Many children continue to be financially dependent upon their
parents long after the wedding. Some receive an ongoing
supply of benefits or allowances. Some couples take their
main meal by their parents for the entire first year after
marriage, while others are constant Shabbos guests. Most
parents are in long-term debt from marrying off their
children, either to revolving gemachim or through
mortgages. Has the time not arrived for children to open
their eyes, to sharpen their senses and to ask themselves if
they have not become a burden to their parents?
I met Shevi, who lives on the border of Bnei Brak-Ramat Gan,
at a shopping center one day. She looked carefree and
lighthearted as she was choosing a child's outfit whose price
tag was in the several hundreds. She wrote out a check
without batting an eyelid and seemed pleased with her
purchase.
"I always buy expensive clothing. The price tells me it's
high quality that will last," she boasts.
"At that rate, you can go bankrupt," I couldn't help noting.
"You need a full time salary just for clothing alone."
"My father pays for it," she said unabashed.
So this was the secret of her equanimity. It was not her
husband's kollel check she was spending, but her
father's bank account that was underwriting her standard of
living. "I work in my father's office," she continued to
confide, "but really, only when I feel up to it. I have no
regular hours." Shevi is registered on the payroll and can
afford a weekly ozeret.
I was shocked, and couldn't help showing it. She seemed very
comfortable with her lifestyle and felt no need to make any
changes, she admitted freely, in reply to the questions I
couldn't help asking.
"My father has plenty," she said with a dismissing wave of
her hand. "He loves to give us."
This is an extreme case of a businessman with three children
who does not feel any pinch in providing for his daughter's
generous standard of living. With most families, this is not
the case. Parents are deep in debt, but continue to provide
for their married children, be it with a steady flow of
groceries right to their doorstep, allowances, free lunches,
fish for Shabbos, and so on, long after the wedding.
Kest, or provision for young couples for a certain
specified time after their marriage, has long been a Jewish
institution, especially for bnei Torah devoting this
period to Torah study. But the situation has changed, at
least in Eretz Yisroel, where in most cases, children are
provided with an apartment as they start off their married
life, which sets parents in debt for many years to come, and
where the husband receives a living stipend from whatever
kollel he attends.
Shuli receives a meat order delivered every other week to her
doorstep. She has no conscience pangs about accepting it;
after all, her mother holds two jobs and earns a good salary.
So why not?
Shuly's mother did not want her to feel any different from
her married classmates who eat their main meal by their
parents every day. But being out of the house most of the day
made it very difficult for her. For the week after sheva
brochos, she took time off from work to be home and serve
three course meals, but soon saw that she would be unable to
keep it up. She `compromised' by providing the meat necessary
for Shuli to cook. A `concession' on her part.
In my pursuit to answers to the questions of how much do
parents provide, I came across a young kollel wife,
married a year with a child, who does not feel the need to go
out to work even though her father can barely support his
family and cover the basic utilities. "I know that they won't
let me starve," she says with a shrug, and continues to
accept a weekly fruit order delivered to her doorstep.
To the credit of married children who continue to take/accept
help from parents is the good will in which the help is
extended. "More than the calf wishes to nurse does the cow
wish to suckle." They don't realize how difficult it can be
for the parents and truly think that this is the parents'
greatest pleasure in life. "If they didn't have, they
wouldn't give." "They don't feel any lack" are only some of
the reactions we received. But this is not always true, and
in their naivete, children fail to realize it.
One interesting point was raised in our inquiries: "They've
accustomed us to taking" and "If they had not begun, we would
not have dreamed of asking..." In other words, married
children who continue to receive fish/meat for Shabbos
`blame' the parents for this, for having clipped their wings,
so to speak, and made them reliant upon their generosity. It
becomes a pattern no one will break.
A mother of two married children explains why she continues
to serve hot meals daily to her married daughter and son-in-
law: "It is a burden with a price to pay and I personally
don't think it justified. She already has her own home and
even though she doesn't have enough practical cooking skills
and confidence in herself, it's time she began acquiring
them. But her friends go to their parents' for meals and I
don't want her to feel she is any different. I wish someone
would open her eyes to the other side of the situation. I
guess this goes for the general public, as well. It's time we
all woke up to the reality of how difficult it is to keep on
pampering our married children and to change some of the
accepted social norms."
This, then, is the point of this piece. If parents are able
to give and take satisfaction in doing so -- all the credit
to them. But when the giving is a great effort and not
justified in real terms, children should become sensitized
and have the courage to refuse. They should not wait until
the parents are forced to say so themselves. Let them thank
their parents for their help up till now, and begin to rely
on their own resources, and cut down standards, if that is
what is called for.
The satisfaction that the young couples will feel in standing
independently on their own two feet will be well worth any
sacrifice on their part.
