Don't archive Joe Muer's yet• • • On The Bookshelf `The Improvised Woman' Now traditions can be recorded in Southfield. Same extraordinary difference. It's no Mande' to be single, says author Marcelle Clements. EDITH BROIDA Experience the difference Special to the Jewish News Reservations — 248-644-5330 30855 Southfield Road T HAKATA JAPANESE RESTAURANT • eit 05) OPEN 7 DAYS • LUNCH & DINNER featuring AUTHENTIC JAPANESE CUISINE AS YOU LIKE IT! • Elegant Atmosphere • Gracious Warmth s Reasonable Prices * Sushi Bar * Private Japanese Rooms * Cocktails Including 30 Different Kinds of Sake Lunch: Mon.-Fri. 1 1 :30-2 p.m. • Dinner: Mon.-Sat. 5:30-10:30 p.m. Sunday 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. 737-7220 737-7223 32443 NORTHWESTERN HWY. Fax: Between Middlebelt & 14 Mile Visit us on the web www.hakatasushi.com Michael and Ray Abrams Invite You To MeWe's Now Appearing RON CODEN TRIO SAL, MAY 1, 8, 15 & 22 5/7 1999 23380 Telegraph, Bet. 9 and 10 Mile • Southfield. • (248) 352-8243 wo 60-plus women, one married, one widowed, both fashionably attired in tennis togs, are talking about The Improvised Woman (WW. Norton & Co.; $26.95), an engrossing new study of single life authored by New York journalist Marcelle Clements. "I wouldn't mind a relationship," remarks the widow, "but I certainly wouldn't want to live with anyone again." "Actually," replies her married friend, "you really only need a man for weddings and bar mitzvahs." This dialogue would not surprise journalist Marcelle Clements. For almost a decade she interviewed a cross-section of single women, ages 20-plus to mid-90s. Her findings con- firmed her own suspicion: Single life today is "comfortable." Edith Broida is a freelance writer based in Farmington Hills. The single woman, the unmarried mother, the divorcee, the widow, she discovered, have found ways to impro- vise, and their new life, which often places men on the fringe, is not only tolerable but enviable. At the very least, she suggests, some of the common beliefs about the tradi- tional American family are archaic, reflecting the wishful thinking of the Dan Quayle bunch; "new families" are disparate, reflecting a technology that has made artificial insemination, sperm banks, in vitro pregnancy, sur- rogate mothers and grandmothers almost commonplace. Her research is demographically sig- nificant: There are two single women for every three married, she discloses. In the United States, this means a pop- ulation of 43 million single women. There is additional data: the 50 per- cent divorce rate is static, she writes, but the remarriage rate has dropped by 40 percent. The steepest increase of births out of wedlock is among white, ( educated, professional single women. Marcelle Clements defines the "new family'• its her own. European immigrants attempting to Marcelle Clements introduces her reconstruct family life with the rem- with a book The Improvised Woman nants that remained. frank admission: She never anticipated Clements' own parents - her life would become what both of whom were previously it is today. married -- spent the war years She marvels at the equa- in hiding. They immigrated to nimity she feels as a 50-year- the United States in 1958, old single mother who main- convinced by the Suez Canal tains a successful freelance and Algerian crises that more writing career in New York dangers loomed in France. City while managing the In an interview, affairs of a 93-year-old wid- Marcelle Clements Clements compares the owed mother and the needs strong Jewish women of her of a 4-year-old adopted son. childhood to the strong Jewish But upon reflection, she suspects women she interviewed as part of there were role models in post-war her research on single life. Paris, where she lived as a child. She She is still sorting her findings, not- remembers many "new" families in ing with some surprise that a dispropor- her community, many were corn- tionate number of single Jewish women prised of Holocaust survivors and