Updated: Links on Tzniut, Parenting
A new carnival called Parents Helping Parents is being hosted at Modern Parent.
Don’t have time for the soccer game or to explain the facts of life? Help is available. “You worry about yourselves, we’ll worry about your kids.”Kidsourcing. (Hebrew)
Hat tip: Gila
Update: This morning, when you click on the video a message appears:
Parenting Services for Rent? Not in our school. Kidsourcing is a fictitious company. You will soon be directed to another site.
I gather that the whole thing is a clever ad campaign for Adler parenting classes, sponsored by Clalit Health Fund (Histadrut). I was wondering, because it seemed too slick to have been produced by amateurs. After viewing the ad you can go back and watch the spoof.
Modesty Blasé laments, “For the first time in Jewish history, mothers are encouraging their daughters to underachieve. They shouldn’t be too pretty, too smart or too competent for fear of scaring the boys away.” Smart and competent I can believe. But since when has beauty ever been a problem for Jewish girls? If she means that tzniut dress codes detract from women’s beauty, that’s nothing new. Read her post and tell us what you think.
How to Become a Patient Parent. Hat tip: Esther’s sidebar
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Abbi Said,
August 24, 2008 - 23 Av 5768 @ 7:57 AM
It looks like the clalit thing is taking advantage of the popularity of “Super Nanny” and similar shows. As for the “kidsourcing” thing. It’s like a joke, if you have to explain a marketing ploy- it’s probably not worth doing. :/
re: modesty blase- this is really the FIRST time in Jewish history that Jewish mothers are concerned that their daughters are “too smart” to find a husband? Really? This sounds more like a cliche that was set in stone from time immemorial.
Mothers have been constantly concerned that their daughters would be “too smart” or that their sons wouldn’t wants someone who’s “too smart”. Guess what- most of these kids are “too smart” for their parents and end up with the best catches because they are smart enough to wait for a match that truly accepts them for who they are.
Lion in Zion Said,
August 24, 2008 - 23 Av 5768 @ 8:25 AM
“This sounds more like a cliche that was set in stone from time immemorial.”
?
Abbi Said,
August 24, 2008 - 23 Av 5768 @ 9:25 AM
LOZ:not sure what you ? is. You’ve never heard this complaint that mothers worry that their daughters are too smart to marry?
Leora Said,
August 24, 2008 - 23 Av 5768 @ 11:56 AM
I would agree with Abbi (partly). I don’t see any evidence in my community of girls dumbing down, nor among my more right wing family in Far Rockaway.
And I first heard the idea of girls being “too smart” from a non-Jewish friend, so my impression is that this is a universal thing, not just limited to Jews.
A Living Nadneyda Said,
August 24, 2008 - 23 Av 5768 @ 11:59 AM
…smart is out, mediocre is in. Many religious women in their 40s who went to university and worked briefly in their profession relinquished their fledgling careers to raise their families…. most of them are frustrated and bored.
Maybe this is the trend in England, although I must admit that one of my American Haredi friends postponed graduate school for marriage. That was a decade ago.
I commented on modesty blase that many of my friends — not the more religious ones — have chosen full-time parenting over careers, and enjoy their lives. I’m sure many of them will return to their careers when their children are older, although to everyone’s detriment, our society does not encourage this.
Many times over the years, That Guy I Married has noted his regret that he is the higher wage-earner, since he would rather spend more time at home and let me do all the earning. Alas, a career in the education system “pays” in self-satisfaction, but not much else.
ALN
ProfK Said,
August 24, 2008 - 24 Av 5768 @ 6:40 PM
I so wish this war didn’t keep getting fought over and over again. In my parents’ home it was ossur to be a ba’al tashchis. You didn’t waste physical resources and you didn’t waste mental ones either. All of us were expected to develop our intellect as far as we were capable of. All of us got married and all of us have husbands who are more than thankful that we are capable of being full partners rather than needy dependents, that our “brightness” was not dimmed to barely visible.
When it comes to shidduchim, if boys are worried about girls who might be brighter than they are, perhaps we need to turn up the brightness level of the boys, rather than dim the brightness level of the girls. Just a thought.
Orthonomics Said,
August 24, 2008 - 24 Av 5768 @ 10:38 PM
Definitely a trend to dumb down. While girls are making strides, there are those who don’t want to hurt their shidduch chances and stick with a Ma’alot degree at the most.
Lion in Zion Said,
August 25, 2008 - 24 Av 5768 @ 5:43 AM
ABBI:
“You’ve never heard this complaint that mothers worry that their daughters are too smart to marry?”
i have, but . . .
a) i only know of this as a contemporary phenomenon and i am not aware of the historical echos you seem to refer to (“from time immemorial”)
b) this attitude is by no means universal. it has certainly not infected my circles.
(btw, did you catch the article on ramaz in haaretz?)
ORTHONOMICS:
what is maalot degree
Abbi Said,
August 25, 2008 - 24 Av 5768 @ 6:46 AM
Ok, my “time immemorial” comment was a bit hyperbolic, but I was responding to the original bloggers contention that this was “the first time in history” that Jewish women were concerned about this.
You can find evidence of this concern probably ever since the concept education for girls became a reality.
I will look for the Haaretz article now.
Lion in Zion Said,
August 25, 2008 - 24 Av 5768 @ 7:06 AM
abbi:
http://agmk.blogspot.com/2008/08/sex-ed-for-orthodox-day-schools-ramaz_24.html
A Living Nadneyda Said,
August 25, 2008 - 24 Av 5768 @ 12:16 PM
ProfK-
I love your family’s approach to bal taschhit. Or, as the ad says (is it still around?), the mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Why are we still stuck in this harmful place of even considering whether half of our members are less worthy of an education than the other half? Might as well discuss rescinding the 19th amendment to the US constitution, while we’re at it.
ALN
ALN