I walked into my high school classmate’s wedding last week and was unexpectedly overwhelmed with babies. Apparently, since our class’ last wedding/reunion (that is what they really are, after all), half my classmates had gone and gotten knocked up by their husbands. I still don’t feel mature enough to be choosing our country’s next president (although is anyone in this country really up to that task?) and here my friends are sorting their income into “bulk-sized baby formula” and “college savings for little ziskeit.”
I graduated high school in 2007, making most of my classmates 22 or 23, and currently half of them are married or engaged (and that percentage doesn’t include those engaged-to-be-engaged, or those previously-but-no-longer-engaged). And now, apparently, many of the marrieds are toting babies on their hips like the latest fad. I’ve never been good at keeping up with the times, but suddenly I’m feeling way behind.
When I turned to one of my closer friends from high school, and remarked in a bit of a tizzy, “Everyone who’s married is a mother already!” she replied calmly, “Well, that’s kind of the next step, isn’t it?”
There we have it. Yet another difference between my current world and the world I inhabited in my pseudo-Bais Yaakov high school: in my world, getting married isn’t necessarily the first domino in a pre-arranged system, where the next domino is having kids, then raising them, and so on (I say and so on, because I’m not really sure what happens next. No one’s let me in on it yet). In my more left-leaning Modern Orthodox community– I just double checked with a friend to make sure I was right– getting married doesn’t imply you’ll be poppin’ out the kids as fast as your ovaries can make them.
Sure, it’s generally expected that we, my friends and I at YU, will eventually be birthing the babies and raising a brood, but not right away. We get leeways from rabbis to use birth control for the first year or more of marriage. We’re encouraged to wait until we’re financially stable and psychologically prepared for the life-long challenge of raising children. We have time to breathe, and time to get to know our husbands before we’re thrown into the dirty diapers together (literally. I’ve baby-sat. I’ve seen things).
I’ve been out of high school a mere 5 years and already I’m forgetting the way it worked there. It’s surprising me where it didn’t used to. And though I can’t say one way is better than the other, I can wonder– what are the reasons and benefits to each philosophy? Does spending more time as a couple before having kids really lead to a happier marriage? Does having children right away allow for greater dedication to the mitzvot of raising a family? And which of those two ideals– happiness versus halacha– is more important, anyway?
I can’t answer any of those questions– heck, asking them hurt my head– but I can know which option is better for me. I know that to be in a stable, happy relationship matters most to me. As much as I value a career, I look forward to having a baby (yes, even with all the poop they come with), and yet as much as I can’t wait to hold that tiny being in my arms, first I need to know that the baby will be coming into a home that’s happy and ready to have it and support it. And while other women might be able to do that at 22 (or 18, depending on which classmate we’re discussing), I need a few more years.
