Jewish Mother Stereotype - Reception in The Middle 20th Century

Reception in The Middle 20th Century

This stereotype enjoyed a mixed reception. In her 1967 essay "In Defense of the Jewish Mother", Zena Smith Blau defended the stereotype, asserting that the ends, inculcating virtues that resulted in success, justified the means, control through love and guilt. Being tied to mamma kept Jewish boys away from "entile friends, particularly those from poor, immigrant families with rural origins in which parents did not value education".

Betty Friedan, in contrast to Blau, rejected the stereotype. In her view, a stifling Jewish mother didn't create a nice Jewish boy, but rather a homosexual son. Brodkin observes that this view was not confined to the Jewish mother stereotype, and that a more general climate of "mother bashing" obtained in the 1950s. One did not have to be Jewish necessarily in order to be a "Jewish mother", and Jewish mother jokes were enjoyed by the population at large, Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

One example of the stereotype, as it had developed by the 1970s, was the character of Ida Morgenstern, mother of Rhoda Morgenstern, who first appeared in a recurring role on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and later as a regular on its spinoff Rhoda. While Rhoda herself was not the Jewish-American princess daughter, the character resisting the pull of that particular stereotype, Ida was a canonical example of the overbearing Jewish mother. The character of Ida was a problem for critics. Albert Auster observed that although "thoroughly assimilated, there was about her, as well as her mother and sister, reminders of some of the negative traits ascribed to Jews".