understood to mean the sacrifice of the learner himself – of awakening before dawn on cold winter nights, putting in his hours of learning, going to work and then returning to the beis medrash to learn some more. Today, it is parents and in-laws who are put upon and from whom mesiras nefesh is demanded. Their golden years that were supposed to be, at long last, stress-free and relaxing become debt ridden to keep their children “in learning.”

The most troubling aspect of this plan is the “es kumpt mir” (entitlement) attitude that this weltanschauung has fostered and fomented. Unquestionably, there have always been long-term learners supported by wealthy parents and in-laws, or worthy “yechidey segulah” (special individuals) – young men particularly suited and qualified in this regard who were sponsored by their communities. Personally, I would like to see an approach where Roshei Yeshiva, Rebbes and Rabbeim would, without judgment, select those individuals who should be in it for the long haul and release the others to a commitment of several years of full time learning followed by a combination of “kevias itim” (a regular learning schedule) and gainful employment. Zevulun would be appropriately reinstated and women could choose to return home to raise their own children and focus on the needs of the husband-wife relationship with greater menuchas hanefesh (peace of mind). There was a thunderous applause in the hall when I concluded my remarks and throughout the Shabbos women thanked me for daring to suggest the unspeakable – that perhaps it was time for men to go to work. Predictably, the organization viewed my comments as bordering on heresy and I was never invited back again.

Following the convention, a Rosh Yeshiva of note called me and said that, while my comments were on target, public pronouncements of this kind were not the way to go. He asserted that changes were beginning to happen incrementally. Yeshivas that combine Torah learning with preparation for a trade were becoming more prevalent and accepted. At last, “Torah im derech eretz” was gaining some momentum. Be that as it may, he advised that patience was required and that change would come organically because the old system was imploding – collapsing under its own weight and rendering itself unviable.

“You can never go home again,” a statement made popular by a secular writer, is one of the bigger challenges awaiting women. Even if a paradigm shift occurs and the wherewithal to function primarily as mother and wife becomes a possibility, having tasted “freedom,” can working women realistically return to the path that we know intuitively is more consistent with who we are? Can we return to the road less traveled? It will require great strength if it is to happen. It will demand setting priorities – family first and then personal endeavors.

Among my daughters-in-law are two exceptionally gifted young women who were extremely successful in the workplace. After their first children were born, respectively, they decided on principle to be stay-at-home moms. They wanted to be the ones to raise their children – but they admitted that it was the greatest and most difficult adjustment of their lives. They persevered because, at the end of the day, it resonated as being the right decision for that season of their life.

My daughters, biological and otherwise, have confessed that working outside the home gave them an immediate, identifiable and doable goal which, when navigated successfully, provided them with a huge boost of self-esteem. Simultaneously, however, they admitted that they came home physically drained and, not surprisingly, their patience and interaction with their husbands and children had suffered.  It was just not the same as when they had been at home.

An alternative plan could be that women who want to be home but need the extra income or the creative stimulation might consider conducting their professional business out of the house. Others might choose to work part time and make a point of being there when their children return from school. If there is a will – that is, an appreciation of the critical nature of a mother’s input in the formative years of a child’s life – perhaps they can find a way.

There are experiences in our lives that confirm the verities by which we live. One such occasion took place when I was asked to address a group of older, secular, professional singles. In an effort to break the ice, I went around the room and asked each one to introduce themselves by their Jewish names and to give some background information about themselves – where they came from, siblings, parents, etc. I also asked them if they had grandmothers (I was trying to find the Jewish connection). What emerged was fascinating. They differentiated between their grandmothers and their “Bubbies.”

They described their ‘grandmothers’ as competent working women who, given their busy lives, would need to ‘schedule a meeting’ to have a visit with them. ‘Bubby,’ on the other hand, seemed to live for the moment they would call. Anytime was a good time. Moreover, by the time they arrived at Bubby’s house, their favorite cookies would be in the oven and her embrace made them feel loved, cherished and equal to life no matter what challenges would arise. It was at this point, when they described their Bubbies, that they choked up, their voices cracked and tears streamed down their faces.

At the end of the day, who makes the greatest impact on our lives? Personally, I knew that as long as my children described me in their compositions as “the best cooker and baker” I was still on safe ground. However, when they would launch into a description of my travels and teaching, it would serve as a cue for me to reign in my outside activities, to reassess and make sure that my professed priorities weren’t taking a beating.

My community in Milwaukee is primarily comprised of spectacular baalei teshuva. In their past existence, many were professional women from all walks of life. In their quintessential dedication to Yiddishkeit, they seek to reconcile all the pieces of their person in a way that is consistent with Torah hashkafa. Toward this end, my husband, shlit”a, has recommended an “annual spiritual” whereby inventory is taken and evaluations are made in the presence of the Rabbi and Rebbitzen. They would ask questions such as:

1)   Should I pursue my PhD program at this time or should I be home with my toddler?

2)   If I feel I am a better mother when I go out to work and come home invigorated, am I rationalizing and, in fact, merely feeding my ego?

3)   I am working to support my family while my husband is in kollel or out of a job.  The physical, emotional and psychological burden is enormous. Am I obligated to have more children under these circumstances?

Due process has to be invoked by the presiding posek or rabbi, taking into consideration all of the complicated variables. Every situation is unique and hadracha (guidance) needs to be given on an individual basis, obviously based on Torah guidelines. The bottom line is that in our times, more than ever before, one must put into place the “asey l’cha Rav” – acceptance of a rabbi to be one’s guide. One must have a halachically-conversant resource person who is wise, caring and who will understand the individual in a holistic way and advise them accordingly.

The choice of having dual incomes vs. the sole income of a wife to allow her husband to learn in kollel or pursue other idealistic ventures must be balanced against the wellbeing of children and the marriage. It may be that the schools and communities benefit from dual incomes but there may be a price: the cost of mental health interventions has grown and appears to be in part a byproduct of communities losing the solid ground that stable, intact families with clear role definitions had provided.

The pendulum swings back and forth until it reaches a tipping point. Betty Freedan, one of the early, strident voices of the women’s liberation movement, reversed herself when she saw the devastation her view had wrought. Barbara Walters, a major television personality, has stated that after life on the public scene, her idea of liberation is going back home. Ann Richards, a political figure from the South, has stated that while she has had disappointments in her life, races lost, and ups and downs on the political scene, the only failures that affected her to her core were the ones in the realm of relationships – husband-wife, children, friends, etc. Ultimately, women draw their energy and their life force from relationships. Temporarily, we may be blindsided by the lure of instant gratification and positive feedback that is so much more easily achieved in the world out there – in the world of illusion. The question, however, is at what price?

Until such time as the issues are sorted out, when the dust settles and clarity prevails, women going out into the workforce need to be apprised of the current dangers. Working side by side with men, regardless of whether or not they are frum, requires exquisite vigilance. The natural sexual tension between the genders cannot be overstated.  On a practical level, this would mandate that if a woman were to sense an attraction towards a male coworker or boss or vice versa, in that one of them is paying her undue attention, she should be advised to run for her life. These situations are all too prevalent and wreak havoc with the lives of young girls and married women. Support groups, whether in person or on the phone, should be put in place so that women can receive chizuk (strength) from each other. Torah classes on a steady basis and chavrusa (study partner) arrangements should be strongly encouraged.

In conclusion, as we engage the world of dissimulation, please note the red mark on my forehead, and I will look for yours so that we may be cognizant of the fact that our world is in need of a brighter future. In so doing, we will hopefully move forward, step by step, towards carving out a more sane world for ourselves and our families.

 

Rebbetzin Feige Twerski lectures worldwide on a myriad of Judaic subjects, and serves as the Rebbetzin alongside her husband, Rabbi Michel Twerski, of Congregation Beth Jehudah of Milwaukee.