SOURCE: "Mothers and Daughters: The Jewish Mother as Seen by American Jewish Women Writers," in Modern Jewish Studies, Vol. 6, No. 4, 1987, pp. 87-92.

In the following essay, Adler evaluates the complex portrayals of Jewish mothers by American Jewish women writers, contrasting these to the often stereotypical depictions offered by male writers.

The stereotype of the Jewish Mother, while frequently filling everyday banter, has also entered serious literature and become, in recent years, one of the most hackneyed and overplayed of literary themes. Most stereotypes have appeared and have subsequently been discredited as a result of their inherent limitations—the ignoring of individual differences and imposition of rigid and outmoded patterns on complex and fluid reality. The stereotype of the Jewish Mother, however, thrives, nurtured by an apparently deep-seated contemporary need.

Dan Greenburg's farcical book How to be a Jewish Mother typifies the stereotype. He describes the Jewish Mother as...