Juggling Work and Family (4)

Does having a full-time working mother negatively impact an Orthodox Jewish family? According to the women profiled in the winter issue of Jewish Action, the answer is an emphatic “no.”

The women describe schedules that made serious demands on their time, and they seem to think that those choices didn’t affect their families and their children.

It would have been interesting—and to my mind, far more informative—to ask the family members of these superwomen how they viewed the fact that their mom/wife was working so hard. Were they really as okay with it as their mothers/wives seem to think?

At the very least, the article should have featured women who are stay-at-home moms as well. What sacrifices does that lifestyle entail? How hard is it really? What are the ramifications of making that choice? Perhaps then your cover story “Striking A Balance” would have been somewhat more balanced.

RABBI REUVEN SPOLTER
Yad Binyamin, Israel