Three dimensional families

Abstract

While much work-family literature is concerned with identity formation, it ignores civic and religious life and assumes that work and family are the primary sources for the construction of meaning. This study of Jewish identity among teenagers and their parents introduces a third, community dimension into the emerging work-family model of identity. I conducted open-ended interviews with 16 teenagers and 19 parents in 14 middle and upper-middle-class observant Jewish families. Most of my respondents, in both generations, seek in Jewish rituals and social networks a sense of emotional connection with one another and with other Jews. The results of this outreach depend on the family's larger approach to identity building and on the characteristics of the community they belong to. "Communalist" families construct solidarity and meaning through active, joint involvement in synagogues and other Jewish organizations. In these families, father, mother, and children share a desire for emotional connection through Jewish identity; and they are immersed in a Jewish community large and diverse enough to contain within its boundaries the opportunity for teenagers to form friendships and develop individual interests. But a substantial minority of families combines an "individualist" with a "familist" approach, where top priority is given to the competing commitments of individual family members to school, work, or hobbies, although individual obligations are periodically set aside to spend time at home with one another. In these families, community-building efforts are sporadic and easily derailed when their synagogues lack the resources to satisfy their desire for emotional connection.