One morning, my husband and I woke up to the sound of our bedroom door being thrust open and bouncing off the wall.

After that enthusiastic lead-in, our 2-year-old toddled in, hugging his blankie and sporting a grin that clearly announced: Is there anything more thrilling than seeing ME first thing in the morning?

Many very young children never entertain the possibility that their parents prefer to sleep rather than play with them. And they wake you up with the utter confidence that you are so thrilled to see them, you WANT to wake up—just for them.

My face was scrunched into my own blanket, but the space left for breathing allowed me to see how his little face lit up in delight when he saw me.

My mommy is playing peek-a-boo with me!

Cheerfully obliging his perception of my covered face, he toddled over and tugged the blanket partially off my face. 

"You look like a face!" he announced cheerfully.

Truth be told, with his own cute little face inches from mine, it was quite an adorable and charming sight to see upon waking up.

​But I still wanted to sleep.

Then his face lit up even more as he examined me closer and said, "You look like a bulldozer!"

​"You didn't tell me that on shidduchim, darling," my husband mumbled.

Oh dear. I guess I need to switch night creams.

(Just kidding.)

This particular child had and still has a real fondness for construction vehicles. So he projects this fondness onto anything he likes.

In his 2-year-old mind, the world is a much nicer place when everything looks like a bulldozer. Or a dump truck. Or a giant crane. Or a digger. Or a cement mixer. Or a steam roller.

In fact, an especially exciting moment for him came whenever he found a construction vehicle that was both a bulldozer from the front and a digger from the back. 

And this is a very common trait in young children: They get massively excited or fascinated by the very things we adults no longer notice (or even find annoying).

And this is something very precious that young children bring to their families, that enthusiasm over mundane objects and experiences.

Not long after he first started enthusing over construction vehicles, we (his older siblings, his father, and I) instinctively started seeking out such monsters whenever we were out with him.

And because his excitement was so charming and contagious, we started getting excited whenever we saw a construction vehicle we knew he would like.

In fact, each of us mentioned that when outside alone and, say, a monster dump truck would come lumbering down the street, our heart would give a leap and we instinctively turned to point it out to him, feeling a bit deflated that he wasn't there to share the experience.

And this is very common for parents and older siblings.

​If it's not with construction vehicles, then it's with something else that the small child gets all excited about.

Even now at age 4, when I take this child to gan on the bus in the morning, he is so excited.

He loves sitting next to the big low window on the bus (as opposed to the higher & smaller window of a car) and he gazes out, his little backpacked body all a-quiver in anticipation of seeing a bulldozer or a steam roller during the 4-minute ride.

I find buses a bit stressful, but I must admit that an enthusiasm for bus rides and catching sight of construction vehicles is a great way to start your day.

​And like I said, his enthusiasm is contagious. I often find myself in a better mood sitting next to him as he wriggles in delight upon spotting his heart's desire chugging away in the dust, rocks, and heat.

And this kind of dynamic is a very big gift that small children grant their families.

Hashem wants us to be excited about the life He has given us. 

He wants us to appreciate all the things we take for granted (or even find annoying; construction vehicles are quite noisy), especially if they are extremely helpful things—like construction vehicles.

This can get lost amid all the toil of raising young children.

​Obviously, a kid pulling on you or calling you to see a mundane thing that child finds thrilling, or to be woken up by winsome 2-year-old narcissism too early in the morning—this can all be understandably exasperating.

You don't always manage the patience for it.

Sleep is a basic need.

​And there are also things that really do demand your attention that just need to get done already, without distractions from even the most adorable and enthusiastic preschoolers.

And that's normal.

But whenever possible, it's good to let ourselves be touched by the zest for mundane living that small children bring to our lives.

A huge blindspot today is language.

Foul words have entered everyday vocabulary, with today's grandmothers using the very words (or worse) for which she originally washed out her own child's mouth with soap as a mother only 3 decades ago.

This can be true in parts of modern frum society too sometimes.

Foul English words have also entered Israeli Hebrew as slang (because they don't know what they're actually saying & because cussing in a foreign language doesn't have the same jolt). Even some frum Israelis end up using this vulgar English as slang within their modern Hebrew.

However, Judaism insists not only on non-vulgar language, but on refined language in general.

When asked about lashon nekiyah - clean language or a clean tongue - Rav Avigdor Miller mentioned the words mothers traditionally forbade their children.

Then he goes a step deeper and discusses refined language in general - "mindful speech," if you will.

For example, he explains, in Slabodka where he learned, they never said the word shlecht, which is Yiddish for "bad."

And that's worth chewing over.

Related link:
Try This: No Swearing for One Week

UPDATE:
​Either Weebly or my filter is not letting me comment on my own post (on other posts -- yes; on this one -- no), so I can't respond in the comment section. But all the comments so far are very inspiring and written from the heart (and much appreciated!).

This wasn't in the post, but based on the comments, I feel it's important to add that while getting pregnant later in life is often more difficult (as mentioned in the post), it's far from impossible. Two commenters had children from age 37 and onward. I've personally known women who got pregnant for the first time at age 39 and another at age 45 shortly after her first marriage -- no fertility treatments or even herbs, and no long wait!

So if this is your situation, please don't despair! And I wish all of you much bracha and hatzlacha.

​(And thank you to all the commenters for sharing their stories & giving chizuk.)

Growing up in secular America, I always saw marriage & family portrayed as the end of one’s life.
 
My orthodontist cheerfully informed me that she waited until around age 37 to start a family. "I wanted to wait until I wouldn't feel resentful about not being able to go out to dinner," she said with a warm smile.

As if your own child isn't worth missing a couple of hours in a restaurant in the evening.

As if you can never go out to dinner again...

I secretly wanted marriage and children instead of a career (though I wanted to be a novelist on the side too), but couldn’t admit this—not even to myself.  
 
You were supposed to push off marriage and children for as long as possible. Education, career, travel, living one’s dreams, sowing wild oats, and all that took precedence.
 
Marriage and children came only when you had lived your life and were either finished with everything else or were just sick of it.
 
Sadly, this has led a great many women into the dilemma of being at the height of her career just as her biological clock starts running out of time. Now she’s supposed to find a husband--or if she already has a husband, start trying to get pregnant and then deal with pregnancy and juggle a baby when her career is going full-force.
 
Furthermore, many women discover that it’s not as easy to get pregnant at 38 as it would have been at 22.
 
And while frum women continue to have children throughout their fertile years, a non-Jewish journalist pointed out that for other Western women who anyway only plan on 1-3 children, it makes more sense to build your family when you’re on the upside of fertility, when you’re young and can deal with sleepless nights (she makes the point that college students often throw themselves into all-nighters: study sessions, parties, discussions & heart-to-heart talks, etc), and are still at the beginning of their career.

Yes, building a career (if a woman wants) goes more slowly with young children, but it’s better to do things that way and hit your momentum when they are relatively self-sufficient teenagers rather than hit your momentum—and then need to slow down or stop to deal with birth, recovery, and a child who will be very dependent on you for the next few years. 

​ When I had my first child at the age of 24, one of my initial feelings—in addition to (and actually because of) new-baby ecstasy—was betrayal.

Not only did I realize I’d been lied to my whole life, but that I’d been lied to very badly.

​And I felt so betrayed.
 
Having a baby was one of the best things to ever happen to me.
 
I felt so lucky and grateful. I felt like my baby was a treasure and that I somehow merited the great fortune of this special treasure being given to me.

Also, I felt a love that I’d never felt before.
 
But before I continue, it bears noting that every situation is different. Some people get the baby blues after birth, some people face emergencies, tragedies, or colicky babies, and some people don’t feel joy but feel heavy (albeit not unpleasant) responsibility instead. Varying amounts of anxiety are often part of the post-partum recovery too.
 
And that’s all in the realm of normal and nothing to feel guilty or defective about. If you do feel tremendous joy after birth, it’s a big chessed from Hashem and something for which to be grateful.
 
And I also faced difficulties. Just as 2 examples: The healing episiotomy hurt and was a nuisance to care for. The nursing went pretty badly and was excruciatingly painful for an entire month (despite following all the expert nursing advice), and it continued to be an unexpectedly stress-filled hassle until I got pregnant with the next child around 8 or 9 months later. Phew!

​And despite the ups and downs of parenthood, the times when I wanted to run away, and the times when I feel like a big failure as a mother, I always feel like me kids are the best thing I’ve ever done in life. (And I didn’t even do it—it was Hashem! But still.)
 
But I was deeply in love with the baby himself. And that kind of love is a very pure love to experience because it’s so strong, intense, joyful—and selfless. A baby only takes and can’t give anything back (except smiles—but only after a few weeks). So you’re just rejoicing in the free gift of his very existence—pretty heady stuff.
 
And I had no idea I would feel that way until I did.

​And I was just like, “Why, oh why did everyone always make this out to be so awful? Why is it considered so miserable and limiting that it needs to be pushed off until you’ve fully ‘lived life’ first?”

Why is the emphasis always on the hardships of motherhood and not the fulfillment or the rewards?
 
I felt like I’d only started living life with his birth! I realized that I didn’t have a life before I had my kids.
 
And I felt regret that I hadn’t gotten married and pregnant right out of high school instead of wasting my time. (It would’ve been kinder for my husband too, instead of him suffering through shidduchim until I finally got my act together.)
 
Yet when I told someone, “If only I’d known how great this would be, I’d have done this much earlier!”, she laughed and said, “But were you ready before now?”
 
“Well, no,” I said.
 
“That’s what everyone says,” she told me. “They all wish they’d done this earlier, but admit they weren’t ready before.”
 
She’s right—but she’s also wrong.
 
Her comment got me thinking…why wasn’t I ready until I married at 23?
 
Well, I needed to become frum first and to get myself solidly into the Torah life. But other than that?
 
An informal survey showed me that I wasn’t alone in feeling that any major inner growth came because of marriage and children, and not a result of work prior to marriage and children.

Many women feel that the experience of dealing with marriage and children increased their emotional maturity—maturity and inner growth that couldn’t come any other way.
 
Needless to say, marriage and children don’t guarantee peak emotional maturity. There are many immature and irresponsible parents walking around. Furthermore, some people are so dysfunctional, they really shouldn’t get married or have children yet because they simply will not be able to rise to the occasion.
 
The point is that whatever level of emotional maturity you found yourself on before you married and procreated, that level rises after marriage and procreation. Usually. Most people are better people after marriage and children—even if they feel like they’re not.

This is because even during parenthood’s most stressful, miserable, and despairing times, you’re still doing something meaningful.

You’re rectifying profound soul issues and changing the world.

You can’t say that about partying, making money, climbing the corporate ladder, performing, falling into yet another meaningless relationship with no future, drinking, touring Paris, or lying on the beach with the latest bestseller.

​Also, mothers manage to nurture other facets of their personalities. Just in the frum community, there’s a wealth of shiurim and classes for dance, drama, art, music, sewing, fruit-carving, cake-decorating, pastry-making, healthy meals, and much more. (The variety depends where you live.)

Taking courses either online or a couple of times a week at available hours gives mothers degrees and skills for paying jobs.
 
It’s more of a juggle when you have kids, but it’s definitely doable—at least to a certain extent. And many if not most mothers participate in activities outside the domestic sphere, so it's obviously a realistic thing.

​The other big lie—and it’s a lie by omission—is that you can't push things off until later in life.

When is that option ever offered?

You CAN push things off until later in life. And it’s okay to do that.
 
Just like secular society encourages people to push off marriage and children until later in life, you can do that with other things too.

​For example, I know so many women who made a career change, starting in their late forties. Their kids were older or out of the house and they started taking courses toward a new degree. Then they phased out their old career to start the new one around fifty.
 
What’s wrong with that?
 
NOTHING.
 
As a personal example, there are certain activities and classes I’d like to indulge in, but I don’t have the time or extra money right now. And that’s perfectly fine! I’m not tortured by their absence right now and it gives me something to look forward to in my fifties and sixties. Why not?
 
What is the big pressure to do everything (except child-bearing) before you’re 40?
 
It’s not a coincidence that youth-and-hedonism-worshiping Hollywood pushes this whole deception. Those degenerates portray the world as they honestly see it.
 
But it’s a big tragedy that so many people fall into it.

Related posts:
Breaking Out of the Big Lie about Motherhood

Several years ago, Hamodia printed a column in which Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller contrasted 2 different mother-daughter relationships.

​In one scenario, the mother allowed her teenage daughter to pour out her heart and thoughts with no restraint. The daughter discussed her perceptions of other people using their names and any other identifying information without a second thought. Both the mother and the daughter viewed their relationship as “close” and one of sharing.
 
Yet Rebbetzin Heller noted that a relationship based on lashon hara doesn’t possess genuine intimacy.
 
In contrast, she described a relationship in which the mother and daughter felt close to each other, but the mother allowed the daughter to discuss others only when necessary and without names or any other identifying details (unless there was a to’elet—a beneficial purpose—in revealing these details).
 
This revolutionary (for me at that time) idea struck me because I hadn’t considered that placing boundaries on a child’s conversation could still facilitate a close relationship with that child. My own children were still young at that time and Hashem led me to read this column before I needed to—which was great preparation for my future relationship with them.

​Even now, it’s surprising how much a child can confide without telling me anything more identifying than “a classmate of mine” or “a kid in the neighborhood.”

​Yes, sometimes names and identifying details need to be revealed, but not usually. And even when the child can’t avoid telling you who’s bothering them, the other laws of lashon hara l’to’elet need to be observed.
 
There are no hard-and-fast rules about this. Age, for example, can be a deciding factor. Child-parent discussions involving lashon hara l’to’elet occur at the parents’ discretion and since it’s impossible to be perfect about this, you just give it your best shot based on whatever knowledge you have of the situation and the halacha.
 
But I’d grown up with the modern child psychology that children need all their feelings validated and that any lashon hara they spoke was automatically l’to’elet because a child “needs” that outlet in the parent.
 
However, one thing that Judaism (and Rebbetzin Heller’s column) emphasizes is how the home is really training ground to bring out your child’s soul-potential.

Our job as parents is to train the child to be the best he or she can be and consequently earn the best Olam Haba possible.

The only way to do this is to do the following:

1. First, as parents, work on our own middot.
2. Secondly, to train our children to adhere to halacha.

 
And while I knew that “being friends” with one’s child is not good for them, I had a harder time breaking away from the idea that children need to be happy and a parent needs to build a child’s self-esteem. It didn’t help that many very well-meaning chinuch “experts” opined that a happy child-parent relationship was necessary to prevent children from going off the derech. The child needed to feel loved and also love the parents.
 
It sounds so nice and logical. What could be the problem with it?

As one rebbetzin explained to me in my early years of motherhood, a parent cannot focus on making a child happy.

​A parent must focus on doing what’s best for the child, regardless of how hard that is for the parent or how much the child dislikes it. Determining parental success or failure by how the child feels about the parent creates a recipe for disaster.
(You can see more details about that exchange in Allowing Others Their Own Life Journey.)

Also, what I didn't realize back then was that self-esteem cannot be given, it can only be earned by a person through making moral choices and taking the higher road (even if it's only a tad higher than the road everyone else is taking).

In other words, parents can teach their children how to earn & cultivate their own self-esteem, but parents cannot give their children self-esteem.

And yeah, I'm still cleaning up the mess from having gone with the child psychology of the 80s & 90s.

(Fortunately, Hashem helps.)
 
Furthermore, it's not hard to notice that many children with seemingly close & friendly relationships with their parents grew distant or even angry at their parents later while many strictly raised children ended up becoming close and appreciative of their parents later.
 
Yes, parents whose strictness is based on being control-freaks or who are too lazy to say yes when saying no is easier have given firm boundaries & high expectations a bad reputation. But those parents aren’t doing what’s best for the child; they are simply indulging their own bad middot and ignoring their children’s feelings for their own convenience while pretending they are being responsible parents.

Here are some helpful halachic Q&A regarding lashon hara between parents and children:
​hamodia.com/columns/mishmeres-hasholom-ask-rav-151/
https://hamodia.com/columns/mishmeres-hasholom-ask-rav-140/​
​https://hamodia.com/columns/mishmeres-hasholom-ask-rav-137/
https://hamodia.com/columns/mishmeres-hasholom-ask-rav-136/

Here's a gem from Rav Avigdor Miller's dvar Torah for Parshat Vayetzei:

In the frum world, people like to romanticize the Yiddishe mama who enjoyed nothing more than tending to her mikdash me'at, her home and family.

And this was true about some women, but for others it was a mix of ups and downs with regard to how they felt.

Since time immemorial, women based their identity on their roles as mothers and wives. (Case in point: In the not-so-distant past, American wives registered themselves as Mrs. Wayne Johnson, and so on.)

Marriage and parenthood were important goals in both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds for both men and women.

In the Jewish world, unmarried women and childless women were pitied (as were unmarried men and childless men, for that matter) and they themselves experienced deep anguish from their lack of spouse or lack of children. Anything that interfered with an upcoming wedding (such as a missing dowry, etc) caused a crisis. Jews invested copious prayers and blessings from tzaddikim to change an unmarried or childless state.

Yet things changed in the last couple of generations. 

And no matter how hard they've tried, many frum Jewish women end up feeling frustrated at not being able to recapture and fulfill the romanticized image erected on the pedestal of pa'am (the olden golden days of yore).

When frum women turn for guidance, they're often told "things have changed" and "today's women just can't be satisfied being housewives."

And with that, women are encouraged toward careers and all sorts of pastimes (there's a chug for every inclination!), all the while being reminded to "put family first."

Yet this never made sense to me.

If a women's innate nature has always found joy and satisfaction in being elbow-deep in scrubbing soiled cloth diapers against a washboard or cooking over coals or dealing with all her family in a home of just one or two rooms and finding fulfillment in dealing with toddlers all day, then why can't we recapture that?

After all, it's innate NATURE. 

Could it be that innate nature changed so much?

But after talking to people who actually lived in such times, reading memoirs and autobiographical anecdotes, and looking into Chazal, I realized that nature hasn't changed.

Focus has changed. Values have changed.

​But maternal nature actually hasn't.

Whenever given the choice and the financial capability, women almost always chose to delegate their responsibilities to hired help.

True, sometimes a woman performed a chore herself IF she felt the hired help wouldn't do it properly. But barring that, women delegated their responsibilities to others.

​Wealthy women even delegated feeding to wet nurses.

So if the above are true (and they are), then what of the airbrushed picture of the frum Jewish housewife living in poverty, her heart brimming with joy in her duties?

First of all, if you grew up as 1 of 8 kids in a hut in 19th-Century Poland, then that was normal life for you. In fact, your initial years of marriage (with just you, hubby, and the first couple of babies) may even have felt like a break after having grown up crammed with so many other people in such a small space and all the work that entailed.

You may have sometimes dreamed of a nicer home with servants, but that wasn't so realistic, so you just made do with what you had -- which is exactly what you were used to anyway AND exactly how everyone around you lived.

So you did what you were raised to do and what everyone around you did, and you tried to do it with a good attitude.

Although not everyone managed to keep a smile on their face.

​In her autobiography, Gutta: Memoirs of a Vanished World, Gutta recalls sympathetically the impoverished Jewish woman who lived in cramped airless conditions with little light and extracted little with which to nurture their children.

In fact, a major part of Gutta's work as a Beis Yaakov teacher was to provide her more impoverished students with the nurturing, affection, and attention they lacked at home.

Another autobiography hinted at how a constant state of hunger challenged the middot of an otherwise loving mother, noting that when the family's economic standing improved, the mother was much calmer and more pleasant.

But either way, this is radically different than today's world.

In Western society today, people don't necessarily grow up with children around them. Four children is already considered a big family by many people today. Some girls babysit, but a lot don't. 

I didn't say that people don't grow up with babies or small children at all, but it's certainly not how it used to be.

Today, you don't spend your life with there always being a baby or toddler around. And even if your immediate family didn't have a baby or toddler around, your extended family members and your older married siblings did.

Particularly coming from the secular world, many new mothers need to be taught numerous tasks that you see preteen girls performing for their younger siblings in the frum world.

Another difference is attitude. 

Many women feel that the chores, the cooking, and the demands of their children are demeaning somehow.

​Yes, women of yore also felt exhausted and frustrated by it all. They may have wished they could afford a cook, a nanny, and a housekeeper. But they didn't feel like they should be doing something "better." Particularly for frum women, what was better or more important than your home and family?

If you've grown up with just one or two siblings (and each of you in your own room, naturally), and everyone occupied in various ways with toys and gadgets and videos, and without any cultural emphasis or appreciation of housework and child care, then entering into marriage and motherhood presents quite a challenge.

It's nothing you're used to.

Adding to that is that American society is not a child-oriented society. For all its safety regulations for children and promotion of the health and happiness of children, it's really not child-oriented. I only noticed this once I'd entered the frum community in America and then when I came to Israel, which is a very child-oriented society. After seeing this difference, I realized that America really isn't into children and doesn't really know how to relate to them or to mothers. Of course, there are some exceptions, but in general, America is not child-oriented. (Also in contrast to American society, I think Russians are child-oriented, culturally speaking. Maybe in a different way than Israelis are child-oriented, but Russians still have more of a child-orientation than most Americans.)

Anyway, I'm not even sure "child-oriented" is the exact term to describe what I mean, but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

Of particular concern are today's teens who spend so much time on their phones in their rooms. Studies show that today's teens are less likely to go out to even traditional fun events for teens, like shopping, getting a drivers license, partying, and more. Because of diminished physical interaction, homicide is down among teens -- but suicide is up.

After spending a good chunk of your life on your phone in virtual relationships, how will it feel to get up at night for a child or to read books together or deal with potty-training and spoon-feeding or driving to pick up groceries, buy baby clothes, or take a child to the park? How will it feel to have to coordinate life with a spouse?

Because of this drastic change in cultural norms, many women find housework and motherhood overwhelming.

​They simply aren't used to it.

It doesn't feel right.

​On the contrary, it may even feel all wrong.

Surprising truth: There have always been working women, including working mothers.

No, not in droves as they do today. And not with the variety of employment opportunities women enjoy today. (Men, for that matter, also enjoy a far wider variety of employment opportunities than ever before.)

But there have ALWAYS been women who earned money and engaged in work outside their family responsibilities.​

In Caddie Woodlawn, Caddie's mother raised turkeys to sell every November, usually making a nice profit from that.

Almanzo Wilder's mother turned a nice profit by selling her butter.

As a married woman herself, Laura Ingalls Wilder attempted to supplement the family income by selling her own butter and eggs. Later, she wrote articles for a local farm publication and then her bestselling books.

Women worked as nurses, midwives, seamstresses, laundresses, helped their husband run the family store, taught school (as long as they weren't married), babysat, helped their husband with his business (sometimes as a full and very successful partner, including successfully taking over the business if the husband died or was incapacitated), and more.

In addition, working women are mentioned in Chazal.

In the famous section of Mishlei, Eishet Chayil (A Woman of Valor), Shlomo Hamelech describes a woman who makes a sheet and sells it in Mishlei 31:29.

Metzudat David explains it to mean a woman who makes sheets for her own needs, then sells the surplus.

​Ralbag describes a woman who made sheet, which she then passes on to a merchant to sell on her behalf in order for her to acquire capital buy "all that her soul desires."

Malbim explains that she wove both a sheet and a belt, which she then sold to a merchant. Then she distributed her earnings to the poor, creating for herself spiritual garments to don when she eventually leaves her physical garments, enabling her to indeed be "clothed in oz and hadar and laugh on her last day." (Nice peirush, eh?)

The Ben Ish Chai also recommends that women who earn their own money use it to ease the financial burden of her husband (by buying her own cosmetics and personal needs) and distribute money to the poor.

Prior to that verse, 31:16 describes a woman who examines a field and purchases it. Metzudat David, Ibn Ezra, Ralbag, and Malbim all explain this to mean an intelligent business woman, and interpret the following verses as proof of her financial acumen and success (i.e., the yield of the field is good, and which enables her to acquire a vineyard, etc.), which allows her to ease things for her husband and provide for the poor of her community.

​Both the Malbim in 31:18 explains that she works for her actual needs, without making a career out of it. Malbim says: "Gam lo tiyached mischara rak b'avor ha'arev v'hamo'eel l'tzorech atzmah" -- She won't make the business something special and stand-out (tiyached is like meyuchad), just what is pleasant and useful for her specific needs.

Metzudat David 31:19 explains that even as she puts her mind to business, mikol makom lo zazah mimalechet nashim -- nonetheless, she doesn't move on from women's work; she still tends to her domestic duties.

Interestingly, the Sages advise/assume that a married woman's earnings go toward her own needs (so that she can ease her husband's burden) and toward tzedakah & gemilut chasedim.

This apparently is their ideal for the working wife & mother of valor.

In Colonial America, Massachusetts midwife Martha Ballard kept a diary during the years 1785-1812.

Martha only started midwifery after her own childbearing years were long past and she could rely on her young adult daughters to run the home while she was at a delivery. After those daughters married, Martha relied on hired help, which was not nearly as reliable as her daughters.

Based on what she describes in her diary, Martha prefers gardening and delivering babies to housework.

This is clearly not an influence from the feminist movement or modern mores, but an innate personal preference.

​In fact, many modern women can relate to her description upon returning home in 1796 from her 612th delivery:

"Up in arms" paints an image of a house weaponized against its owner. One pictures Martha arriving at home only to encounter unfolded laundry aiming a shot gun or dust bunnies armed with tomahawks. 

Two years later, she again wrote of coming home at 10 a.m.:

Yet another time, she was called for a delivery in the middle of butchering a calf. She came back a day later to find the kitchen still a bloody mess with the calf head lying where she left it. Neither her husband nor her 2 sons still living at home had tended to things in her working absence.

Due to the strenuous journeys Martha sometimes needed to make to arrive at a delivery on time, she noted that she arrived at work "almost fatigued to death."

The above are probably familiar sentiments for some working wives or mothers.

Yet while Martha found domestic duties a burden, she still felt they were important.

Another example:
​One of my relatives, born in the South at the beginning of America's Civil War, wrote a long poem in 1934 about her struggle to face the daily question of "What's for dinner?"

Here are 3 excerpts from that poem (the original contains a stanza for each day of the week):

​She preceded feminism and even WWII's Rosie the Riveter. So she wasn't affected by feminist thought or attitudes. Like a lot of us, she finds dinner a challenge, made even more challenging by the more labor-intensive preparation necessary before modern appliances became common.

However, she didn't find it demeaning or unfair. She just didn't feel up to all the time, especially as she aged -- and especially on days packed with other labor-intensive demands, like laundry day.

​So the modern working woman who doesn't feel like putting together dinner after a hard day's work isn't so different than this old-time Southern woman who also didn't feel like putting together dinner after a hard day's work.

What's the point of reading all this?

Well, I feel like women today can end up feeling second-rate.

Why?

Not because of the new and worse value system or emphasis or focus.

Focus and values CAN be changed. It takes some work, depending on your personality and background influences, but they can be changed.

But many frum women feel second-rate because of their actual feelings.

There's a fairy tale that women performed all their domestic duties with a song in their heart and a dance in their step, with Jewish women practically swooning from the uplifting holiness of working in their mikdash me'at.

Yes, women experienced fulfillment.

Yes, there were aspects they enjoyed.

And yes, their domestic responsibilities were important to them.

But again, that doesn't mean that they never felt overwhelmed, exhausted, fed up, or frustrated similar to how you feel sometimes.

They did!

And whenever possible, they usually hired someone else to fulfill these duties.

(Although it's important to note that even when a mother hired a nanny or a wet-nurse, the mother was around. She was able to oversee both her child and her child's caretaker. Passing one's very young child into another's care - especially into a group situation - AND being far from them is a modern construct.)

You're not second-rate or "not good enough" because you struggle to feel the holiness of mopping your floors or because you're desperate to hire someone else to clean the bathrooms or because you send your 2-year-old out to gan.

You're not second-rate or "not good enough" because you prefer reading a book to making dinner.

You're not second-rate or "not good enough" because you feel the need for a paying job in addition to your domestic responsibilities. ("Zamama sadeh v'tikachehu..." 31:18)

Like I said, FEELINGS haven't changed much over time.

I think that because women are taught that their feelings make them second-rate, it's part of why it is so hard for some women to invest in their families and homes.

They think that "things have changed" and are impossible to resolve. 

So why even bother trying?

Therefore, this post is here to VALIDATE your feelings.

​You're actually not so different than the women of yore.

​Nor are you hopeless.

​Don't despair.

So to sum up:

• A woman's main focus was on her home. THAT'S what's changed.
• But women's feelings toward domestic responsibilities haven't changed so much.
• Whenever possible, women generally tried to delegate ALL her domestic responsibilities to others.
• A frum women prized both her housework and a good attitude...
• ...but depending on her situation, she didn't always succeed in doing so.
• Many women weren't content with housework and childcare alone; they needed more.
• You're not second-rate or not good enough if you don't enjoy housework or childcare.
• Girls raised to value domestic responsibilities find them easier to bear as women.
• Societal mores create difficult struggles and despair for women today.
• It's okay and even natural if you don't find housework & childcare so enthralling.
• Don't despair of yourself. You're not nearly as bad/hopeless/meh as you may have been led to believe.

Finally, there is a world of difference between feeling like you want servants or nannies because you're tired, overwhelmed, and don't enjoy the work...and feeling like you want servants or nannies because the job just "isn't for you" or it's beneath you and you should be doing something "better" and "more important."

Do you see the difference?

Modern feminism inserted the "more important" bug into women's brains.

THAT'S the attitude that's changed.

This is really late to be posting about praying for the upcoming school year (which starts on Sunday for many frum children), but here it is anyway (because I forgot until now):

A Short Yet Powerful Tefillah for Our Children
​
How Praying for Your Child Can Work

May all our children enjoy a school year brimming with bracha and hatzlacha and good health!

It's funny (and hopefully surprisingly pleasant) how things work out sometimes.

For example, school vacation is often a bit of a challenge for me (as it is for many parents). Yes, there are a lot of fun and geshmak moments, but stressful stuff happens too.

So I wasn't sure how this summer vacation would go.

For the past few years, some or all of my older kids like to stay up most of the night during vacations. But their talking and moving around the apartment sometimes woke me up or even worse, woke up the youngest, who until this past year had been an inconveniently light sleeper.

(They didn't mean to be noisy; they thought they were being quiet enough. And if the youngest woke up, they offered to take care of him so I could go back to sleep. So not bad kids at all.)

This is when a person finds herself in that no-man's land:
I know that whatever will be will be for our best benefit. Even all the stressful stuff with him before was for our benefit (even as it sometimes drove me to tears and overwhelming anxiety).

But at the same time, I'm really dreading going through everything again, with the extra pressure of dealing with a greater distance and transportation and less flexibility regarding times, etc.

On the other hand, there's so much to be grateful for: We know the teacher and we know he's so good with this age, we know our child will enjoy playing with other boys and learning new things. We like the school. The van hired for transport seems  responsible.

So there's what my mind knows and what my heart feels. And they're at odds.

We'll see how things go.

And however it goes...gam zu l'tovah!

​(At least that's what I plan to keep telling myself, even if I have to grit my teeth to say it. ;-)

During an overlong stay in the USA, I ended up at the public library, desperate for some kosher reading to combat my mind-gnawing boredom.

I came across a book whose title and author I no longer remember, but the true story always stayed with me.

The author described her experience as an obese young woman who weighed over 300 pounds. Feeling unable to lose the weight, this young woman did not even have the conventionally pretty face and attractive hair some overweight women have.

Because of all this, she felt certain that love and marriage could never be an option for her. But being a naturally warm and nurturing person, she invested all her love and caring in the babies she was responsible for as a nurse in the maternity section of her local hospital.

She made peace with her life as she saw it, that she would never marry and have children of her own. Thus, she completely removed any thought of romance or love from her mind.

Though she could have put herself in the category of a have-not, she decided to become a giver instead.

(What's the difference? I suppose it's a matter of focus and direction...)

That same hospital also employed a young male pediatrician of average build and a warm engaging personality. For the sake of the babies, they ended up working together quite a lot and developed professional appreciation for the dedication and caring they saw in each other.

This flowed out into catching a cup of coffee together after work to discuss events that occurred during the day. Sometimes, he stopped by her house and they sat on her front porch together for a chat.

Grateful for a dedicated like-minded friend and co-worker, she enjoyed the friendship in a completely platonic manner.

One night as they sat chatting on her front porch, the doctor suddenly asked her to marry him.

Her heart stopped. "What?" she said, sure she couldn't have heard him right, yet also knowing that he wasn't cruel enough to joke like that.

He again asked her to marry him.

Wide-eyed, she turned to him in shock and said something like, "But I'm so obese! You're normal and you deserve a normal-sized woman! I'm just so obese."

And then he replied with something like, "That's because you need a body big enough to hold that huge heart you have."

They got married and ended up having a couple of kids of their own (even though I think that proved dangerous because of her girth). So they decided to adopt unwanted children, and ended up adopting over 30 children of all different races, many of whom had some form or Downs syndrome or other disabilities.

And at some point, she lost all that excess weight, but the book wasn't about that, so I don't know how she did it. She just mentioned it as a postscript at the end.

Anyway, the above encounter always stayed with me because it was a compelling example of how you don't need to go tearing after things or letting resentments and self-pity pile up in your head.

All she did was just decide to empty what she really wanted (marriage and children) from her mind and heart, and then just focus on being a really good person and giving love where it was needed in order to find meaning in her life.

And then Hashem brought her husband to her doorstep without any effort or angst on her part.

And together, they ended up being a force of good in the world.

One evening, I went to put my 3-year-old to bed, but when I called him, he refused to answer.

After looking in a couple of rooms, I found him lying on a bunch of clean linens in the bottom drawer opened from his older siblings' trundle bed. (He'd been playing with his older siblings and after they'd dropped off to sleep, he decide he wanted to sleep in this drawer in the room with them, rather than going to his bed in another bedroom.)

I looked at him and he looked right back at me. Then he said, "I'm not here."

Restraining a laugh, I said, "Yes, you are here. I'm looking right at you."

Still looking me right in the eye, he arched his little eyebrows, shook his little head, and repeated, "No. I'm not here."

Recalling Rav Arush's observation that children mirror their parents qualities and behaviors (sometimes in an extremely magnified way and sometimes in a much more subtle way), I realized that my son was doing exactly what I tend to do to Hashem.

And I'm guessing I'm not the only one, either...

We know that Hashem is thoroughly Omnipotent and not only sees everything we do, He even knows our true motives because He sees exactly what's in our hearts and minds.

Yet despite our intellectual knowledge of this, we still do things we know He doesn't approve of.

It's exactly as silly as looking a parent in the eye while insisting, "I'm not here."

Except that when we do it as thinking adults, it's not nearly as cute or innocent as when a 3-year-old does it to his mother.

And although Hashem loves us even more than we love any of our children of any age, it's not cute or funny when we deny our culpability regarding prohibitions that are really important.

"Dum-de-dum-de-dum...I'm not really doing anything so bad, God...You can't really see me...I'm not really here doing what it looks like I'm doing...dum-de-dum-de-dum..."

But you are here. And He's looking right at you.

May we all succeed in maintaining a loving awareness of Hashem at all times.