Mothering Babies: Issues and Experiences of Women From a Traditional,Collectivist Society in a Modern,Individualistic One

Abstract

This study examines the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of first- and second-generation Ethiopian immigrant mothers in Israel. This subject is important in and of itself and also because it serves as an example of what happens to immigrant mothers from traditional, collectivist societies in modern, individualistic ones. Face-to-face interviews with 30 mothers of babies reveal generational similarities and differences. Both first- and second-generation immigrants identified motherhood as the “essence” of life for women, defined a “good mother” as one who was there to meet all of her children’s needs at all times, and expressed a strong desire to combine the ways of Ethiopia and Israel. With this, the first generation emphasized the need to give the baby space to grow, whereas the second generation regarded the baby as a being to be molded. In addition, the second generation considered it important to play with their babies and express their love for them explicitly, which the first generation did not.

Keywords

immigration first generation second generation a “good mother,”mothering babies motherhood

Recent years have seen large waves of immigration from countries with traditional and collectivist cultures to countries with modern and individualistic ones. Among the immigrants are young women who will give birth to and raise their babies in their new country. In addition to adjusting themselves, they will have to wrestle with the complications of parenting their babies in a different culture from that in which they were raised. They will have to decide what sort of parent they want to be, where and from whom they will seek and accept advice and help, which values of the new culture they will adopt, and which of their culture of origin they will retain (Falicov, 2003; Liamputtong, 2003; Ochocka, Janzen, Sundar, & Fuller, 2001; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; Roer-Strier, 2001; Tummala-Narra, 2004). Although the process is incumbent on both parents, most of it falls on the mother, who is the primary parent and major influence in the first months of the baby’s life. It is thus vital to obtain thorough understanding of what she feels, thinks, and experiences from her own perspective.

Introduction

Mothering Babies in a New Culture

Although much in motherhood is universal, the cultural context in which it occurs affects mothers’ experiences, functioning, and perceptions (Liamputtong, 2003; Van Doorene, 2009). For example, DeLoache and Gottlieb (2000) provide cross-cultural case studies of child-rearing practices among minorities in seven different traditional societies to show how each views its own practices as the “right way” to raise children. Keller (2003) presents different models of infant socialization for competence in typical rural agrarian and urban middle-class cultural contexts, showing how the socialization goals that are adapted to particular ecocultural environments become instantiated in parental ideas that define the framework for parenting behavior. Lancy (2010) shows how the parenting of intelligentsia and village parents differs in accord with the needs of the society. Bornstein, Cote, Haynes, Suwalsky, and Bakeman (2012) point out that whereas American mothers regard their infants as having desires and a will of their own, Japanese mothers view them as an inseparable part of themselves. There are also differences in how cultures view infants’ development. For example, whereas Israeli born mothers emphasize reinforcing their baby’s self-esteem and sense of security, Russian immigrant mothers believe they must create an environment that fosters their baby’s abilities (Rosenthal & Roer-Strier, 2001).

Immigrant women invariably mother in two, sometimes contending, cultural contexts: of their new country and of their country of origin (Bornstein & Cote, 2004; Raghavan, Harkness, & Super, 2010). They bring with them internalized concepts of how to raise their children and of which behaviors and characteristics to foster and which to discourage. Upon their arrival, however, they encounter new positions, whether through direct statements and instructions or indirectly through observation. They must decide how much to parent in accord with the ways of their culture of origin and how much in accord with the ways of the new culture.

This often entails choosing among opposing influences and may cause difficulty, anchored in the possession of conflicting knowledges. For example, a study of immigrant Thai mothers in Australia reported that they had to get used to their infant sleeping in a different bed from themselves (Liamputtong, 2003). Immigrant Indian mothers in the United States reported being wary of telling their doctors that their infants slept with them, lest they be pressured to teach them to experience themselves as separate persons (Tummala-Narra, 2004).

Mothers of Ethiopian origin in Israel are yet another example of mothers who are exposed to opposing influences from their culture of origin and their new country. This article discusses their experience of motherhood in Israel. Their experience is important in and of itself and also because it serves as an example of what happens to immigrant mothers as they encounter a wide gap between their new culture and the culture in which they were raised.

Immigration of Ethiopian Jews

Ethiopian Jews immigrated to Israel in three organized waves. The first two, in 1984, following the rise of the dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, and in 1991, following Mengistu’s ouster by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Front, were rescue operations carried out by the Israeli government. The third, in 1997, was a family unification initiative undertaken by the Israeli government. Since then, Ethiopian Jews have continued to arrive in smaller numbers. In 2012, there were 131,400 Ethiopian Jews in Israel, 84,600 of whom born in Ethiopia and 46,800 born in Israel (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2013). Although they received considerable financial and social assistance, including in learning Hebrew, finding employment, and finding and paying for housing, their adjustment has been fraught with difficulties, stemming from large differences in their way of life in Ethiopia and the reality in Israel. In Ethiopia, most were part of a traditional, agricultural society, and lived in villages without electricity, sewage, or roads. The transition to a modern industrial society totally changed their lifestyle: their dress, food, religious practices, routine activities, and child-rearing.

First-generation immigrants experienced particular difficulties. They underwent the strenuous and often traumatic trek from Ethiopia to Israel (Bar-Yosef, 2001; Ringel, Ronell, & Getahune, 2005), had to learn Hebrew and Israeli customs and behaviors, and had to cope with the many losses, including their home, way of life, support networks, entailed in leaving ones place of birth, and upbringing. The second generation did not have to deal directly with any of these challenges. The area of interpersonal communication provides a salient example. First-generation Ethiopian immigrants were accustomed to an indirect communication style characterized by verbal restraint, silences, and use of body language. The second generation quickly adopted the direct, highly verbal, and often confrontational communication style common in Israel (Bar-Yosef, 2001).

Impacts of Immigration on Ethiopian Women’s Mothering of Their Babies

Immigration from Ethiopia to Israel entailed a major transition, from a traditional society in which mothers brought up their children in a large extended family to a modern, individualistic culture, in which children were raised in relatively small nuclear families (Bar-Yosef, 2001; Ringel et al., 2005). This change could not but affect virtually every area of life, including the mothering of babies. Whereas in Ethiopia mothers were responsible for the housework, carried their infants on their backs, and nursed them for extended periods (Weil, 2004), in Israel many of them went to work outside the home, nursed their infants for shorter periods of time, and no longer carried them on their backs all day (Simonshtein & Shefi-Zenkel, 2005). Along with the parental role, their entire perception of infancy changed with their immigration. For example, Berhanu’s (2005) study of parents who immigrated from Ethiopia showed that whereas in Ethiopia the assumption was that infants developed on their own, at the well-baby clinics in Israel Ethiopian mothers encountered for the first time concepts such as IQ, intelligence, and cognitive development and were encouraged to promote them in their babies (Berhanu, 2005).

These studies provide important information on the difficulties encountered by mothers of Ethiopian origin in Israel. Nonetheless, they provide only limited information about the women’s feelings, thoughts, and experiences. The present study focuses on these more subjective matters.

Method

The study utilizes the phenomenological approach (Giorgi, 1997), which explores how persons construct and give meaning to their actions and experiences in concrete social situations. The approach was adopted despite the challenges entailed in using it with persons of Ethiopian origin, who are notably reserved and whose culture places substantial obstacles in the way of open communication (Bar-Yosef, 2001; Ringel et al., 2005). As described in the “Data Collection” section below, various steps were taken to enable the interviewees to open up and to speak with authenticity about their feelings, thoughts, and experiences.

Research Participants

Interviewees were obtained through purposive sampling (Patton, 1990). Care was taken to select interviewees with differing personal features (age, number and age of children, education). Thirty mothers, aged 21 to 40 years, were interviewed: 15 first generation and 15 second generation. Fifteen mothers (five first generation and 10 second generation) had high school matriculation, 10 (five each generation) had a BA or more, and three never completed high school. Their infants’ ages ranged from 1 to 6 months; 16 infants were under 3 months old. Ten mothers (three first generation and seven second generation) had one child at the time of the interview, 13 (six first generation and seven second generation) had two children, five (all first generation) had three children, and two (one from each generation) had four children.

Process

After receiving authorization for the study from the university’s Ethics Committee and Israel’s Ministry of Health, the researchers approached the Chief Nurse responsible for the well-baby clinics in the area where the study would be conducted. She, in turn, informed the chief nurse at each of the clinics in the area and asked for cooperation in mobilizing potential interviewees. To preserve their privacy, the mothers were first approached by the nurses at the well-baby clinics, who told them about the study and asked whether they were willing to participate. The contact information for those who agreed was relayed to the chief researcher, who then telephoned the mothers, explained the purpose of the study in greater detail, and informed them that the interview would be conducted at a time and place convenient to them. The purpose of the study was explained in considerable detail to allay the interviewees’ wariness of talking about personal experiences. This was necessary because Ethiopians tend to be a very private ethnic group.

Participation was voluntary. Face-to-face interviews were held at the participants’ homes after the interviewees were again told the study’s aims, promised anonymity and confidentiality, and informed that the study had been approved by the university’s Ethics Committee and the Ministry of Health.

Data collection

The interviews were conducted by the second researcher. In view of Ethiopian Israelis’ documented reluctance to speak about personal matters, she began with small talk on general matters and moved to the interview proper only after she sensed that the interviewees had become more comfortable. The first question of the interview proper, so to speak, was, “Would you please tell me a bit about yourself and your family.” To help the interviewees open up and elaborate in the course of the interview, the interviewer asked them specific questions about their mothering of their latest baby, such as whether anyone helped them take care of their infant, what challenges they encountered in being a mother in Israel, their conception of the ideal mother, and in what language they spoke with their children. The interviews lasted about 2 hr each. All were tape-recorded and transcribed.

Data analysis

In accord with the phenomenological approach (Giorgi, 1997), two researchers experienced in qualitative analysis separately performed cross-case thematic content analysis (Berg, 2001), in three stages (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). First, each interviewer separately performed open coding via line-by-line analysis of the interview transcripts to identify units of meaning. Then, they compared the meanings they identified and the quotations they marked. Following discussion, they reached complete agreement on all the meaning units and quotations. In the second stage, the interviewers used axial coding to identify the relationships among meaning units, as conveyed by context and content, and organized them into themes. In the third stage, integration, the coders, first separately and then together, identified interrelations among the themes and organized them by topics. They also tried to identify possible associations between the interviewees’ personal characteristics and their views of babies and mothering behaviors. The only such characteristic that was consistently related to their views and behaviors was their being first- or second-generation immigrants. No other personal feature, whether age, education, family size, social support, religiosity, or social support was.

Findings

Four themes were identified: (a) dual identity as Ethiopians and Israelis, (b) the good mother, (c) motherhood to babies, and (d) language spoken to the baby.

Dual Identity

Virtually all the respondents in both generations experience and practice their motherhood against the background of their dual identity as Ethiopians and Israelis. With this, they experience the duality differently. Those in the first generation tend to feel more rooted in Ethiopia: “I’m an Israeli Ethiopian. I was born there. That’s where my roots are” (#19, first generation).

Most of them try to combine the two cultures. They describe the task as effortful, requiring ongoing examination and balancing.

I combine the two cultures: Ethiopian culture and Israeli culture . . . It’s not so easy. You always need to be balanced between the two cultures and try to see where it’s good, where it does harm . . . and you need to examine it all the time. (#3, first generation)

The second generation describe themselves along a spectrum. Some emphasize their continued connection with their Ethiopian roots and tell of feeling not entirely Israeli:

[I’m] Israeli-Ethiopian! Completely Israeli-Ethiopian . . . I can’t say that because I’ve been here for many years I’m a full-fledged Israeli . . . I can’t forget . . . what my origin is and where I came from. (#30, second generation)

Some emphasize their Israeliness, without, however, relinquishing their Ethiopian roots and traditions:

In our daily lives, we don’t live in two worlds. We live in one culture Israeli culture. At the same time, we have our traditions, and we have our language. It’s something additional. It’s not contradictory. (#4, second generation)

Yet others emphasize their dual identity: “I feel “half-and-half. I respect what my mother says, the traditions and everything, but I feel Israeli” (#5, second generation).

Virtually all the respondents reported that they lived in, and had to adapt to two incongruous worlds, the Ethiopian world in their parents’ home and the Israeli world outside:

There was this conflict—between being an Israeli and being an Ethiopian. You really need to adapt to the two situations. When you’re outside you’re an Israeli, and when you’re at home . . . Outside you see other things and then when you’re home you suddenly go backwards . . . (#13, second generation)

They spoke both about the challenge of balancing their two identities and about their strong desire to do so, so as not to forego their Ethiopian roots and traditions:

Don’t forget your roots. It doesn’t matter how many years you’re in Israel. First of all, always remember your past—who you are and where you came from. The fact that you’re in another place doesn’t mean you can abandon everything you had. So first of all I’m Ethiopian, Jewish, Israeli, and a sabra who was born here. (#7, second generation)

The Good Mother

Both the first- and second-generation women identified motherhood as the “the essence of life” and “the best thing there is.” They repeatedly declared that “being a mother is everything” and described the inability to be a mother as a terrible deprivation and even a punishment:

I think if a woman can’t be a mother, it’s a kind of curse; and if a woman can be a mother it’s a kind of blessing. I think that the essence of being a woman is to be a mother, and if she isn’t it’s a kind of punishment. (#15, second generation)

The interviewees of both generations told that being “a good mother” meant meeting all their children’s needs. The statement “A good mother gives her children what they need, takes care of their needs” (#3, first generation) was typical of both generations.

All of them, too, conceived of these needs very broadly. Along with the need for food, which every one of the interviewees mentioned, they named the need to “welcome the child with a smile,” to “be with their children all the time so they aren’t neglected,” and to “talk to them, “play with them,” and “bring them up with the right values.”

With this, there were also differences in the generations’ conception of children’s needs. First-generation interviewees noted both their children’s need to be left alone and their need for support, as well as the importance of tuning their giving to their children’s exact needs:

A good mother? She gives her children what they need—the right upbringing, not too much, not too little—just what’s needed . . . Always to be there. (#10, first generation)

A good mother has to give them peace so they can grow . . . not disturb them. (#8, first generation)

Interviewees of the second generation spoke, in addition, of meeting their children’s need for love along with their physical needs:

A good mother is a mother who knows how to give, how to love . . . who knows what her children need, knows how to give them what they need . . . You have to give them warmth, love, food, drink, diapers, all those things . . . (#7, second generation)

They conceived of meeting the need for love as including knowing their children through and through, respecting them, and totally accepting them:

Knowing your children . . . every little thing about the child, giving them what they need . . . devoting time to them, explaining things to them, laughing with them . . . even just sitting with them . . . and tickling them. Having fun . . . (#7, second generation)

Motherhood to Babies

In discussing their mothering of their babies, the interviewees spoke extensively of conflicts between adhering to tradition and adapting Israeli, that is, modern, approaches; between following the ways of their mothers and adopting the counsels of the Israeli establishment. The two generations differed in their perceptions of the baby’s connection with its mother and of its cognitive abilities, and, consequently, they also differed in their views of the parenting behaviors that were required of a “good” mother.

For the first generation, mother and baby are welded together by the baby’s needs. As they presented it, babies have no comprehension; their organs are undeveloped:

He’s a baby. He doesn’t understand anything . . . he doesn’t know anything. (#28, first generation)

Even his internal organs aren’t the internal organs of a separate person. Only when he reaches the age of three. (#8, first generation)

Hence, mother and baby must not be separated even in sleep. “In Ethiopia, [the baby] would sleep with the mother . . . until she has another baby” (#26, first generation).

The separation practiced by most Jewish Israelis evoked a combination of wonder and skepticism in the first generation. One first-generation interviewee laughed as she noted: “A baby is born and they [non-Ethiopian Jewish Israelis] put him in another room . . . a separate entity!” (#8, first generation), as though the notion that a baby is separate and distinct from its mother is ridiculous. Another first-generation interviewee noted in addition that Ethiopians dismissed babies’ ability to “know” anything, as well as the related idea that parents should foster their babies’ cognitive abilities from its earliest days:

Here they tell you to play the baby music when you’re pregnant . . . to tell him stories . . . to communicate with him. There we didn’t care about it . . . “He’s in your tummy . . . he doesn’t know anything”—that’s what we’d say. (#19, first generation)

The view of the second generation is that babies are separate entities with their own needs, who should be spoken and played with:

I’d look him in straight the eye and talk to him, sing to him, play with him—with my hands, with my fingers . . . there are all kinds of games. (#29, second generation)

The difference in perception and the ensuing behaviors was a source of intergenerational tension. Several interviewees told that their mothers laughed at them for speaking to their babies and crediting them with the ability to understand:

My mother would laugh at me . . . Every night when he [the baby] got up, I would sit and just talk to him. My mother didn’t understand who I was talking to . . . She’d come, look, and say, “Tell me, who are you talking to?” I’d say “I’m talking to the baby. Who else would I be talking to?” She’d laugh at me: “You’re crazy. You’re talking to him? You think he understands you at this point?” (#17, second generation)

They treat babies like they don’t understand anything. They thought it was funny to see us talking to them. I’d put the baby in front of the television, and my mother would say, “What, you’re putting him in front of the television? What does he understand?” She’d laugh at me for showing him television . . . or for talking to him. (#24, second generation)

Several interviewees suggested that the difference in approach was rooted in a difference in the type of knowledge on which the two generations relied. The first generation, they stated, relied on intuition and environmental knowledge, the second on knowledge obtained from books or from the well-baby clinics to which mothers bring their newborns for weighing in and routine examination:

. . . The first generation relies more on their intuition, instinctive knowledge and beliefs. Or they rely on their environmental knowledge. In the younger generation, I think they also rely on intuition—but I’d say it’s less. It’s more knowledge from books, or knowledge from mother and child clinics . . . (#1, first generation)

Some first-generation mothers seem to have regarded this knowledge, or advice as disconcerting and as sapping their self-confidence:

In the first generation we see some sort of confusion. It’s possible that I have it too. In the mother and child clinic they told me to do this and that—and they talked about selflessness . . . A good mother investigates and asks questions. She’s concerned about her child’s welfare. Am I like that? I don’t know . . . Not totally. (#1, first generation)

Language

Although virtually all the interviewees of both generations told that they spoke mainly Hebrew with their babies, they differed in their feelings about it. Most in the first-generation interviewees conveyed some regret in having chosen Hebrew, both at having lost their native Amharic and at having adopted a language that is not properly their own:

I speak Hebrew, Hebrew, Hebrew, Hebrew with my children . . . I’m really sorry about it . . . We’re forgetting our language . . . it’s a shame . . . (#12, first generation)

I speak to my children mainly in Hebrew, but . . . Amharic is my native language . . . Hebrew came into our mouths. (#21, first generation)

Some, taking the counsel of Israel’s well-baby clinics, feared that speaking Amharic to their babies would delay their language development:

I said that when I give birth I’d speak Amharic. Today, I don’t think that’s going to happen . . . They told me, “If you speak a lot of Amharic he won’t talk quickly.” (#10, first generation)

The process was difficult and the outcome a sense of displacement and frustration, stemming from the need to switch between the two languages and the fact that Hebrew, being noncognate with Amharic, is a hard language for Ethiopians to master:

All morning you’re in a framework and you speak Hebrew . . . and then you come home. You have to switch and start talking Amharic. It’s really hard, making that switch. (#18, first generation)

With this, most of the first- and second-generation interviewees declared that they would teach their children Amharic so as to enable them to speak with their grandparents and to retain their roots:

I speak to my children in Hebrew . . . [But] I want to teach him [Amharic] so he can talk to my mother in Amharic. (#26, first generation)

My native language is Amharic. That’s how I communicate with my parents . . . It’s really connecting and really good . . . My son’s a baby, and he’s also going to speak Amharic. I’m going to teach him when he starts talking. I’ll speak to him in Amharic . . . I think it’s important. (#16, second generation)

Discussion

The findings show considerable similarities along with major differences in the perspectives of the two generations of Ethiopian mothers in Israel. Both generations identified motherhood as the “essence” of life for women and as vital to their identity. Both defined a “good mother” as a mother who was there to meet all of her children’s needs, emotional as well as physical, at all times. Both expressed a strong desire to combine the two very different worlds of Ethiopia and Israel. Both spoke mainly Hebrew to their babies, yet declared that they would teach them Amharic.

The view of motherhood as the essence of a woman’s life is a feature of traditional societies (Ihinger-Tallman, Pasley, & Buehler, 1995). It is also quite prevalent in all sectors of Israeli society, which regard bearing and raising children as incumbent on men and women alike, albeit more so on women (Kulik & Tsoref, 2010).

The view that mothers of babies should be there to meet all their baby’s needs at all times exceeds the usual expectations of mothers of babies in Israel, where fathers are expected to take part in baby care. It reflects practices in Ethiopia, where mothers are with their babies at all times (Rosenthal & Roer-Strier, 2001). These findings indicate that when they become mothers, both the Ethiopian immigrants and their children, including those raised in Israel, exhibit the internalized perceptions of motherhood of their culture of origin.

The desire to preserve the former culture while adopting the new one is found among many immigrant groups (e.g., Liamputtong, 2003; Tannenbaum, 2005; Tummala-Narra, 2004). For example, studies conducted among immigrant mothers in Australia and Israel found that they considered it important to talk with their children in their native language as a means of preserving their original culture, of bridging their past and present (e.g., Liamputtong, 2003), and of enabling their children to communicate with their grandparents (e.g., Tannenbaum, 2005; Tummala-Narra, 2004). With this, our finding that second-generation Ethiopian immigrants were as eager as first-generation immigrants to ensure that their children would learn Amharic sets these immigrants apart from second-generation immigrants in Canada (Lalonde & Cameron, 1993; Pawliuk et al., 1996), Holland (Merz, Özeke-Kocabas, Oort, & Schuengel, 2009), and the United States (Davidson et al., 2009), who were considerably less eager than their parents to retain the values, traditions, and language of their culture of origin.

Along with these similarities, several major generational differences were found. The first generation, but not the second, spoke of the need to give the child space in which to grow. Their view is consistent with Winnicott’s (1958) view that being alone (although in the presence of the mother) is essential to infants’ emotional development. On the face of it, the view seems to contradict the Ethiopian mothers’ strongly held notion that the mother must be with her baby at all times. The contradiction is only apparent, however. What the view actually conveys is the mothers’ confidence in their babies and in their environment. Their confidence in their babies may stem from their view of their babies as extensions of themselves. Their confidence in the environment may be rooted in their lives in Ethiopia, where other women were always around in the period after a baby’s birth and could be relied on to intervene in the case of need. The fact that the view was expressed by the first generation but not the second generation suggests that the first generation has more confidence than the second generation in babies’ ability to manage and/or in the availability and readiness of others in the environment to help.

Whereas the first generation viewed the infant as an extension of its mother, the second generation regarded him or her both as a separate entity and as a being to be molded. Second-generation interviewees conveyed the notion that the baby was to be molded from his or her earliest days, while still in the womb, and that the molding should continue well into the child’s development. This view reflects the influence of the well-baby clinics to which most mothers in Israel bring their newborns for checkups and inoculations, as well as of other sources in Israeli society, whether books, TV, or non-Ethiopian friends and neighbors.

Furthermore, the second generation considered it important to express their love for their infants explicitly, by kissing, fondling, and playing with them, while the first generation viewed such behavior as excessive. The first generation’s attitude reflects the restraint in overtly expressing affection and other emotions that is expected in Ethiopian society (Ben-Ezer, 1992). Non-Ethiopian Israelis, in contrast, tend to express affection in demonstrative ways (Almog, 2000). The generational differences in notions of how to treat babies sometimes brought the second generation into conflict both with their mothers and with themselves. The mockery of some of their mothers of their efforts to foster their infants’ development was not only painful; it was a source of conflict about how they should treat their babies. The inner conflict was probably intensified by the fact that the mother’s main source of support was their own mothers. It could not but have been very difficult for them that their mothers, whom they very much appreciated, view both motherhood and infancy very differently than the “authorities” that they, the younger generation, have come to accept.

The various differences reflect differences in the source of the knowledge on which the two generations rely. The first generation believes that the knowledge of how to mother babies is anchored in instinct, intuition, and information provided by the people in their close environment. The second generation tends to be more accepting of knowledge acquired from professional authorities: doctors and nurses, the staff of the well-baby clinics, as well as from books.

The literature on immigration generally presents first-generation immigrants as experiencing the greatest difficulties in adjusting to their new country and the second generation as experiencing those difficulties to a much lesser degree and only indirectly, through their parents (Costigan & Dokis, 2006; Nesteruk, 2007; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). The findings of this study, however, show that second-generation Ethiopian mothers of babies in Israel experience many difficulties of their own. They are torn between their Israeli and Ethiopian identities and work very hard to combine them. These findings suggest that these immigrants lack the clear, internalized, and unchallenged model of motherhood which their own mothers possess. They serve as yet another example of what is usually termed the immigrant paradox (Fuller et al., 2009), whereby children of immigrants may experience diminishing developmental outcomes and educational achievements in comparison with their parents (García Coll & Marks, 2012; Marks, Ejesi, & García Coll, 2014).

The study has several limitations. Although it encompasses more interviewees than most qualitative studies, the 30 Ethiopian mothers, 15 from each generation, constitute a small and unrepresentative sample. Moreover, the fact that the interviewees were recruited through well-baby clinics means that the more traditional mothers of Ethiopian origin, who do not bring their babies to these clinics, are not represented in the study. Another limitation is that the interviewer was a White, native Israeli, who differed substantially in culture, background, and life experiences from the interviewees. She had never undergone the trials of immigration and adjustment to a foreign culture. Nonetheless, the fact that she was of a different culture and social position may have enabled the interviewees to speak about personal matters more freely than they would have to one of their own, with whom they may have shared the cultural taboo against speaking of personal matters with others.

The present study enables us to learn from mothers who actually experienced the transition between two very different cultures firsthand, and to understand the ways in which this transition shaped their experience of motherhood. Whereas previous studies focused mainly on mothers of toddlers and emphasized their coping with the pressure to conform to their new society, the present study is one of very few explorations of the impact of immigration on mothers of infants, and sheds light on their conflicts with their own mothers and within themselves.

Further research is recommended on both first- and second-generation mothers of babies who moved from a traditional, collectivist culture to a modern, individualistic one. In practical terms, it is important that professionals who come into contact with mothers of babies, including doctors, nurses, psychologists, and social workers, be aware of the many difficulties faced by immigrant mothers and, by extension, their babies.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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