No, you should automatically get email events in the game. When you first start playing you should get two in (roughly) the first hour, and then one approximately every 24 hours after that. As the children grow up and go off to college you should also get occasional emails from them as well. I've never seen anybody else report this problem before, and don't have any suggestions, although the developers might be able to help. It might be best if you opened a support ticket.