"It is endless … It is definitely challenging … But we experience growth out of it": negotiation patterns of Jewish Israeli women living in mixed families

ABSTRACT

Mixed marriages challenge ethnic, racial and religious belonging. However, over the past few decades, there has been an increase in the number of mixed marriages in the Western world, as well as in Israel. The present study focuses on women living in mixed families in Israel – Jewish women who are married to Muslim Arab-Palestinian men.

The study examines the negotiation patterns that these women use in order to shape their identities as women, partners and mothers during their daily family life. To examine how these women negotiate their multiple intersectional identity, in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 Jewish women married or previously married to Muslim Arab-Palestinian men, and who raised children with them. Using a multilayered theoretical perspective, we analyze how these women negotiate with themselves and others in their circles of belonging regarding issues related to couplehood and child rearing.

The negotiations conducted by these women take place on two levels (the personal level and the level of external-social relations), where different women are placed on the range between a Jewish-national identity, a hybrid identity, and a Muslim-Arab-Palestinian identity, depending on their intersectional locations and resources, including education, employment and place of residence.

The intersectional locations of the women may leverage or limit their negotiation. The identification of these multilayered negotiation patterns contributes to the literature regarding the daily experience of women living in mixed families, particularly in deeply divided societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed families
• negotiation
• Jewish-Israeli women
• gender relations
• intersectionality
• motherhood

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts with ethical standards.

Notes

1 The term ‘familism’ refers to fertility rates, marriage age, divorce rates and so forth. In many of these categories the data in Israel does not correspond with those in other Western countries (Fogiel-Bijaoui, 2017).