How to raise 10 kids in a 2 bedroom home

chen

Sun, Apr 29 2007, 9:28 pm

amother wrote:

life and society in general was soooo much simpler then! Today we are dealing with a whole lot more!

Oh,please!

Is every single day a struggle for survival for us? Not a struggle for prosperity but literally a struggle to keep body and soul together? how often do you see parents burying a young child? a hundred years ago--even seventy-five-- it was not uncommon to give birth to ten children and count yourself lucky if three or four survived to adulthood.

how many of our sons have been carted off to spend the next 25 years in the czar's army? How many of us have had to deliberately break a son's' leg or amputate a finger in the hope that the army would reject him? or send him off across an ocean to an unknown land, not knowing when or even if we would ever see him again?

How many of us are told in job after job "If you don't come in saturday, don't come in monday"? How many of us have to make the heartbreaking decision: work on shabbos, or let my children starve? NOT eat nothing but chicken and watery soup for shabbos, but literally starve?

How "simple" do you think life was when measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pneumonia, influenza, scarlet fever, tuberculosis and so on were not just the names of shots your baby gets at well-baby visits or names in horror stories your great-grandmother tells you, but dreaded scourges that you prayed might spare some of your family members this season before the next epidemic swept through town?

How 'simple" was life when talking to your nonjewish neighbors was like walking on eggs, always fearing that an inadvertent remark could be all the excuse they'd need to start a bloody pogrom?

How 'simple" is it to decide which of your children to send to America and which to keep at home? Your eldest, the budding iluy, because he is already at risk of being drafted? Or the second son, who is maybe not so smart and capable but has a steadier character and is maybe less likely to be seduced by the attractions of non jewish society? maybe the daughter, because as a skilled seamstress she can earn the most? still, a young girl, all alone in a foreign land...maybe the second son after all, even if he won't be able to send for the others so quickly..and which one to leave behind when you have to go yourself?

How "simple" is it to arrive on the blessed shores of the Goldene Medina, only to find out that your youngest child is being denied entry because she suffers from trachoma or some other highly communicable disease? what happens to her now?

How "simple" is it to try to build a jewish life in a place where there are few if any Jewish schools and a welcoming society that is doing its utmost to make your children throw off the shackles of their "outdated" traditions and become an indistinguishable part of itself?

You think there were no illicit drugs in 1910? No children going off the derech? No alcoholism? No spousal abuse or child abuse? No infertility? No "children with special needs"? No difficulties finding shidduchim? No money troubles? No governmental paperwork? No red tape? No marital problems? No nasty mothers-in-law or witchy sisters-in-law or unfaithful husbands? No trouble finding tzniusdik clothing? No "the man I love is marrying my sister"? speaking of which, how would you like to have to marry your older sister's widower, knowing all along that chances were good you would die in childbirth, just like your sister, and your next younger sister would step into your shoes just as you stepped into your older sisters'?

On either side of the Atlantic, our forebears had all the problems we have, and many more that B"H we don't. Your condescending statement is a slap in the face to the generations that came before us.

Motek

Thu, May 03 2007, 1:49 pm

Quote:

life and society in general was soooo much simpler then! Today we are dealing with a whole lot more!

unfortunately, the words "life and society", the word "simple" and the word "then," were not defined, and more unfortunately, you assumed negative intentions of the poster and instead of questioning what she meant, you ridiculed and condemned her in a hodgepodge of examples from Czarist times, life in Europe before the war, and immigrant life in America

You equated "simple" with "easy" and gave numerous examples from different eras to show that life was never easy and was, in many ways, harder than it is today.

Another meaning of "simple" is "uncomplicated." Here are some examples to illustrate what amother may have meant. Never before in the history of mankind, was a shopper faced with 30 types of cereal to buy. Even within a given category, say Bran Flakes, there are numerous options, at least 2 heimishe brans, with or without raisins, etc.

For Russians coming to America (as well as other immigrants I'm sure), our supermarkets were an enormous culture shock. Not only because of our bounty, but because of the choices.

Look at our Recipe section. The women of yesteryear did not spend time, as I do, deciding which of numerous chicken recipes to make for Shabbos: Cacciatorie, Italian, Honolulu, crumb, with Russian dressing, Italian dressing, etc.

This is not a tragic situation, but if we'd stop to ponder how our life differs from that of even those raising families in the 50's and 60's, we'd see how simple their lives were as compared to our own.

There were simple pleasures, simple vacations, simple simchos. I'm sure you could wax eloquent with examples. Kids used to play stoop ball, punchball, ride bikes and roller skate, play hopscotch and jump rope. Today's kids are being evaluated for sundry emotional and behavioral illnesses and far too many of them have regular appointments with their therapists. Life is complicated. The breakup of so many marriages and homes, children contending with weekend visitations. We never had the "leibidege yisomos" that our generation is seeing, I.e. children of homes broken to divorce.

Pesach was simpler. People stayed home or went to parents. They didn't have Pesach stores to shop from and they ate simply. Life is complicated today, and we have greater expectations. Children whine that their friend is going to Mexico for Pesach and why are they going to boring Florida once again. It's not merely about being spoiled. It's about the change from simple to complicated.

If you were sent to sleepaway camp, you had plain bunkhouses, plain food, had plain fields to play ball in, and a pool and gym. There were ordinary activities like dodgeball and arts and crafts with popsicle sticks and the summer was great. Now? There are go-cart tracks, gourmet food which is supplemented by the canteen (ma, can you send more money?), and of course just going away to camp is boring. Trips to Hershey Park and Niagira are a must, as well as ice skating and roller skating excursions. Very few simple pleasures remain.

A few decades ago we weren't programming our VCR's and answering machines, we didn't have problems with computers crashing and we didn't have call-waiting interrupting our conversations. Do we enjoy these technical advances? Yes, but life is not as simple as it was even 30 years ago.

Being connected via Internet and cell phones has numerous advantages but they don't contribute towards the simple life. We read and hear more information in one day than people read and heard in a lifetime back in Europe. Even compared to a few decades ago, the amount of news and information we hear today, on all subjects, depending on our level of exposure to the media and especially the Internet, is incredible. It complicates our lives.

It's not that all or even most families resembled that of Father Knows Best, but back in the 50's and 60's, fathers knew what they were supposed to do as fathers and mothers knew what mothers did. There was no gender confusion or identity crises unless you were seriously troubled. I'm not getting into whether even then some women worked. That's not the point here. The point is that it was a simpler time. People knew who was who and what was what. Shidduchim were simpler. There was no shidduch crisis because for the most part (of course there were always exceptions), people got married. Dating was simpler. When people didn't shmooze on the phone long-distance out of town and certainly not out of the country, most shidduchim were local, simple. My mother, who got married in the 60's, has told me that when she shopped for her kitchen supplies, she went to the local hardware store and was shown two sets of Melmack dishes. She took one set for fleishigs, one for milchigs. She marvels at how simple it was. Now, when she wants to buy something, she spends hours doing research in Consumer Reports and on the Internet, going from store to store.

People rarely flew around the world to meet and later to take a family, by plane, to foreign lands, for a simcha. If you moved away, you often did not see family for years, not even for simchas. Away was away. Life was simpler. Not easier. Not necessarily more pleasant though in many ways it was, but simpler.

Look at the Emotional Health and Shalom Bayis sections. Yes, there were always problems with relationships, but the kind of complicated relationships we are hearing about today as well as the unprecedented mental health problems, were unheard of a few decades ago. Life was simpler. People were more mature or less mature, and they weren't told (after a 15 minute visit) that they had one of many personality disorders that the mental health field has invented of late.

The rate of depression is doubling every 20 years and, according to a Harvard Medical Center study, the rate of childhood depression is increasing by 23% a year! Preschoolers are the fastest growing market for antidepressants. Women are starving themselves to death! Life is not simple! This is why millions upon millions are resorting to mind-altering drugs such as anti-depressants. Back in simpler times, a very few people got seriously depressed while everybody else, when experiencing sad or difficult times, felt sad or anxious and got on with life.

Expectations were simpler, so yes, children could share a bed and childhood could be joyous nonetheless. In our confused, complicated times, children can't even share Ipods, they need to have their own or their self esteem will be crushed. There are numerous other examples. In short, in many ways, life and society back then were far simpler than today.

chen

Thu, May 03 2007, 2:38 pm

very articulate motek, I'm impressed. however, I know exactly the difference between "easy" and "uncomplicated". If the poster meant something other than the way I interpreted the word, she was at liberty to make that clear.

Furthermore, if the poster was referring to Jews in Arab countries or in Spain, in biblical times or the Middle Ages, she can also speak up for herself. I believe she didn't because she meant exactly what I read into her post--Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe and the US roughly between the 1800's and mid-1900's.

Furthermore: Deciding what to do, even when there are only a handful of choices, is not necessarily uncomplicated. The options may be few but the factors that go into the decison-making may be legion. Therefore the example of the parents trying to decide which child to send to America. Do you really think the poster was saying our lives are more complicated than they used to be because we have thirty-six different kinds of kosher breakfast cereal to choose from? Please.

BTW, I don't buy the statement that LIFE is more complicated. Life is what you make of it. people are complicating their own lives by buying into the hedonism, the keeping-up-with-the-Goldbergs, the gotta-have-it-gotta-have-it-gotta-have-it.-gotta make an impression. They could simplify their lives a whole lot by rejecting it.

which is why some people do and some people don't go through those thousands of recipes , agonize before Purim over themes for Shalach Monos, send their kids to summer camp, buy the very latest appliance (yes, virginia, you can make coleslaw without a food processor) , plead for blow-them-away ideas for a birthday party and spend days making costumes for their little princesses. If you enjoy that sort of thing, enjoy gezunte heit--but please do not kvetch about how complicated life is.