You Are Entitled to Exactly What You Want
I am expecting my first child, and for medical reasons my doctor has already scheduled my delivery date. With no mystery about when the baby is coming, both sides of our family have already booked their plane tickets and are planning to show up en masse. I want to have some time alone with my baby and my husband beforehand. This may sound selfish, but it’s how I feel.
— Begging for quiet delivery
As the expectant mother, you are entitled to have exactly what you want. But you should have thought about what you wanted before revealing your delivery date to your entire family. Your family members have no doubt already booked cheap flights with huge penalties attached in the event of changed dates — or worse, nonrefundable tickets. If such is the case, the only way to get yourself out of this is to reimburse everyone for their expenses and tell them how you really feel. Hope they will not take it personally — good luck — and arrange to have them come after you’ve had a few weeks alone with your baby. If you can’t afford the expense, you can still tell your family members how you feel and hope they’ll do the right thing on their own. Again, good luck. Remember that this is one of those small concessions to family — which is to say future baby sitters.
* * *|
Is there proper etiquette for the seating arrangements at a bar mitzvah? Is there a head table, and, if so, who should be seated there?
— Priority seating
Always so many questions about the party and so few about the ceremony. The significance of a bar mitzvah is to recognize that a boy is now a man in the eyes of God and his community. That small detail can easily be lost in the over-the-top parties; it certainly was at a bar mitzvah I recently attended, at which the 13-year-olds were wearing higher heels and more makeup than I was.
Forgive me for sounding off. A head table is perfectly acceptable for the parents and grandparents of the bar-mitzvah boy. The bar-mitzvah boy himself would probably rather sit with his buddies — a reasonable request given his diligence and the message of the day. Depending on the size of your immediate family and the distance some guests have traveled to attend, you may want to honor select others by also seating them at the head table. If you choose not to have a head table, that is also okay. It’s your bar mitzvah, and you can do what you want to. Your son, of course, may have an opinion too.
* * *|
My fiance and I are planning to pay for our own wedding. We have eliminated as many extras as possible so we can maximize our guest list. Still, the size of the wedding dictates that we invite no children at all — a decision that seems to be raising quite a firestorm. There is not enough space in your column to mention how each family member has explained why his or her child deserves to attend. My future sister-in-law has even said that she would pay for her son’s dinner. When we held firm to our decision, brothers, sisters, cousins and even my mother-in-law threatened not to attend. My fiance is so broken up that he thinks we should just elope, but that would break my parents’ hearts.
— Wee ones not welcome
As long as you and your fiancé are on the same page, proceed as planned. It is your happiness that matters here, no one else’s. Including your parents, I might add, though, it sounds like you, too, would like to walk down that aisle. Family members who choose to boycott the wedding will open up a seat for a friend who is delighted to attend. Clearly your families have forgotten who is getting married here. Their behavior is outrageous. Why don’t you suggest to one of them that if they feel the children need to celebrate with you, they can organize a children’s party in your honor? While they’re at it, they can buy you a second dress for the occasion. You may feel that the deck is stacked against you, but think again: You are holding all the cards — and the invitation list to the hottest game in town.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 2
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 3
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 4
Fast Forward Columbia staff receive texts asking if they’re Jewish, as government hunts antisemitic harassment on campus
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Trump nominee Ed Martin, who praised a Nazi sympathizer, also compared Biden to Hitler
-
Opinion RFK Jr. and Trump are talking about an ‘autism registry’ — this sounds disturbingly familiar
-
Fast Forward Heavy police presence blocks anti-Israel protest in Brooklyn from reaching Jewish neighborhood
-
Yiddish קאָקני־ייִדיש“: אַ פּאָדקאַסט, אַ לשון און אַ שטײגער לעבן‘Cockney Yiddish’: A podcast, a language and a way of life
צװײ לאָנדאָנער היסטאָריקערינס לעבן אױף דאָס ייִדישע „איסט ענד“ אין אונדזער פֿאַנטאַזיע
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.