Spinoff- how many kids do u have

amother

Saddlebrown

Wed, Aug 07 2019, 7:23 pm

unexpected wrote:

Also, both my grandmothers were given hysterectomies immediately after difficult births because the dr decided that "it was enough". A lot of people don't talk about this but it was a relatively common phenomenon that women who had no support, didn't know the language and were in a lot of pain just trusted the dr and signed the dotted lines.

This is interesting. As part of research for birth control for an assignment in school I cam across an interesting article that talked about how black women were often treated to hysterectomies after childbirth. Never heard of anything like this where doctors or society dictsted family size.

amother

Lilac

Wed, Aug 07 2019, 8:07 pm

ShishKabob wrote:

I had to come back and say that I'd be getting a paid late model car, paid insurance, paid gas and tolls, a ton of paid holiday, personal and vacation days. I also would get invited to parties with glatt kosher food because of the diversity of the people that work for the federal government. I would also do my job at my leisure because that's the way my workplace works. If you work too efficiently you end up with no work at all.

And my friend, that paycheck that I am getting plus all the perks, are coming out of your taxpayer dollar! every single bit of it! Just because I have a job with the federal government!

Is this considered tzeddaka cuz it's coming out of your pocket?
Are you going to stop paying your taxes because of this, because it's not fair for you to fund my auto and insurance bills and my sick days off and my yom tov days off? And you also fund every penny of my paycheck! Out of your hard earned taxpayer dollar! Whew!

[u]

I think this is probably the single most illogical thought of this entire thread. So you're equating a government worker who gets paid from tax money to a random person who knocks on my door asking if I can help with his bills.
To you, these people both get their money from the public, so they are the same. They are both beneficiaries of chessed from strangers.

southernbubby

Wed, Aug 07 2019, 8:34 pm

amother [ Saddlebrown ] wrote:

Didn't Planned Parenthood start around 100 years ago?
Also it was very common for doctors to decide that it would be dangerous to have more children.

byisrael

Thu, Aug 08 2019, 2:43 am

I am not advocating not using BC or having as many kids as possible without any sort of chesbon.

What I do feel is that the form of "responsibilty" being advocated by some posters completely leaves emunah and G-d out of the picture - and that is a dangerous slippery slope. I mean Harry and Meagan will be only having one child so not to burden the worlds resources - I doubt anyone frum would go that extreme the fact is that there are plenty of people who won't have kids at all in the name of responsibilty.

Historically if people would have always done the finacially responsible thing there would be no jewish people. Just look at the holocaust - there where people who had the opportunity to leave Europe when things started to look bad but stayed because the where very comftorabe and hoped it would blow over....

The average family will pay tuiton for 20 -30 years. It is impossible to know that you will always have enough income to be able to afford tuiton for all of those years. What is possible to know is at the time of having the child does it seem like in the forseeable future you will be able to afford to raise that child. After that emunah come in. And if you loose your source of income, then thats also from HKB"H and believe me there are plenty of people who are not as nasty as some of the people on imamother who are happy to help a jewish child get a jewish education (I do this and I know there are lots of people like me)

amother

Natural

Thu, Aug 08 2019, 3:04 am

I'm going to come in with a unique situation I'm curious to hear opinions.

I have 11 kids. I teach part time and my husband is a Rebbe. He works in an elementary school for most of the day, and a few hours in a mesifta. Both have free tuition as part of the pay package.

So I don't pay anything at all for half my kids. One of my boys good to a different cheder and I do pay tuition there, and yes, we get a subsidy, no questions asked. My girls are all on subsidised tuition. We always pay on time, and for a few years we actually paid more than we were asked to, because at the time we felt we were able to do it.

1). Is my free tuition considered Tzedakah? It's certainly being subsidized by the community. Why is it different than my girl's tuition?

2). Should I be "allowed" to have more children, after all, there's a 50% chance that I won't have to pay tuition. Or perhaps I should only be allowed boys.

3). Should I be allowed to send my son to a different cheder at a reduced rate if I have a free option? No one in the cheder that I switched him to, even brought that up.

4). What about the fact that when the school system in klal Yisrael was originally set up by R' Yehoshua Ben Gamla, it was a community institution, funded by community tax. I have every intention of supporting my children's schools to whatever extent I can, long after my children graduate.

5) I have a child with some special needs (mainstreamed, so free tuition), and his therapy isn't covered where I live, so I pay it out of pocket. Could it be said that perhaps I should be funding my girls' tuition before I pay for his therapy? It's inconclusive whether the therapy I'm doing will have long term results.

And I have more questions but I have to think about how to phrase them. So I'll leave it at this for now.

amother

Pumpkin

Thu, Aug 08 2019, 3:52 am

I did not read this whole thread, but OP did you ever consider that perhaps each new child can bring more parnassah and bracha to the family?

True story. My parents had 3 children and were barely making it (from what my parents told me - my father and mother were working several jobs, we barely had money for any extras other than food and housing). They were not managing tuition payments and considered switching my siblings to public school. After I was born, my father (who was already in his 40s and no higher education after HS) quit his two jobs and started a new business. At first the business was from home in a very unorganized room with small children running around and bothering.
Guess what? BH his business blossomed and has a lot of bracha and for the past 20+ years is a multi-million company and he owns various real estates and investments.

I'm sure if before I was born, my parents were asked how they will afford more children - they would not have a practical answer al pi hateva.

Just shows you how G-d runs the world and not us.

amother

Lilac

Thu, Aug 08 2019, 6:53 am

amother [ Pumpkin ] wrote:

It's a wonderful story and bh it worked out. Do you feel you can say that you understand how hashem runs the world based on this one story? Talk about a small sample size. If I tell you about a case where as a family got bigger, parnassah became an even bigger struggle, how would you explain it?
We don't know how hashem runs the world and to try to demonstrate otherwise from a story or 2, when there are obviously many stories that show the exact opposite, is unreasonable.

amother

Lilac

Thu, Aug 08 2019, 7:36 am

ectomorph wrote:

Again, the goal in life is not to earn money.

Money is only a means to an end.

The goal of life is to do mitzvos.

There would be no Jewish people if our ancestors hadn't had children and trusted in Hashem.

I'm wondering if there's any other mitzva in the Torah that you do without bounds or limits? Hachnosas orchim? Tzedaka? Visiting the sick? Or is it just this one?

amother

Blush

Thu, Aug 08 2019, 8:02 am

I'm not American so probably see this differently from most of you.
I think tution should be a community responsibility not a personal one. No different to public school where everyone contrubutes regardless of age and whether you have kids or how many. All of society benefits from educating kids not just parents. We need dr, high tech, rabbi's etc. It should be a community tax paid your whole working life.
The number of children an individual family have should never be a consideration.

southernbubby

Thu, Aug 08 2019, 9:00 am

To amother natural who posted at 3:04 a.m., many frum schools and businesses try to help klei kodesh in order to share in your husband's good work so they are purchasing a share of it rather than giving you tzedukah.

Poor people in general get a variety of forms of tzedukah but I assume that whoever is in charge of the causes would be absolutely horrified to think of people avoiding having children in order not to receive help from their cause.

I think that the problem is not that people have babies until they require help from others but that some people seek help when they need to economize and then they put more strain on those charitable organizations.

ectomorph

Thu, Aug 08 2019, 9:16 am

amother [ Lilac ] wrote:

I'm wondering if there's any other mitzva in the Torah that you do without bounds or limits? Hachnosas orchim? Tzedaka? Visiting the sick? Or is it just this one?

What? I never said to do it without bounds. You're making it up. I said to do it to the best of your ability.

And yes, I try to do every mitzva to the best of my ability.

southernbubby

Thu, Aug 08 2019, 9:31 am

ectomorph wrote:

What? I never said to do it without bounds. You're making it up. I said to do it to the best of your ability.

And yes, I try to do every mitzva to the best of my ability.

And that is the heart of the matter because today a lot of people are becoming more modern both in tznius levels and family size and doing one's best gets buried in doing what everyone else is doing.
I see people here who probably feel that it is morally wrong to have more than five kids due to both emotional and financial constraints when many families actually do have the ability to raise more.

amother

Hotpink

Wed, Nov 13 2019, 1:52 am

Old thread, but OP isn't the first to think about this issue. Amram in Mitzrayim also decided that communal family planning was better than having kids, being as there was a 50% chance of them getting murdered at birth and 100% chance of growing up into the most miserable enslaved existence one can envision on the chance they survived. Perfectly valid reasons to limit family size... Definitely equally valid to avoiding the financial crunch. If Miriam hadn't disagreed with him and put her foot down, Moshe Rabbenu wouldn't have been born and the Jewish people as we see it today never would have come into existence. I don't know what's right or wrong (everyone should discuss their personal situation with their Rav, especially if more children and the connected financial burden will wreak havoc on your physical and emotional health and ability to care for your existing children and give them a stable upbringing), but it certainly gives a bit of perspective to the Torah Hashkafa of those who have large families that you deem irresponsible.