Chapter 1 - Preparing For Children: Life Questions

A: Background

7. DISCOMFORT WITH THE JEWISH FAMILY MODEL

In terms of the question of having or not having children, the pressures of the tradition certainly make many young Jews today uncomfortable. While one of the major expressions of the traditional Judaism's belief in the importance of children was to seek an early marriage for one's children and to start the career of childbearing at a very young age, the tendency that we find among most modern Jews is precisely the opposite. The question of arranged marriage has fallen by the wayside for almost all except those who live in, or on the edge of, ultra-orthodox communities, in favour of romantic love. Marriage itself is often sought at an age which, in past times, for all Jews would have been seen as scandalously late, entailing a waste of many good childbearing years. The framework of the traditional two-parent family is by no means viewed as the unquestioned ideal; and even among those who continue to see it as an ideal, there is far greater preparedness than ever before to break up the framework when it does not work for at least one of the partners.

Moreover, within marriage, children are no longer taken for granted as the foundation stone of married life. There are those who are willing to talk of their personal disinclination to have children. It is no longer accepted, for example, that children necessarily define a woman's role or meaning in life. In addition, over the last forty years we have heard the articulation of a philosophy that sees that the world as it exists today is not a place for children. Individuals or couples have espoused the view that it is an immoral act to bring children into the "nuclear" world that exists around us. And, of course, more recently we are witnesses to the phenomenon of many who say that having children needs to be deferred or dismissed, either for financial reasons, or because of the demands of the two-career family. Indeed, the whole question of the professionalization and change in horizons for Jewish women and men has modified greatly the traditional attitudes to children.