Tradition and transition: Family change in Israel

Abstract

This article describes recent family change in Israel. Two opposing forces affect this process—factors resisting change and attempting to preserve traditional patterns, and factors producing and driving change. The former are mainly religion, familism, and the political situation; the latter are mainly global cultural influences and the need to adapt to changing environments. As a consequence the magnitude of change as measured by rates of marriage, divorce, fertility, and new family formations lags behind similar transformations in other Western developed countries. An empirical study in Israel shows that a majority of married women and mothers perceive of both family and work in the labor market as highly important and combine them in practice. Their occupational aspirations and achievements are, nevertheless, limited by strong traditional norms of familism.