For many people my age, their lives revolve around one thing: their family. Most of us would do and do do everything we can for them (work long hours, give up a kidney, drive around town at all hours of the night). I took a look at a couple of common areas of family life at this age and jotted down my notes.
Marriage
I don’t think I have mentioned very much yet in this series about how much I appreciate my wife and appreciate being married. Having a companion to get you through the good times and the bad is something that can not be taken for granted. Commitment is something that is very hard to come by these days and making a commitment to spend the rest of your life with someone else is something that if you think about it too long doesn’t make sense, but then you realize that you probably could not do most things alone.
One of my ideas that I have always had is to write one of those dime-a-dozen self-help, commoditized psychology (think Tipping Point (paperback), etc.) books called the “Power of Two”. In fact, my wife before we got married printed out all of our Facebook messages between each other while we were dating and then put them in a binder with this as the title. I’ve tried reading them but they make no sense, which kind of goes back to my fascination with time and how time can really change how you perceive other parts of time. Why don’t I remember a random Saturday night gathering that took 50 messages to plan? Perhaps the doses of dopamine that I received from that party were on par with a million other occurrences. I also didn’t have a blog that helps me remember these types of things. But I digress.
The point is that there are many benefits to having a partner in life (yes, even in addition to “that”). Your health outcomes are better, your lifetime earnings are better. If you have children together, you’ll hopefully have someone to help take care of you as you age. You’ll raise children together which is one of the most rewarding things I can think of. You can share experiences with someone like travel which can impact that ever-important dopamine response that slows down time.
I understand that statistics and personalities sometimes mean that marriage isn’t a reality for everyone. I guess my advice in that case is to keep on trying. Statistics are just that, statistics and nothing says you have to be the 1:50 or whatever. Also, if you’re single and interested in being married, there are coaches, matchmakers, and others who are happy to help you, in addition to your standard psychological avenues. These, along with a good dose of compromise (the foundation of any marriage) can really do you a lot of good, especially since I believe that 80% of people are compatible with 80% of other people (at least - but Tamar you are the only one for me 😘).
Home Ownership vs. Renting
Where do I fall out in one of the greatest middle-aged debates in current times? Really either one is fine and comes with their own set of pros and cons (probably why there is such a raging debate). I think in the end it comes down to what fits into your reality. Maybe you want to buy, but you also want to live somewhere (jobs, friends, family) and buying is just not realistic in that place (money, lack of available housing, old construction) in which case renting is fine. It gives you a home and you don’t really need to care about maintaining it or whether its value increases or decreases (yes, the housing market does occasionally decline) and it most likely means you can live where you want to (and pickup easily if you need to change locations).
Housing provides other sets of benefits, but can also come along with maintenance costs, and the inability to quickly liquidate should the need arise. It is OK as a saving vehicle, but this can be counterbalanced by renting in a lower-cost area compared to what your mortgage would be and saving the difference.
I’m not saying anything new, and I’ve done both for about half of my married life so as long as you act responsibly financially with your housing, then I think you're going to be ok.
Moving a lot
Having done both buying and renting equally for the duration of my marriage, this also means that I have moved a lot in these 16 years. We have lived in 5 different cities in this time (sometimes moving multiple times in each city), and while I don’t know how it compares to the average, it certainly seems like a lot to me. Nevertheless, I was able to make friends in each place (something known to be harder as you get older, and which is a strong reason why I am disinclined to move cities again - for a while - despite there being good opportunities).
And friends is really something that is important wherever you live, and I have spoken about the importance of friends in other parts of this series, so I won’t elaborate on it here. However, the kinds of friends and the kinds of people you can find in each place really add a certain spice to the area you live in and no two demographics are the same in any given place. So the ability to meet new people and learn about the micro-cultures they live within is always something interesting to observe and participate in.
Torah Learning
Any home that is focused on raising responsible children needs an ethical basis on which to raise those children. I am slowly slogging through the OG of all the self-help books (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - paperback) and the part I am in right now (which I think is also the largest section) is the one where he encourages every family to have a “family constitution” which guides how the family as a whole manages decisions and which forms the basis of how they choose to act in any given situation. I find this section to be a little superfluous for religious, and really any, Jewish person as we know what that constitution is: The Torah.
The Torah is a little long to hang on the wall in a prominent place as Covey advises, but to me, even better than hanging it is actually living it and showing that you appreciate it and that you study it rather than observe it. So I try and make a point to learn around my children and also with my children. I strive to dedicate 30-60 minutes each day to Torah study. As my children grow older, they are also becoming the ultimate chevrutah, or study partner, which means I get to learn, but also bond with my children over something that is important to both of us.
No matter what your religion may be, or how your constitution is written, I suggest studying it openly and finding sources which support the paths your family has chosen. Don’t be embarrassed to take a shortcut and join a religion (just don’t become a fanatic) and then your study guides come built-in.
Child Rearing
Having a code of ethics and successfully applying them are two very different things. It is also very age-dependent and even gender dependent. For younger ages, what I have found is that they can understand consequences very well. If they act a certain way, then they lose their toy or they can’t watch their TV show, etc. You can also flip it and say they need to stop doing a certain thing (e.g. crying unnecessarily) in order to get what they want.
For older children, it would seem that teaching them the lesson of their behavior is a good way to go. Were your kids disrespectful to you (still a thing in 2025 despite way too much tolerance for this in popular culture)? Then show them disappointment and tell them that this veers out of bounds for the Torah commandment of respecting your parents. Did they spend too much time bumming around and doing nothing one evening? Then tell them that there are better ways to spend their time and think together about what some of those ways may be (a schedule of different things to do when the get home, volunteer opportunities, etc.).
Another thing you can do is let them learn the consequences of their actions on their own. Let their decisions play out (with supervision of course) and then they can learn on their own what the best course of action may be in any given situation. Let them ask you questions about how they should act (going back to the Torah as a guide in the previous section). Just know that this approach can be very time-consuming so don’t do it if you are in a rush. These various approaches I have found to be much more effective than time-outs, grounding, and yelling. You don’t want your children to fear you (too much).
In terms of teaching the kids responsibility, we have found great success in terms of giving them all (yes, even the little ones) a set of chores to accomplish, especially at the end of the week before the Sabbath. As they get older, we have added an allowance into the mix. Chores range from helping with bedtime, to babysitting, to taking out the trash and the occasional bathroom cleaning. For the little ones they can be encouraged to do it via the approaches mentioned above, and for the older ones, a swift reminder that they are receiving an allowance for what they are doing usually does the trick.
This balance of chores and allowance/other rewards is essential in my/our household because something that my wife pointed out to me today that I really hadn’t realized till now is that “peak career” can often coincide with “peak family”. It is a new phenomenon I think that kids are given very little responsibility within the home and I think that is counter to what basically every generation till now has been taught. Back when families were large because they worked on the farm and because there was no birth control, it was a given that the older kids would help with the little ones. Similar situations can been seen among the so-called “Ultra-Orthodox” where many-a-time someone as little as 6 or 7 will be escorting their toddler sibling to school or some other errand. Now I’m not saying that this extreme is 100% correct, but like anything there is a balance and you shouldn’t feel guilty about having or needing your kids to pitch in. It takes a village.
Giving an allowance helps with early money management in addition to reducing a little burden on the monthly budget since the kids who get one are now responsible for providing their own snacks and extras when it comes to things for class and for their youth groups and other activities. We found that providing them with a rechargeable credit card makes the most sense, since then they can’t lose the money and we can also track what they spend it on.
Conclusion
I am for sure forgetting and not mentioning a lot of things here, so maybe there will be a follow-up post at some point, but in terms of areas where I have the most influence in my family, I think I listed them here. What would you add to this list? Has anything else worked really well for you? Do you disagree with anything I said? Leave a comment!
We have stickers - https://the-cholent.printify.me/
Random Amazon Affiliate Link of the Post (RAALOTP) - Gel UV LED Nail Polish Lamp, LKE Nail Dryer 40W LED Light with 3 Timers Professional for Nail Art Tools Accessories White (I did a search for 40 in honor of the series and this was the most random thing on the first page, and the accompanying marketing materials are quite funny). General Amazon Affiliate link.