Just in time for Mother's Day, author Joyce Antler has produced a work that chronicles the perceptions and misperceptions of the Jewish mother through the years.

Despite its somewhat flippant title, this book is a scholarly effort to which the author has brought impressive credentials; a noted Jewish feminist, she has written a number of books about women that have received awards and recognition. She holds a chair in American-Jewish history and is also a professor of women's studies at Brandeis University. Antler earned her master's and doctorate from the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

But the data she used for her analysis of the American-Jewish mother come primarily from seemingly nonacademic sources: jokes, songs, radio, TV, films, plays, and novels. Only one chapter relies on conventional scholarly findings. Antler's perceptive presentation emphasizes the problems in Jewish mother-and-son relationships where the mother is depicted as demanding and self-sacrificing. She is seen as a negative influence who nags and intrudes. Today, some Jewish female comedians extend the portrait to the interaction between interfering Jewish mothers and their assertive daughters. Antler thoroughly explores the persistence of this negative image – and its accuracy – by questioning its authenticity. She argues that the picture of the Jewish mother as oppressive and dictatorial fails to take into account her genuine concern for her children.

According to Antler, stereotypes about the Jewish mother have persisted because of what she calls "the Jewish comic tradition." The Jewish mother is the butt of humor despite the diversity of contemporary Jewish mothers and their loving concern for their children. Lampooning and satirizing the Jewish mother fails to recognize the inevitable tug "between the parent who cannot let go and the child who wants freedom."

Antler points out that early songs by Al Jolson and Sophie Tucker presented positive images of the Jewish mother. This view was furthered by the popular radio and TV sitcom The Goldbergs – whose central character was Jewish mother par excellence Molly Goldberg. By contrast, in Herman Wouk's novel Marjorie Morningstar, Noel Airman calls Jewish mothers dull, self-righteous, eager, and suspicious. This image was intensified by Borscht Belt comedians who ridiculed overfeeding mothers and their henpecked husbands. Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Goodbye Columbus, along with other novels and TV shows, reinforced this mocking description of the Jewish mother.

Antler eventually concludes on a hopeful note, anticipating that Jewish feminist mothers and their daughters will break down the old stereotypes.

The book is marred by Antler's propensity to provide titillating tidbits that do not further her analysis. For example, she cogently criticizes the book Life Is with People by Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, a generally well-regarded portrait of shtetl life in Eastern Europe. Antler is certainly within her rights to challenge the book's picture of the Jewish mother in the shtetl; however, she goes way overboard by giving negative personal information about Zborowski that has no connection to his book.

Similarly, in describing the World War II anthropological project led by Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, of which Life Is with People is a product, Antler discredits them with a gratuitous and extraneous accusation. Finally, why does Antler have to spoil her excellent chapter on The Goldbergs by telling us about the unrelated problems of one of the actors who played Jake, Molly's husband?

Despite Antler's erudition, she has failed to learn the Jewish concept of lashon hara – the evil tongue. Malicious gossip, even if true, should not be peddled to those who have no need for the information. Antler's lashon hara detracts from what is otherwise an informative and witty account of how the image of the Jewish mother has developed and changed.