4

The Mennonite Quarterly Review

b_{1950-1959100 (2349)83 (1947)11 (246)7 (156)}
b_1960-1969c_{100 (1983)92 (1832)5 (102)3 (49)}
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N of cases in parentheses.
a_{Data taken from 1980 Indiana Amish Directory.}
b_{Data taken from 1988 Indiana Amish Directory.}
c_{This cohort includes many young people in their late teens and early twenties}
(835 out of 2818) who have not made a membership commitment. Therefore, the
analysis included only those people who have left theirparental homes.

Father's Occupation, Marriage and Family Dynamics

The 1988 Indiana Amish Directorylists 407 families with children
who have left the Amish. These families constitute 21% of a total of
1958 families. What are some of the characteristics of these families
which may lead children to defect? The issue to which persons
working in other settlements have given much attention in the past is
the shift in employment away from agriculture and to industry.

Scholars such as Hostetler,¹¹J. Erickson et al.,¹²E. Erickson et al.,¹³

and Martineau and MacQueen¹⁴have argued that a father's non-
farming occupation is directly related to a child's leaving the Amish.
Data from northern Indiana do not support this argument.

In 1988 the largest occupational category among the heads of
households in the Elkhart-LaGrange settlement was factory work. The
factory men work primarily in the recreational vehicle and mobile
home industry. Although Amish men have worked in these factories
sinceWorld War II, in the past two decades increasing numbers of them
have entered factories instead of beginning their careers on farms. As
recently as 1970, 61% of Amish household heads were farmers;
however, by 1988 that figure had dropped to 37%. By contrast, in 1970
26% were employed in industry, and by 1988 this group had increased to
43%.



11_{. John A. Hostetler, Amish Society(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).}

12_{. Julia A. Ericksen, Eugene P. Ericksen, John A. Hostetler, and Gertrude E.}
Huntington, "Fertility Patterns and Trends among the Old Order Amish," Population
Studies, 33 (July, 1979), 255-76.

13_{. Eugene P. Ericksen, Julia A. Ericksen, and John A. Hostetler, "The Cultivation of}
the Soil as a Moral Directive: Population Growth, Family Ties, and the Maintenance of
Community among Old Order Amish,"Rural Sociology, 45 (Spr., 1980), 49-68.

14_{. William H. Martineau and Rhonda Sayres MacQueen, "Occupational}
Differentiation among the Old Order Amish," Rural Sociology, 42 (1977), 383-97.