Gabriel Lipson

CD-64 Rothbaum

9/10/06

Evolution After Immigration

Just a few days ago, I called my dad on his cell phone to check in. He said that

he’d been meaning to call me- that he had something to talk to me about. It was the

twentieth anniversary of his mother’s death. She died in her sixties of breast cancer.

“Gabe, I just want you to think about her today- about how important she was in

making me who I am- you who you are. All of her brothers lived ‘till their eighties. She

should still be here. We’re going to go to synagogue tonight. She would’ve been so

proud of you.”

Very soon afterward I began reading the text for this class- reading about working

class families in the fifties and sixties (Kohn), nurturing mothers, disciplinarian fathers-

all the while assimilating my own family history into the text. My father and mother are

second and third generation Eastern European Jewish Americans, both would consider

their upbringings middle class, and both had depression-era, immigrant, working-class

grandparents. Yet, beyond those similarities, their upbringings couldn’t have been more

different.

So here I am, Gabe Lipson, middle class, spiritual but not terribly religious,

occasionally selfish, occasionally philanthropic- the perfect product of two very recent,

self-made, socio-culturally opposite, ethnically identical family histories.

The most important difference between the two families was that my father’s

lived in a culture of family, and my mother’s in a culture of pragmatism and

intellectualism. From stories, I gather that my father’s very close extended family was

much like that described in the Vega article. They lived in a Jewish neighborhood in

Bridgeport, Connecticut (local style), they had a large extended family that kept in very

close touch for guidance and nurturing, owned small family businesses, and had a very

strong religious foundation. These similarities also extend quite easily to the African

American culture of extended family (Mandara). Also, much like children in Marian

Wright Edelman’s neighborhood, my father was pushed very early on into a lifestyle of

community service and social responsibility and was brought up with great respect for

elders- especially those whose histories were full with Zionism and had devoted much of

their lives to the eradication of anti-Semitism.

So, African American, Latino, or Judeo-Semitic- ethnic groups with histories of

persecution, when faced with poverty, rely very heavily on large systems of extended

family, and on espousing both the retention of culture and the duty to use education as a

tool for desegregation. Though my father’s parents were probably more working-class

than middle class, they pushed their children to both go to college and to study fields that

truly interested them. This middle class centric attitude is what inevitably brought my

father away from Bridgeport and into the world. He wasn’t expected to come home and

manage his father’s drapery business. So, whether or not his family was middle class,

like most immigrant groups, their goal was to give their children the tools for financial

and emotional security and betterment. After all, why would a family move to the United

States from elsewhere in the first place if not for some belief in the American Dream.

Thus, I would venture to say that the “working class” discussed in Kohn’s article is quite

different from the “working class” filled by recent immigrant families. Middle American,
bread and butter working class families are less upwardly mobile and more socio-

politically conservative. While the immigrant working class wants more for their

children, the traditional working class families discussed in Kohn’s article probably

believe that they already are living the American Dream, and have been for generations.

As Kohn discussed, normative American working class families characteristically

espouse a deep-seeded belief in submission to figures of authority (bosses, foremen,

political figures, etc.), which is very uncharacteristic of American immigrants, who often

flee their homes to escape political systems that espouse this submissive attitude (Cuba,

China, Iran, etc.) and only deal with submissive, labor-intensive work as a means to an

end. So, families of immigrant groups often shower their children with love and support,

in an almost democratic style of parenting, all the while demanding because children are

expected to achieve greater things than their parents. My father felt so much love and

support from his mother that the hardest part of her death, it seems, is that he cannot

show her all that he’s accomplished.

My mother’s family, on the other hand, was much more Americanized than my

father’s. Additionally, because my mother’s parents were both college educated and very

intelligent, they made a lot of money very fast. Their American Dream was a very

gentrified one. A scientist and an atheist, my grandfather moved the family around a lot

and extended a value system based on pragmatism more than affection. Though my

mother’s parents, because they had the financial means, showed her the world, they

didn’t give her the same amount of affection that my father received from his parents.

Also, because they had no spiritual community, they left a very ambiguous message to

my mother and uncle about religion. Still, they were very supportive parents in many
ways, and exemplified a very traditional “father knows best” attitude. In this sense, they

were much heavier disciplinarians than my father’s parents were. Additionally, they had

fragmented relationships with extended family, which again took a lot of the community

and emotionalism out of my mother’s initial upbringing.

On the surface, her family seemed to function with a great deal of harmony, but in

reality there was a great deal of generative tension, as both my mother and her brother

both went (and are still going) through very emotional processes of individuation

(Rothbaum, et al.). And that, I suppose is the American way.

This is not to say that because my mother’s family was wealthy, they supplanted

love with money. Rather, it shows very clearly how similar ethnic backgrounds can

evolve into different cultures of economics and religion, and subsequently different styles

of parenting. In the Gaines short story The Sky is Gray, mama may not have always been

affectionate, but her children loved and revered her. They knew she loved them and that

she’d always go to bat for them. This is the kind of relationship my mother had with her

father. He wasn’t the most touchy-feely guy, but he usually came through.

There are pros and cons to both parenting styles. My father’s parents were so

supportive that he’s had a harder time dealing with the school of hard knocks. My

mother had such a push and pull relationship with her parents, that it forced her to find

herself on her own terms and to learn to deal with problems very effectively. So, they

compliment each other very well, and their style of parenting is a whole other essay.