Parenting for Successful Dating & Marriage by Sherry Zimmerman and Rosie Einhorn
Today, more people are finding themselves single and are unhappy about it. [See Survey Says] They find it harder to develop relationships that lead to good, stable and happy marriages. How do we reverse this trend and increase the rate of successful, enduring Jewish marriages? By preparing young Jews for dating and marriage, long before they are ready to date. Moreover, parents are the most likely candidates for this responsibility.The best gift a parent can give to prepare a child for dating and marriage is a positive outlook on marriage in general and their own marriage in particular. Even parents who lack shalom bayis or who are divorced can give their children a positive outlook on married life by emphasizing the benefits of married life and noting the good points in their own marriage or former marriage.
Parents should:
1. Make a conscious effort to show their children that they care for each other
2. Describe the values they share and the features they admire in each other.
3. Be aware of the non-verbal cues they use. Spouses sometimes argue and it is healthy for children to observe their parents resolve conflicts constructively and continue to love and respect each other.
Although marriage is a goal the Jewish faith espouses from the moment a Jewish baby is named (Torah, chuppah and maasim tovim), in many families this goal is not actively reinforced during a child's upbringing. Contemporary culture treats marriage simply as an alternative lifestyle choice: the "me first" ideology encourages children to finish their graduate degrees and internships, establish financial security, become established in a career, and acquire some accoutrements of success before they even consider dating for marriage. When an adult delays marriage-oriented dating in order to achieve other goals, he can have difficulty making a transition from casual dating to developing a serious relationship that can lead to marriage.
In addition, while the achievements we parents encourage our children to accomplish are laudable, they alone do not prepare our sons and daughters with the skills they will need in their personal and familial relationships. Our children need socialization skills, perhaps akin to a "Social Ed" class in high school, and there is no more important venue for imparting this than the home. Another important middah (trait) that many contemporary young adults appear to lack is a sense of responsibility. Parents should inculcate this early, while at the same time facilitating age-appropriate independence.
One of the difficulties of parenthood is that we are so busy with our lives and the demands of raising a family that we don't think about how our children will navigate the dating maze until they actually begin to date. If we are conscious of the skills that will help them successfully date for marriage and be good spouses, we can adapt our parenting style to help them acquire these skills as they mature.
Sherry Zimmerman is an attorney and Rosie Einhorn is a psychotherapist. Together they founded Sasson V'Simcha- The Center For Jewish Marriage, Inc. They are the authors of Talking Tachlis and In The Beginning and write weekly advice columns for The Jewish Press and http://www.aish.com
Click here to leave a comment
Monday, November 15, 2004: anonymous wrote…
Modern Orthodox parents and schools have to rethink whether prioritizing
Ivy league educations, careers, money and maybe even religious development above marriage is an appropriate method of inculcating Torah Umitzvos to the next generation. Schools and parents should be more proactive in discussing marriage, having lectures and shiurim, etc. Schools must start being more than Jewish high schools with a smattering of Judaic studies and little “spirituality” or “ruchnius”. Parents have to be role models in terms of their Shabbos/Yom Tov observance and what they consider to be appropriate Motzaei Shabbos activities. In my opinion, NCSY chapters are a far better and more supervised activity than unsupervised “Shabbatonim” (Hillcrest, Queens, has them every year with zero concern for tznius, etc).