Americas Jews

7. The Contemporary American Jewish Family

7. The Contemporary American Jewish Family One major social issue which was widely debated during the 1970s was the future of the family in modern society. The issue was probed from a variety of perspectives and involved spokespersons from such fields as sociology, social welfare, social history, religion, and politics; indeed, Sussman (1978) has suggested that the 1970s may well come to be known as the decade of "The Great Family Debate." The sources of that debate and an evaluation of the various prognoses will not be discussed here. For the purposes of this chapter it is sufficient to point out that within the American Jewish community as well there was (and is) widespread concern over the future of the American Jewish family. As to the larger societal issue of the future of the family, however, some were not overly concerned about the implications of the decline of the family within the Jewish community, although there has been a virtual consensus that the decline of the American Jewish family presents a serious challenge to the future of the American Jewish community. The focus of concern has been upon individuals as members of the American Jewish community and the implications for the continuity of that community, and not solely upon the well-being of individuals qua individuals. Why is American Jewry so uniquely concerned about the future of the American Jewish family? In this chapter I shall attempt to explain this concern, first by pointing to the role of the family in Jewish socialization and continuity and then by analyzing the empirical data concerning the contemporary American Jewish family. 159 160 America's Jews in Transition The well-being of the Jewish family is a primary concern because it plays a central, if not the central, role in defining and transmitting Jewish identity and identification. A vast body of literature describes and explains the socialization of children by the family, the more relevant parts of which have been reviewed elsewhere (Waxman, 1979b). Certainly within the history and tradition of Jews, the family has been the most prominent institution involved in ethnoreligious identity formation and the transmission of ethnoreligious norms and values. (For a detailed, though idealized, description of the role of the Jewish family in Eastern European small towns and villages, see Zborowski and Herzog, 1962, pp. 269-380.) It is, thus, no coincidence that the home and the synagogue are the two, and the only two, institutions in Jewish life which are referred to in traditional Jewish literature as mikdash me'at or "sanctuary in miniature." The family and the synagoguewhich historically was not a "house of worship" solely but equally the center for education, study, and learning-were the two major institutions through which both Judaism and "Jewishness" (Glazer, 1972) were transmitted. The family in addition has been the stage, if not the focal point, for much of Jewish religious tradition. Observers both past and contemporary have viewed the family as the institution responsible for Jewish continuity (d. Vitz, 1977, p. 89). Accordingly, the contemporary condition of the American Jewish family will be examined as well as the implications of this condition for the future of the American Jewish community. The focus of this analysis will be upon five structural variables: marriage , divorce, fertility, intermarriage, and extended familism. Marriage Jews and Judaism have traditionally placed a high priority on marriage as an intrinsic value, and data indicate that a high proportion of America's Jews are married, and that the vast majority marry at least once. In their study of Providence, Rhode Island, Goldstein and Goldscheider found that Jews had a higher rate of marriage than non-Jews (1968, pp. 102-3). In a Contemporary American Jewish Family 161 more recent study of Rhode Island, Kobrin and Goldscheider found marriage to be virtually universal among Jews, with the proportion of ever married increasing over the years (1978, p. 38). That those findings are fairly representative is evident when compared with figures reported from the National Jewish Population Study (NJPS). In the table, "Percent Distribution of Households' Age of Head, by Marital Status, U.S. Jewish Population-1971," less than 5 percent of respondents aged 30 and over are single. More than 95 percent are listed as married, separated or divorced, or widowed (Chenkin 1972, p. 16). This high rate of ever married would seem to indicate that American Jewish continue to abide by the biblical dictum that...