During the past few weeks my column has served as a forum for parents who were perturbed at the overwhelming demands of their children and children-in-law. How much should parents give - and where they should draw the line is a sensitive subject on which there are many divergent views. I must admit that I personally have always had difficulty relating to this problem having grown up in a home where my parents sacrificed everything for us. Everything they had and everything that they did was for us, their kinderlach, and we, in turn, always felt a need to do for our parents.

When we arrived in the United States in 1947 following the Holocaust, and I acquired new friends, for the very first time I heard the word “allowance”. In our home, this was an alien concept. The little money that my parents had was kept in a drawer and was accessible to all of us. But somehow, we never took advantage of it. If anything, when I had a baby-sitting job, I would take my meager earnings and place them in the drawer.

When I was married, my parents made me a very beautiful large wedding. My father, HaRav Avraham Halevi Jungreis, Z’tl, was careful to include everyone on the wedding list. Needless to say, this entailed an enormous expense, but without a second thought, my husband, HaRav Meshulem HaLevi Jungreis , Z’tl, and I took it for granted that we would turn over all our wedding gifts to cover the expenses of the wedding. I know that this might sound pollyana-ish and somewhat unrealistic to many readers, and I also realize that today, people may be better able to afford to make weddings for their children, nevertheless, I mention this because I cannot help but wonder what happened to this new generation. What went wrong? It is normal for parents and children to want to do for one another, and if parents have the ability to lavish gifts upon their children, why not? But if parents cannot, how can children be so insensitive as to demand that they do? What concerns me most in this entire discussion is this attitude of the young people that screams, “You owe it to me! It’s coming to me!”
I have difficulty relating to young couples who expect and accept extravagant vacations as gifts from their parents, while their parents are struggling and denying themselves the basics. In all good conscience, how do adult children do that? How can they be so callous? How can they keep taking, knowing that their mothers and fathers are having a hard time just making ends meet? Somewhere, somehow, something went wrong.

I recall my father, Z’tl telling us how, when he was a little boy in Hungary, he and his brother would compete for the privilege of shining my Zeide, Z’tl’s shoes. In America, my father added, everything is in reverse; in America, parents feel privileged if their children deign to allow them to shine their shoes. I believe that this little story illustrates the gap between the generations and how far many of our children have departed from the Torah way. I cannot fault the children entirely however, for they are only a reflection of a vacuous value system that encourages conspicuous consumption and entitlement while disregarding gratitude and indebtedness. It’s not the gifts that are the problem, but this callous selfish attitude. As I pointed out, I see no difficulty in parents giving children gifts if they have the ability to do so, for it is hardly realistic to raise children in a certain life style and then anticipate that overnight, they radically lower their standard of living. (As a matter of fact, our tradition stipulates that a young man should support his bride in the manner in which she has been raised in her father’s home)

However, even if children come from the wealthiest of homes, it is very poor manners to demand a specific kind of gift, such as the size of the stone for the ring. By its very nature, a gift is a free-will offering and should be accepted graciously. Here again, one cannot help but wonder how these young adults become so ungracious.
Those parents who wrote to me however, were of very limited means, and therefore I found the demands of their offspring even more shocking. Demands for frills and luxuries that made these parents feel used and abused. So the question still remains - what went wrong with the upbringing of these children?

There are many contributing factors, not the least of which is our society, which thrives on shopping for the sake of shopping, living beyond one’s means and gaining status by keeping up with the latest fads. But that is not the entire answer, for societal pressures are manageable if Torah values are transmitted in the home, and I’m not referring to rituals practiced by rote, but to a living, vibrant way of life which is based on mesiras nefesh.
Mesiras nefesh is not a concept that is easily given to translation. It’s not just commitment and devotion - it actually entails sacrifice - the giving of oneself. The experience must be taught to children at a very tender age. It is then that we must imbue them with a sense of responsibility, of caring, of seeing the larger picture rather than only themselves and their own needs. It is such feelings that my parents instilled in us. True, my very earliest memories were of the war years. Our home was a gathering place for refugees and young Jewish men who were conscripted into slave labor. Mesiras nefesh was required day and night - lives had to be saved, and my parents made us children a part of it. We all had to pitch in, we all had to help. But I will not focus on those stories, for, Baruch HaShem, they are not applicable to our generation, but there were situations that are very relevant.

In our city in Hungary, there was a family that had a handicapped child of my age. I was only three years old when my mother took me to her house to play with her, and this was on an ongoing basis. My mother explained that it was my responsibility to try to befriend her and to try to help her. Nowadays, very few mothers of mainstream children will insist that their sons and daughters include the handicapped in their circle of friends. Most often, such children are shunned and I have received many sad letters from mothers of the handicapped to that effect).

It is difficult to “un-train” adults. At this point, the only option for the parents of these self-centered young people is damage control - firmly, but lovingly setting down a new set of rules. Hopefully however, young parents who read this column will take this cue and not repeat these mistakes. Let us start by teaching our children little acts of mesiras nefesh by focusing on others rather than themselves. These little acts, if carried out consistently, become life transforming deeds that are not so little after all. There are so many meaningful ways to teach them: When grandparents come to visit, the first question that youngsters usually ask is “What did you bring me?” which is most often followed by “Oh that. I have it already, I don’t like it”, or they play with it for a minute and then cast it aside.

So let us teach our children the rudiments of mesiras nefesh. “Bubbie and Zeidie are coming - make a gift for them.” Arts and crafts - anything ...the idea being to teach a child to give rather than to take. And there is so much more..... .... greeting guests with refreshments, standing up for Mom or Dad when they come home, etc.

As a final word, I must point out that all these teachings will be of no avail if the parents themselves do not become paradigms - role models to their children. Parenthood comes with responsibility and we must all strive to be like Yaakov Avinu whose image was engraved on the heart and mind of his son, Joseph. It was this image that enabled Joseph to transcend his environment and become Yosef HaTzaddik.