Parshas Ki Teitzei - Marriage and Parenting
“Dad, can I have extra computer time?” If you’ve never spent time with kids, you may wonder why the child didn’t ask Mom. Everyone else understands that children intuitively know which parent is more likely to yield the desired answer in the moment, and that’s the parent they’ll turn to. Unfortunately, this natural dynamic is often a painful source of conflict in marriages, as each parent has personal opinions based on their individual upbringing, temperament, and life experiences. These differences strain a marriage as a good cop/bad cop dynamic emerges or at the very least, parents feel alone and unsupported in their parenting decisions. Even worse, ongoing conflicting parental messages are damaging to children and detrimental to their growth.
Parshas Ki Teitzei (Deuteronomy 21:10 - 25:19) lays out this dynamic for us in three consecutive commandments. The first concerns a soldier in battle who sees and desires a beautiful captive. The second regards a man who hates his wife, and the third depicts the wayward and rebellious son. Ancient Jewish wisdom connects these three ideas to teach that when a man marries a woman for her physical attributes instead of shared values, he is likely to eventually come to hate her, and that, in turn, will lead to rebellious children.
The Talmud teaches that throughout history there never was or will be a wayward and rebellious child as defined by this Torah passage. This commandment isn’t addressing specific families. Rather, the Torah is teaching us important principles applicable to all parents at all times, including the fundamental idea that it is dangerous to raise children when spouses don’t share a value system. Poignantly, the Torah expresses this in the introductory verse, (Deuteronomy 21:18) ”If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother…” The child is being guided by two distinct voices, the voice of his father and the voice of his mother. The parents’ messages aren’t aligned with each other, therefore their child inevitably struggles.
Fortunately, most married couples do share basic moral values and are aligned on fundamental life questions. Even so, challenges arise in the myriad of day to day decisions that come up in child raising. It is inevitable that two people of opposite gender, raised in different homes, and with different natures, will have differing perspectives on almost everything. The key to building a family with harmony and unity is to recognize one transformative truth. Differences between spouses needn’t be sources of conflict, they can be opportunities for connection. If I only see the world through my eyes, I have a limited perspective. If I can learn to see situations through my husband’s eyes as well, and vice versa, we both attain a broader, deeper, truer vision. (This idea is reflected in the way God built our eyes. With only one eye, a person lacks depth perception. It is only with two eyes that see from slightly different perspectives, that a person can see in 3D.)
There is nothing wrong with two parents who disagree. On the contrary, their differences hold the potential for an eventual synergistic, greater outcome. Yet, these differences need to be worked out in private, away from children’s eyes and ears, so that when a child inevitably addresses a question to one particular parent, hoping for a lenient answer, the response will be in both parents’ voices, unified and harmonious.
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