When I was growing up, husbands stayed away from the delivery room because the blood and mess would put you off sex for life. Nowadays it seems like all the husbands I know are in the delivery room. The prospect fills me with terror.
I asked a shiksa delivery nurse at Cedars-Sinai what percentage of husbands are with their wives in the delivery room and she said 100% except for the Orthodox Jews who stay away for modesty reasons. Hmm, that’s another good reason to be Orthodox, along with not having to wear a wedding ring (a traditional Jewish man does not wear jewelry and extraneous clothing and stuff that belongs to a woman, etc).
Plenty of Orthodox men wear wedding rings and plenty of Orthodox men are in the delivery room with their wives but the Orthodox practice is against both things. Just because an Orthodox Jew does something doesn’t make it the Orthodox way. Plenty of Orthodox women wear pants outside the home but that isn’t the Orthodox way. The Orthodox way is for women to wear skirts and for married women to cover their hair, etc.
* You tell a Christian he raised good kids, and you’ll likely hear, “It was the Lord.” You’ll never get that response from a Jew. Instead, you’ll hear, “Thank you” or “It was luck” or “It was genes” or “He had good rebbes”… Protestants in particular tend to deflect compliments while Jews generally lap them up and ask for more. “Did you see how awesome I was” is a typical though often unstated Jewish response.
