Holy Birth Control

A few months ago I was looking at a Hebrew site about birth and I saw an ad for a book called From the Belly and from the Birth (Mibeten u'Mileyda) by Noa Bareket. This book, written by a childbirth educator, is a collection of interviews with Israeli women about their experiences of pregnancy and childbirth- EXACTLY like Expecting Miracles- except with secular Israeli women. So, I exchanged e-mails with the author- and she was as excited to learn of my existence as I had been to hear of hers, and we decided to trade books.

The evening after I picked up her book from the post office, I couldn't put it down. I was amazed to read these women's stories- and to see the ways in which their accounts of motherhood were similar to the those of the women in my book, and just as amazed to see the ways in which their stories were dramatically different. I loved, for example, seeing the spirituality of these self-described secular women- women who felt that their unborn children chose them from Heaven, or who had experienced all sorts of miracles related to their baby's names- the wife, husband, and two best friends all spontaneously thinking up the same archaic name for their baby to be. It was also wonderful to see all the support that these women received from their own mothers after birth- especially since a lot of the women in my book were immigrants to Israel who were an ocean away from any sort of family support system.

And then, there were the things that were weird for me- the women who sought out spiritual guidance not from rabbis- but rather from psychics, shiatsu healers, card readers, and coffee-grounds interpreters. Or the kibbutznik who had twins and then aborted her next child because she just wasn't up to having another baby at that time (the truth is that, even though I really enjoyed the half of the book I read, after reading one too many graphic tales of abortions, and losing one too many hours of sleep over them, I decided not to read any more).

But the main difference between the women in Bareket's book and mine was their attitude towards family planning. A lot of the stories I read followed a certain pattern, that went something like this: the couple has just finished building a house, and the wife is at a lull in her career so that a baby wouldn't be too disruptive, so they decide to try to become pregnant (he could have waited a few more years, but she thought 'I'm already 33! Let's get moving!'), so she goes off the pill, and a few months later she gets pregnant. Post baby they go on the pill again, and wait for a few years, until all the factors in their lives align themselves once again for another baby to come into their lives. After the second baby, things start getting harder- and harder. They love their children- but the mother finds that parenting is difficult, or she's been appointed the regional coordinator of something or other- and that's the official end of the Jewish Pregnancy chapter of their lives.

The religious women that I interviewed for my book and that I know in real life have a drastically different attitude towards family planning.

Recently I have discovered the extent to which there are different models in terms of family planning among Torah-observant women. On the one hand, there are whole communities of women in the Orthodox community who NEVER use birth control- they get married young and have many children- and spend their lives devoting themselves to raising "a family blessed with children." Raising such a large family is very difficult- but in my interviews I found that the mothers understand that they are doing something of ultimate importance- bringing more children into the world and raising them as committed Jews- which they see as the most important thing they can possibly do for the Jewish people. These women as a rule tend to be very very busy as well as very very proud.

These mothers are like any woman with a very challenging careers- such as a corporate lawyer who has to put in late hours, and meet a lot of urgent demands, and read a lot, and consult with a lot of experts in order to be the best corporate lawyer she can be. This is how most religious mothers of large families tend to feel as well- that they will do everything they need to do in order to make sure that they are raising their many children as best they can- no matter how much difficulty is involved.

These women see themselves as "kelim" - as vessels for G-d's blessing to come down to this world. G-d sends them souls, and they receive them with open arms (and wombs). For them, it is an easy theological equation- G-d decides when I become pregnant. End of story.

Up until very recently I thought that this was the primary model for Jewish Family Planning- or actually Jewish lack of family planning, except to maybe take a year off between your sixth and your seventh child, for example. And then, a few weeks ago I was speaking with a group of women about the Jewish attitude towards pregnancy, and a mother I know came up after my talk and told me that she lives in a religious community where the women, in consultation with Orthodox rabbis, maintain control over their reproductive lives. They use birth control each time after they give birth- in order to space their children- and then start using birth control once they have had the amount of children they feel they can handle.

So, I made a call to my rabbi to ask him about this. I thought he would say something like, "Well, there are women who do this- but it's not so good." But what he told me is that this approach is an equally valid model of Jewishly planning a family. He explained that just as there are four matriarchs- so too there are equally acceptable models of Jewish motherhood- the stay home mother of twelve side by side with the mother of four with a thriving Occupational Therapy practice. When I tried to push him to tell me which way was better- whether women should really push themselves to be like the mother of twelve, he refused to choose between these two models of motherhood- explaining that each couple must choose, based on their own situation, what is the right way for them.

Guidelines for use of birth control vary from community to community, and talking issues over with a rabbi who understands the world in which you live, and your concerns can provide invaluable help in making sense of the relatively complex criteria and concerns surrounding birth control use in Jewish law. (Don't have a rabbi to consult with? You could send me a letter to pass on to the site rabbi. To familiarize yourself with basic guidelines, an excellent, unprecedented, pretty thorough resource on the Halachic use of birth control is http://www.yoatzot.org/category/5 )

So, with such different approaches to use of birth control, can we still make any blanket statements about what it means to plan a family in accordance with the Torah? I was a bit stumped by this- and then my husband and I sat down last night and came up with a few general guidelines for what it means to be Jewishly planning a family. I wanted to share these guidelines with you since I think it would do a lot of good if women all over the Jewish world- from Orthodox to Unaffiliated- would take a fresh look at the Torah's wisdom in these matters in order to get recharged, strengthened, and inspired.

The number one guideline for a woman who wants to Jewishly plan a family is that there is value in raising a large family. Whether this means having four children or fourteen- religious couples understand that it is very important for a couple to make every effort to go beyond having 2.2 children. There are many reasons for this- because it is a mitzvah to have many children, because religious society places tremendous value on families and raising children, because the Jewish people desperately needs more members in order to survive- especially after the Holocaust, and the plague of intermarriage and assimilation that has decimated us over the course of this past century.

The next guideline for women who are trying to Jewishly plan their families is that family is their top priority. I once heard from a teacher that when you see a woman who looks like she is doing everything well- she is the fantastic mother of a lot of kids, a high powered career woman, volunteers ten hours a week in the hospital, AND has a spotless house- that there is always one corner of the sheet that is popping up that we just don't see. I am sure that there ARE a few mothers who really do manage everything- rebbetzins with nine amazing children and a full time job in hi-tech- who are able to hold everything together- but in most cases, devotion to full-time work means taking away and cutting corners in one's role as a mother.

So, if we set up a scale from one to ten of where women put their energies- one being women who give 100% of their time to mothering, and ten being for women who only value career, there are some women who are ones and tens- but most of us fall somewhere in the middle- juggling our professional independent lives with our lives as mothers. From what I see- religious women tend to cluster between one and five- meaning that family is top priority for the large majority of their fertile years (which could easily mean several decades of childbearing and rearing).

I think that this is the case because in the religious community there's a ton of acceptance, understanding, and respect for the self-sacrifice that motherhood demands which is sadly lacking in Western society. While Western society values self-sacrifice for career- working very hard and spending huge amounts of money on getting a higher education, putting in crazy hours to get ahead in one's career, and then planning and limiting the number of children you have in order to not infringe too much on one's professional life- in religious society, there is the same kind of respect given to the sacrifices mothers make in order to have larger families.

I once told my husband that motherhood is boot camp for giving. Unlike a regular job- I do not have fixed hours, I have to work even if I'm sick, or in the middle of the night, and my clients are often not as easy to deal with as an adult clientele. Motherhood, in addition to being incredibly rewarding and fun, IS often overwhelming and exhausting- but in the observant community, there is tremendous moral support for mothers. After I give birth, NOBODY asks me when I am going back to work. In my community, it does not even occur to anyone that a woman staying home with her children is "just" a mother. In my community a mother who devotes herself to her five children is respected just as highly as any professor, rabbi, or rocket scientist. If anything, in my community, a devoted mother is probably respected more.

Over a decade ago I met a young man who was making fun of religious people- and especially of the wives who waste their lives raising so many children. I remember asking him what he would think of a woman who was a nursery school teacher? Would he think that she was wasting her life? "Of course, not," he answered. So what's the difference, really? The difference is a paycheck, the difference is prestige, the difference is doing something that LOOKS impressive in the update you send to your college alumni magazine.

Jewishly planning a family is not an easy thing to do- it takes a sizable dose of hard work, faith, and determination, balanced with a good healthy dose of self awareness. It's not easy, but it might provide some comfort and inspiration to remember that G-d loves Jewish mothers, at least as much as we love our own children. And that's saying something.