A bunch of children were playing tag outside on a long summer Shabbos afternoon. Suddenly, one of the boys started yelling, “No girls allowed.” Other boys joined the battle cry, and the girls stopped in their tracks, not sure whether to go on with the game. Some of them were close to tears. One boy called out loudly, “Why can’t the girls play?! He stopped the whole “revolution” in its tracks, and the game proceeded until dusk.
A high school girl made a nasty comment about her teacher’s clothing to her friend. She was trying to rile up the class to join her in making fun of the teacher. To her surprise, her friend refused to be horrified and instead said, “So what?” catching the instigator off guard. That comment stopped the joke and saved the teacher from an embarrassing situation.
Wouldn’t we all like to be able to claim these children as our own? Don’t we want to raise a child who is strong enough to do the right thing even when overruled by the majority? How can we teach ourselves and our children to be firm in their beliefs? To be kind when everyone else is being mean? This article will not answer these questions definitively but will give us food for thought.
As usual I started exploring this topic by asking friends, family, and acquaintances what they thought about peer pressure.
Creating Positive Peer Pressure
“Peer pressure is really about the group,” says Shlomo Schor, a mental health counselor. “Human beings, like many other creatures, feel more comfortable in a group, which provides safety and security from all sorts of dangers. Different groups may protect from different dangers. With animals, we call this group a herd. The stronger your herd, the safer the animal is. The one that strays to the edge of the pack is most at risk. With humans, conforming to the behavior of others makes you part of the group and therefore less vulnerable.”
We can see this dynamic play out as we choose where to live, where to send out children to school and to camp. We all want the security of being surrounded by friends and teachers who share our values so we can increase not only our physical but our spiritual safety.
Although the term “peer pressure” has a negative connotation, with all sorts of bad behavior laid at its feet, the first thing I discovered is that positive peer pressure is, in fact, a Torah value. Pirchei Avos (1:7) advises us to avoid bad neighbors. We are encouraged to stick with good people and not hang out with bad ones. In the morning davening, too, we ask G-d to keep us far away from bad people and bad friends.
Why? Although not stated explicitly, the answer seems obvious. Peer pressure is a strong force. The Rambam talks about this in Hilchos Dei’os (chapter 6), a book about general proper behavior: “It is the nature of man to follow in his opinions and his deeds after his friends and his countrymen. Therefore, a person should join with righteous people and sit next to wise people in order to learn from their deeds. He should stay away from wicked people in order to not learn from their deeds.”
So, if we want to do the right thing, it is best to avoid bad influences and, rather, create an atmosphere of positive peer pressure around ourselves.
The Individual vs. the Group
One mother told me that she wanted her 16-year-old son to go to a yeshiva where the boys came from families just like theirs – not too strict and not too lenient. She didn’t want him to come home from yeshiva feeling uncomfortable about their family’s standards. She also didn’t want him to hang around with boys whose families were less strict, and thus decline in his observance. Now she just had to convince her son that he should go to that yeshiva!
Although this mother is certainly taking advantage of positive peer pressure, is that all there is to being a good Jew? Doesn’t being a part of a strong and powerful group threaten individuality or at least force people to suppress their personality and keep their views secret? We Jews brought to the world the idea that every person is a whole world. We understand the importance of individual development and growth. Yet not being part of a group makes us exposed to physical and spiritual dangers. How to reconcile these opposites?
One yeshiva rebbi said, “On the one hand, we need a strong peer group in order to be good Jews. No one can invent everything by themselves from scratch. We need friends, chavrusas, other people to form a minyan and to establish schools and other communal institutions. But if a person is just part of the group and does not do any independent thinking, he really has nothing. The whole essence of Judaism is a personal relationship with G-d.”
The Confidence to Be Different
The question, then, becomes how to achieve a balance between the group and the individual. How can we raise our families to be confident enough to think for themselves? It is refreshing and inspiring to see a person who does not always have to follow the Joneses or the Cohens. Sometimes we see this middah in very young children. I heard this delightful story from my sister in Israel:
“My daughter came for Shabbos with her children,” my sister said. “Leah, her five-year-old, wanted to show me the video of the performance her class put on at the end of the year. All the little girls were wearing a white shirt and black skirt except for Leah, who was wearing her favorite Shabbos dress. I wondered why. Nomi, her mother, told me the back story.
“Leah insisted that, in her opinion, a Shabbos dress was much more appropriate than black and white and that was what she would wear to the party. Nomi tried explaining to her that everyone else was going to wear black and white, but Leah was not swayed. She also refused to wear that dress for Shabbos for the last three weeks for fear that her mother wouldn’t wash it in time for her party. So, Nomi called up the teacher and asked if it was okay. The teacher said, sure its okay, but bring her black skirt and white shirt to the party so that she can change, because as soon as she sees the other girls, she will feel bad and want to change.
“But lo and behold, that didn’t happen. In fact, when she showed me the pictures, Leah pointed out that she was the prettiest because she had the Shabbos dress and everyone else was wearing black and white – and, just for the record, she was the star hand-clapper, shoulder-tapper, and arm waver in the group. So much for white shirts and black skirts!”
I just love this story. It shows a child with the ability to think for herself and not be influenced solely by what her classmates were doing. Hopefully, she will grow up and make more important decisions based on what is right and not just what everyone else does. One may wonder, though, whether this is a cute story only because Leah is five years old and whether, if she were 17, we would think she was not cute but odd.
Karen Pear, a psychotherapist who works with children, gave me some insight into how to help children withstand negative peer pressure and think for themselves. “It really is important how parents relate to children from the start,” Karen says. “You can help children realize that they have an opinion and that their opinion matters. When a situation comes up, don’t be so quick to lecture. Instead, ask your child what they think and then really listen to the answers. Give children a language to express their own thoughts and feelings. If children do not realize that they have their own point of view they will just go along with everyone else’s. The first step to a confident child is the understanding that “I have feelings and opinions; I know what they are, and I have the language to express them.”
Is Peer Pressure the Same Everywhere?
A friend, Yitzchok, who moved from a large Jewish community to a small one, told me he thinks peer pressure is more pronounced in big cities where many frum Jews live together. “People fear being judged and pushed out of the group. If you are worried that you will not be accepted into a school or find a shidduch, fitting in matters much more. A lot is riding on how you dress, where you work, and where you daven, etc. People in a big community have the “luxury” of choosing to be with peers who are exactly like themselves.”
Yitzchok said that his family was accepted into schools right away in their small community. People were asking them to join carpools as soon as they moved in. Everyone was excited that a new frum family was moving in. “In a small community, each individual and each family is important. In a small community,” Yitzchok, argues, “there is much less pressure to conform. A frum Jewish family is accepted as they are.”
Does Chinuch Make a Difference?
I remember a family that had an invisible person living in their house. Her name was Elsie, short for “everyone else.” When their son came home from school demanding a certain kind of sneakers or a certain basketball, it was always because Elsie had it! Making a joke about the human need to have what everyone else has created some perspective and, perhaps, a little less urgency to his requests.
A young mother, Mrs. Klein, explained that she tries to instill in her children pride and confidence in their family. “We are a family, and we do things a certain way, not necessarily the same way everyone else does them. We are proud to do what we think is correct.” Instead of just saying, “No, we are not going to such and such a place or not doing such and such,” she says, “The Kleins are not going.” On the other hand, she also reminds them about special things that the Kleins do that other people don’t.
Another mother, Tova, with strong opinions about things, manages to make rules for her family that are not the same as those of other families. For example, she does not allow her daughters to go to the mall with friends, only with the family. While many girls in their class go to Florida for mid-winter break, she follows the same policy and does not let them go with a group of friends.
Tova seems to have success making such rules and sticking to her guns. I wondered how she could make policies that are so restrictive and still have happy, cooperative children. Tova was not sure, but she did tell me, “I am very in touch with what is important to my children and try to make sure that they have the things that matter to them. I know where I can draw the line. Also, if the rule is that they can only go to the mall with me, I have to make sure I am available to take them to the mall. I can’t make it too difficult for them.”
Like Tova, some parents are willing to make sacrifices to avoid negative peer pressure affecting their child. I remember a mother told me, years ago, that she or her husband picked up their son every day from school because they did not want him to be influenced by the wild, unruly behavior that took place in carpools at the end of a long tiring day. By driving an extra hour each day, they showed their son how important his behavior was to them. They demonstrated by their actions that doing something just because everyone else does it does not make it right.
My ten-year-old granddaughter, a fifth-grader, explained that in her school there are always fads going on. One day everyone is playing with fidget spinners, the next day it’s Rubik’s cubes, and then it’s collecting stickers. “Everyone wants to have the same shoes or the same knapsack,” she explained, “but I don’t like to be the same as everyone else. I just like to be myself.”
My homeschooled grandchildren, too, do not suffer from the effects of peer pressure. They are already so different from their peers who go to school that they are not worried about being judged by others. They can make their own decisions. They can eat whatever they want for lunch, they can wear the clothes they think are attractive, and they can play the games they think are fun.
To summarize, it is important to be realistic about human nature and leverage the power of peer pressure by belonging to a healthy group. As religious Jews, we clearly value being part of a group and appreciate the extra incentive it creates to behave properly. But that should not take the place of thinking for oneself, which is our ultimate goal. As is true of many other areas of life, there are two sides to the coin. It’s up to us to find the proper balance.
