In the 1960s, Lenny Bruce inverted the Jewish mother image: He said his mother pleaded with the girls to "make sure my son gets some." In her 2005 movie Jesus Is Magic, Sarah Silverman tells a smutty joke that also links her mother and sex, and in a good way.

Should we thank Silverman for further tweaking the image of the Jewish mother? Or does her joke somehow signal the end of an era? At the conclusion of Antler's book, she argues that "we are all Jewish mothers now," because the overprotective, worrying parent has become the middle- and upper-class norm. It took almost 100 years, but the Jewish mother has finally taken over playgrounds and yoga classes everywhere.