Wolf, you don’t think that 10% is a rarity? All I know is I live in a community where lots and lots of first babies are being born, and almost never heard of a pidyon being done.
Then there may be something in the water in your community. 🙂
Seriously, however, I don’t know what to tell you… but your anecdotal experience is probably not indicative of the statistical community as a whole.
Actually, my estimate was closer to 30%… but even so, if only one out of ten families do a pidyon, I wouldn’t say it’s rare.
I wonder if you might not (subconsciously) be comparing the pidyon rate to the number of all births rather than the number of first births. We have a lot of births in our community as well, but the vast majority of them aren’t first births. When I try to compare pidyons to *all* births (or even all boys), then the number starts getting rarer.
For my own personal anecdotal evidence; my four grandparents had twelve grandkids between them. Of them:
#1 had a firstborn boy and a pidyon
#2 had a firstborn girl
#3 had a firstborn boy and a pidyon
#4 had a firstborn girl
#5 (me) had a firstborn boy and a pidyon
#6 had a firstborn boy and a pidyon
#7 had a firstborn boy and if he hadn’t intermarried — all other things being equal, they would have had a pidyon.
#8 had a firstborn girl
#9 had a firstborn boy and a pidyon
#10 – #14 aren’t yet married.
While (again) my own personal anecdotal evidence isn’t the same as statistical evidence, I can tell you from my own personal experience that it’s not a “rarity.”
The Wolf