It Seems Like People in Bereshit are Always Picking Favorites
Today I was thinking and I don't know why, but I started thinking that it seems like lately there has been a lot of favorite-picking. Avraham picked Yitzchak as his favorite, Yitzchak picked Esav as his favorite, Rivkah picked Yaakov as her favorite... Later on, Yakov will pick Yosef as his favorite.
My question is-what is the deal with people picking favorites? Usually parents will say that they don't have favorites even though they do, but here there is description about how all of these people so blatantly pick their favorite kids. What does this come to teach us? Is there a reason for this? Is the Torah telling us that it is okay for parents to outwardly have favorites?
I suppose Avraham picked Yitzchak as his favorite because Sarah was the one who had him, as opposed to Hagar. I'm still not over the whole Yishmael thing, just saying. Then we get to Esav and Yaakov. I don't know what the deal is with that. We discussed in class that maybe the parents had their favorites because they were attracted to their opposites. I am wondering how obvious it was,like did they get special treatment? Yaakov picks Yosef as a favorite later on, and that does not have good consequences. Did he learn from his mother to pick a favorite? It's funny how of all things, the Torah outwardly says that they picked favorites. Is it important?Maybe it's that the Torah isn't trying to hide something that comes naturally. A Time article written in October of last year discusses this issue and says that parents almost always have favorite children.
"In one oft cited study, Catherine Conger, a professor of human and community development at the University of California at Davis, assembled a group of 384 sibling pairs and their parents and visited them three times over three years. She questioned them about their relationships and videotaped them as they worked through conflicts. Overall, she concluded that 65% of mothers and 70% of fathers exhibited a preference for one child, usually the older one. And those numbers are almost certainly lowballs, since parents try especially hard to mask their preferences when a researcher is watching."
And just as parents have favorites, kids are usually able to see this. So maybe the Torah gives us this information because it was so obvious and the kids were able to tell. I wonder if the favoritism played a role in who they were later on. Probably.
What do you think? Do you think it is in the Torah because it is an undeniable part of life? Do you think that parents pick favorites?
I think parents might LIKE a child more than ever, but they still LOVE all of the children the same. Of course, if a child can tell that a parent likes someone else more, it's still hurtful.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this is all speculation on everyone's part... (the torah story). We don't really know what went down...
But I suppose this was detrimental to the Yaakov and Esev relationship
I really like the post Racheli because first of all I also was thinking how it is super weird that parents are always picking favorites in Bereshit; it doesn't really seem to be the ideal family situation that it's so obvious that a parent likes a certain child the most. I also read that Time article last year and found it very disturbing. Obviously since none of us have kids we cannot give our own opinion, but I like what Zahava said ^^ that parents may like a certain child more than others, but they love all their children equally. I want to hear what Mrs. Perl has to say on this matter since she is the only one here who has children!
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