“I Wish he Were Dead.” The Experience of Loss among Young Arab-Bedouin Women in Polygamous Families

Abstract

This article presents the sense of loss of young Arab-Bedouin women in Israel who grew up in polygamous families. Polygamy is widespread in Israel's Arab-Bedouin population, although state law explicitly prohibits it. Tradition and custom allow a man to marry more than one woman, and Islam does not forbid it. Polygamy has many ramifications for women, children, and society in general.

The data were gathered in semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 30 young women, ages 18 to 22, whose fathers took a second wife in the last five years and moved to a separate home with the new wife. The women interviewed were so distressed they sought therapeutic help. Among the many findings is the profound sense of loss: of fathering, of love and attention, and of family.

Intersectionality theory was used to explain the particular vulnerability of these young women. Israel has no targeted treatment programs or interventions for adolescent girls in polygamous families, and this may harm their chances of successfully negotiating adolescence. Targeted treatment is recommended. The findings apply to social work in any country where polygamy exists.

Keywords

experience of loss polygamous families fathering father–daughter relationship

Introduction

This article presents the sense of loss of young Arab-Bedouin women in Israel who grew up in polygamous families. The women in the sample were so distressed that they sought therapeutic help.

Background: A Society in Transition

Polygamy, which is widespread in Israel's Arab-Bedouin population, is a symptom of the complex circumstances and many difficulties this minority society faces. These include inadequate education, unemployment, and insufficient welfare services; low status of women; too little governance by the state; and societal introversion.

Arab-Bedouin society in the Negev—Israel's arid southern region—has undergone great changes in recent decades resulting from the encounter with Israeli society and processes of modernization, globalization, and urbanization. Israel has attempted to provide various services for the Arab-Bedouins and to improve governance, accelerating the processes of modernization and integration in Israeli society. These processes have, in turn, generated two conflicting developments: the Arab-Bedouins’ desire to preserve cultural and religious values and the infiltration of modern societal values that are creating unavoidable social, cultural, and economic changes (Allassad Alhuzail, 2020; Dinero, 2014). The greater the society's sense of change, the greater its sense of threat to its cultural uniqueness (Allassad Alhuzail & Segev, 2019).

Why Polygamy Persists in Israel

Polygamy does not occur in a vacuum, and many factors contribute to its persistence. It is a symptom of the status of Arab-Bedouin women: Disadvantaged and excluded, they struggle for their place in a patriarchal tribal society that refuses to relinquish the superior position it grants to men. Some scholars consider polygamy an integral part of patriarchy, which views women as existing to satisfy men's needs (Abu Rabia, 2011). Islamists view polygamy as a positive phenomenon that provides a supportive framework for older single women (Allassad Alhuzail, 2020).

Most Arab-Bedouin women object to polygamy, but their low social status and life circumstances prevent them from countering it. More than 90% of Arab-Bedouin women are unemployed, and more than 60% of Arab-Bedouin girls living in villages unrecognized by the state drop out of school (Palmor, 2018).

Polygamy persists in Israel, despite the legal prohibition, largely because Arab-Bedouin society ascribes great importance to large family units with many sons, which it sees as conferring power and status on the family and the society. Because the Arab-Bedouins were traditionally warriors, in their view the larger the tribe, the stronger it is. Therefore, individual and familial status, economic security, and the possibility for personal development continue to be based on familial affiliation. Socially and psychologically, polygamy and the resulting large families are still linked to power and honor (Lev-Wiesel & Al Krenawi, 2000).

Polygamy in Israel is unique in that it also has political aspects. The settlement policy imposed on the Arab-Bedouins is characterized by a process of de-Bedouization and de-Arabization, arousing social opposition. Among the manifestations of this opposition is the entrenchment of polygamy and the connection with the Arab world (Dinero, 2014). Polygamy often mediates the political and economic survival of the Bedouins, especially given the Israeli policy of supporting a high birthrate in the Jewish population but not in the Arab-Palestinian population. Under these circumstances the differential rates of natural increase in the two population groups have become a national issue, with women at the forefront of the battle (Berkovitch, 1999). The ramifications of this politicization often strengthen the patriarchal structure that preserves the culture and relevance of the society. The demographic struggle—Israel's desire to increase the Jewish birthrate and to decrease the Arab-Palestinian birthrate—underlies the laws meant to regulate fertility in Israel (Kanaaneh, 2002; Portuguese, 1998). Many Arab-Palestinians view giving birth as part of their national obligation and part of the national struggle against Israeli hegemony (Kanaaneh, 2002). In this context, childbirth becomes a political project.

It has been argued that polygamy persists in Israel because of the state's failure in urbanizing the Arab-Bedouins. The Arab-Bedouin population is one of the poorest and weakest socially and politically in Israel, with the highest incidence of illiteracy (Abu Rabia, 2011). Half the Arab-Bedouins live in great poverty in villages unrecognized by the state, and the Islamic parties are gaining ground among them. The state does not try to suppress the tribalism of Bedouin society but rather encourages it, and this, too, contributes to the persistence of polygamy (Palmor, 2018).

According to Arab-Bedouin feminists, polygamy is a desperate attempt by the men to hold on to patriarchy, which is slipping through their fingers. From the men's perspective, “the land has been taken, the traditional way of life has been taken” (Abu Rabia, 2011; Abu-Rabia-Queder, 2008, 2010). Moreover, polygamy is encased in various religious justifications, making it difficult to conduct a rational discussion about it.

Finally, young Arab-Bedouin men today prefer to marry the person of their choice and not, as tradition dictates, someone chosen for them by the old women of the tribe. They prefer a bride who is educated and has a profession. Many of the men who married in accordance with the traditional method leave the first wife or divorce her in order to marry a second wife of their choice (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 1998).

Polygamy and Feminism

There is great heterogeneity in feminist approaches, especially among those who argue that they are excluded from the feminist struggle on the basis of ethnicity, race, or skin color and have therefore created additional streams, including Islamic feminism (Eyal-Lubling & Krumer-Nevo, 2017).

The processes of change and the penetration of modernization in Arab-Bedouin society have brought with them Western feminist ideas that see polygamy as a mechanism of oppression and control of women (Abu Rabia, 2011; Allassad Alhuzail & Lander, 2021). This approach aims to raise the status of women by exposing the gender inequality in social structures. A key criticism of this approach comes from postcolonial theory, which argues that Western political projects in general and feminism in particular activate and confirm Western norms that perpetuate the colonial-imperialist view (Ahmed, 2017).

Mahmood (2005) argues that Western feminism constructed its own political categories in a limited manner derived from a secular view of agency, which identifies it totally with opposition and subversion. From this perspective, a non-Western religious woman is perceived as being subject to patriarchal religious and societal laws and therefore unable to manifest feminist agency.

Arab-Bedouin feminists who espouse Western feminist principles encounter opposition from their society. In contrast, Islamic feminists in Egypt, for example, who do not refer to themselves as feminists and who act in accordance with the spirit of Islam, primarily in the mosques, succeed in bringing about change in education and employment.

Feminism and Social Work

Feminism and social work are linked. Social-work training programs and the practice of social work are imbued with feminist principles. But the practice has focused primarily on the problems of women and gendered feelings without identifying the social structures that cause this inequality and without conducting a critical discourse and examination of their role in perpetuating gender inequality (Gringeri & Roche, 2010). Among the analytic principles noted by Eyal-Lubling and Krumer-Nevo (2017) as necessary for critical feminist social work practice are gendered social analysis, awareness of power relations, and analysis of welfare services as structures of oppression.

Polygamy and Intersectionality

Israel's Arab-Bedouins are an indigenous population living under a colonial regime that denigrates their culture and customs, including polygamy. The Islamic Movement in Israel views polygamy as part of the Arab-Bedouins’ right as a minority to maintain its customs and religion (Mahajne et al., 2021).

An examination of the intersection of Arab-Bedouin women's multiple marginalizations can contribute to an understanding of the linkage between them and their effect on the women, of the social structure, and of the complexity of the phenomenon of polygamy. Analyzing these structures can expose mechanisms of oppression such as gender, ethnic affiliation, or age and intersectional mechanisms that create unique marginalizations, such as those characterizing young Arab-Bedouin women: their ethnic affiliation that distinguishes them from other Arabs and Jews in Israel, their low status as young women, and the poverty and high unemployment rate despite the increase in the percentage of women acquiring higher education and entering the labor market (Krumer-Nevo & Komem, 2012).

The discussion here is based on the theory of intersectionality of marginal identities, which takes into account the daily life experiences of people from disadvantaged groups, the complexity of their identities, and the ways in which inequality and social oppression are manifested in the power structure. The aim is to promote social justice and social change through research and practice (Adames et al., 2018; Dill-Thornton & Zambrana, 2009).

The theory provides a conceptual framework relevant to women who turn to the welfare services and are suffering from multiple states of distress and marginalization (Mehrotra, 2010), for example, the young Arab-Bedouin women in this study.

The Contribution of This Study

Most of the studies on polygamy have examined the ramifications of such marriages for the women, the wellbeing of the first wife, and the effect of polygamous marriage on the academic achievement of the children. Fewer studies focus on the children, especially the adolescents (Alimi, 2006). Such studies have yet to be conducted among male Arab-Bedouin adolescents in polygamous families and among female and male Arab-Bedouin adolescents living in polygamous families with shared households. Very recently, studies have appeared regarding female Arab-Bedouin adolescents who were traumatized by their fathers’ remarriage (Allassad Alhuzail, 2020; Allassad Alhuzail & Lander, 2021). The contribution of the current study is a broadening of the understanding of the effects on adolescent daughters who have been traumatized by their fathers’ remarriage and move to a separate home and the consequent loss of parenting.

The Unavailability of Parents in Polygamous Marriages and the Lack of Appropriate Treatment Programs

Parents in polygamous marriages, and especially during the first year following the husband's second marriage, are not available emotionally or physically to meet the needs of their adolescent daughters. This absence of parenting is sometimes compounded by the fact that the husband's second wife is the same age as his daughter (Allassad Alhuzail, 2020). In the current study, the ages of many of the second wives ranged from 19 to 25 years. Some of the second wives, however, were 27 or older, an age at which there is tremendous social pressure to marry, even if it means entering a polygamous relationship (Allassad Alhuzail & Lander, 2021).

In Israel, polygamy is not defined as a social problem and consequently there are no intervention programs for treating these families, particularly the children and adolescents. The absence of a treatment program and intervention for adolescent girls in polygamous families compounds their vulnerability and may harm their chances of successfully negotiating adolescence (Allassad Alhuzail, 2020).

Fathering and the Relation to Daughters

The father–daughter relationship has important components of identification and closeness. When the daughter experiences the father as distant, absent, or alienated, this harms not only their relationship but also the daughter's developing self-confidence and the relationships she will have as an adult with other men (DelPriore et al., 2017).

Leonard, in her book The Wounded Woman: Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship (1982), describes the intense vulnerability of girls who had unsatisfying relationships with their fathers. To the individual dimension of the relationship she adds the social dimension. For many of these women, the root of their injury stems from a damaged relation with the father. They may have been wounded by a bad relation to their personal father or wounded by the patriarchal society which itself functions like a poor father, culturally devaluing the worth of women (p. 3).

In general, fathers have limited involvement in the lives of their adolescent children, in terms of communication, closeness, and father–child relations. This involvement is even more limited between fathers and adolescent daughters (Noller & Callan, 1990; Youniss & Ketterlinus, 1987). In Islam, the father's involvement in the lives of his children stems from a religious commandment to treat his children equally, support them, and educate them, but that involvement is not necessarily emotional. This limited kind of support may also derive from a traditional perception of the man's role. Saltzman Chafetz (2006) points out a series of characteristics identified with masculinity in the gendered sense of the term: physical strength and resilience, rationality and emotional restraint, leadership, competitiveness, and achievement orientation. In contrast to this traditional view, a new ideology of self-aware masculinity is emerging, which rejects the emotional self-restraint associated with the norms of traditional masculinity (Kaplan et al., 2017).

Traditionally, however, fathers in polygamous Arab-Bedouin families—adopting the customary masculine role of supporting the family only financially—are minimally involved in rearing their children. As these fathers see it, caring for the children is the mother's role (Allassad Alhuzail, 2020).

Methodology

This study focuses on young Arab-Bedouin women in Israel who live in polygamous families in which the father maintains a separate household with his second wife. The participants were adolescents when the father remarried. The aim is to explore their experiences and their view of the father's remarriage. This is a qualitative study in the phenomenological tradition, which is best suited to the attempt to describe holistically and in detail that which cannot be observed directly in phenomena, processes, experiences, and subjective interpretations (Lieblich et al., 1998). This method enables the researcher to discover and generate hypotheses regarding the interrelations between the meanings in intersubjective phenomena (Lieblich et al., 1998; Miller & Crabtree, 1992; Padgett, 1998; Patton, 2002). This paradigm also makes it possible to study the phenomena in their natural setting and to attempt to find meaning in, or to interpret, the phenomena using the language of the participants (Shkedi, 2003).

The Study Population

The participants were 30 young women who were between the ages of 18 and 22 at the time of the study, had suffered emotional distress, and had sought therapeutic help. The distress was hypothesized to have resulted from the father's remarriage and distancing from his first family.

The participants were all single, unemployed high school graduates who were not in any educational framework, living in state-recognized towns in the Negev. They were located with the help of the coordinators of a support program and social workers who work with the Arab-Bedouin population. The support program is a government-funded social-therapeutic afternoon setting in the community to which social workers refer young women in distress, some of them from polygamous homes. The program aims to help the women find their place in normative frameworks. The therapy provided is based primarily on Western practices focusing on adolescence and adolescent rebellion, rather than on the ramifications of polygamy and how it is experienced by adolescent girls. No information is available regarding the percentage of women in the program who come from polygamous homes.

Notices containing an explanation of the study and its aims were sent to all 75 Arab-Bedouin women in the support program and to the women referred by the social workers. Prospective participants notified the coordinators or social workers who in turn notified the researcher. A total of 30 women responded and all were interviewed. Participation was voluntary; no payment or other benefit was offered, and there were no consequences for not participating. Participants were free at any time to withdraw their consent to be interviewed.

The interviews were conducted by the researcher—an Arabic-speaking Arab-Bedouin woman—who met with the young women in their homes or in the support program setting. The interviews were recorded (with the participants’ permission) and transcribed in Arabic. The data of all the participants were analyzed together.

Ethics

The study was approved by the institution in which the researcher is employed. To protect the participants’ identity, each one quoted was assigned a fictitious name and is identified here by the initial of that name. Each participant was accompanied by a social worker during the interview and was told that should she feel distress at any point she could end the interview.

The Research Tool

Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were used. The aim was to understand how the young women experienced being adolescent daughters in polygamous families and the meanings they ascribed to the experience. The interviews provided access to cultural contexts of the young women's behavior, thus providing a way of understanding the meaning of the behavior and the participants’ experience. A single question was asked of each participant at the outset: Can you please describe your experience as an adolescent in a polygamous family? Additional questions included, Can you please describe your relations with your father? How do you view the second wife?

Data Analysis

A thematic analysis was conducted (Strauss & Corbin, 1990; Tutty et al., 1996). The first stage included recording first impressions from the interviews and the main topics, in an attempt to become familiar with the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). In the second stage, each of the interviews was analyzed separately. This analysis included an inductive process of open coding of the data, aimed at identifying the units of meaning arising from each interview separately, then identifying repeated patterns of significance as categories arising from the various interviews. In the third stage, connections were built between the categories and were then gathered together as themes and named in a shared file for all the interviews. This stage included a thorough examination of the meaning of the loss of parenting, especially the loss of fathering, for the participants. A professional translator translated the passages cited in this paper into English.

Results

The experience of loss—of the father, of fathering, of love and attention, and of the family—is a main theme.

“I wish he were dead”: Loss of the Father and of Fathering

The adolescent girls experience the father's marriage to a second wife as a traumatic event and as a traumatic loss of the father, as is evident in the words of M.

I wish he were dead. I would mourn for him for a while and remember a father who loves his daughter and his family. Ever since Father married a second wife he has not been in touch with us. He chose a different wife, different children, and he doesn't want me…He is lost to me and the family; the man who protected and supported is no longer. It is very hard. (M.)

The father of M., age 18, married a second wife her age. Her story is representative of those of many of the Arab-Bedouin adolescents who experienced the father's second marriage as traumatic and injurious. It is experienced as the loss of fathering and the loss of the significant male figure in their lives. They describe the loss as worse than death. The father is alive but absent from their lives, and this perpetuates their loss and makes coping more difficult.

The adolescent girls whose fathers married another woman their age experience the remarriage first of all as a loss of fathering; the marriage itself is experienced as a secondary trauma, as is evident from the words of A., age 21.

It drives me crazy. I can't imagine my father's wife in his arms, in an intimate situation. She's my age, really, there's a year between us. I can't…[starts crying] It's disgusting…yuck…Why did he do this? (A.)

A. expresses her revulsion toward her father only because of his being in an intimate relationship with a woman her age. This feeling causes an emotional distancing and sometimes also an emotional disengagement from the father–daughter relationship—experienced as a severe loss, as is evident in the words of AM., age 20.

It's hard for me to talk about it, really hard. I don't feel anything toward him. I don't feel that he is Father. I don't feel that I’m his daughter. I can't accept that he is sleeping with a girl, my age…[starts crying]…It's a rape of the soul…[cries] (AM.)

AM. experiences her father's intimate relations with his young wife as a rape of the wife's soul. The experiences of the young women whose father has married a young second wife reflect the secondary traumatization. They experience the father's sexual relations with a girl their age as a brutal rape, as sexual exploitation of the second wife. This hurts them, and they describe feelings of anxiety, depression, isolation, and disengagement that can disrupt their daily routine, as is evident from the words of S., age 18.

There is no value to this life. At night I have nightmares. I imagine how he has sexual relations with L. [her father's second wife]. She's a child, smaller than I am, a thin girl. I’m very frightened. I have a lot of bad thoughts. How can it be that this is my father? How can he exploit a little girl, even if she is his wife? I had a very hard time and for a week I didn't go out of my room. (S.)

Loss of the Family

The young women for whom the father's marriage to a second wife was traumatic also experience the marriage as the total destruction of the family. These are young women who experienced their parents’ relationship as stable and happy, creating a united and happy family. The marriage to a second wife is experienced as a violent, horrible act that has caused the father to abandon his home and has caused the daughter an overwhelming sense of the family's destruction.

R., age 22, compares her father's remarriage to an act meant to totally destroy one family in order to build a different one. She sees her father's decision as narcissistic and him as looking out only for himself, placing no importance at all on his family, his wife, and his children.

If he wants to get married, he should at least tell us, update us, share with us, and go far away and build himself a new family…I don't understand why our family is destroyed in order to build a new family…He destroyed us, he destroyed the family, he only thought about himself. He's sick, narcissistic. That's not my father. (R.)

R.'s words reveal the young women's expectation of being informed, of being involved in the father's decision, which might have made it easier for them and might have changed their feeling that their family was being destroyed in order to build a new one.

The father's second marriage is viewed as the destruction of the family to fulfill his personal needs. Because of the painful experience, the young women's feelings of love turn into feelings of hatred, rejection, and betrayal, and gradually lead to a severing of the father–daughter relationship.

The young women, especially those who had a strong relationship with the father, feel emotional isolation in the absence of the father figure in their lives. They experience a loss of self-confidence and of the backing they had. They feel alone and that they have lost the protection of their father and the safety net that he is supposed to provide, as is evident in the words of SR., age 20.

He loved me more than himself. He used to take me everywhere. I loved him and I never thought this love could turn into hatred….He wounded me, Mother, and the entire family. He married an evil monster who turned him into a bad person, evil. I don't talk to him at all and have no contact with him. He has become a stranger. That is not my father. (SR.)

The young Arab-Bedouin women who experience their father's second marriage as a traumatic loss see the second wife as a partner in destroying the first family in order to establish her own family. They view the father's new family as being built in place of their family and not alongside it. They cannot see two happy families but rather the happiness of the second family built at the expense of the loss of happiness and family life of the first family.

The father's remarriage is perceived as a powerful shock that wounds them at every level—emotional, physical, and social. They relate to the new wife as an inhuman creature with dark, destructive powers and as an evil, ugly woman and a heartless monster. For them she is to blame for the destruction of the relationship between their parents and is responsible for the destruction of the family they had. They view the second wife as the hell of their lives and the main cause of their suffering and pain.

Two years before the interview with MA., age 18, her father married a second wife who was two years older than her and attended the same school.

[Of all women] he chose to marry her. We went to the same school. I was in tenth grade and she was in twelfth grade, a snob, and I could never stand her. [Of all women] he took her as his wife. She made our lives hell. My mother is her mother's age. Not only did she cast a spell on Father, she is spoiled and threatens that if he is in touch with us she will leave him. He is tied to her in a way that is not normal. (MA.)

The anger is apparent in MA.'s words—anger at the father who married a second wife her age and anger at the second wife who won't leave MA.'s family alone. MA. sees her as the main cause of her father's distancing himself from them and as a devil who has made their lives hellish and full of suffering. Her words show that she ascribes dark, evil powers to the second wife.

The second wife is also experienced as a thief who has robbed them in broad daylight of the father, has stolen his love and his support, and has left them nothing but tension and pain. Therefore, they are not nice to her, have difficulty in accepting her, and fight her. They belittle her, engage in verbal abuse and sometimes even physical abuse, cut off contact with her, and harm her socially by besmirching her name.

I will make her life a misery as she has made our lives a misery, stolen our father, fallen in love with him. Why, aren't there enough men in the world?…She knew that he was married and had children. She didn't love him but loved his money. She took everything. One day she will throw him out after she has taken everything. (SA.)

AL. was a student in a high school where her father's second wife teaches. AL. cannot respect her and sees her as an evil woman who chases her out of her father's house and does not allow her to be in touch with him.

I will not leave her alone. She took Father, destroyed our family, stole his love. I tell all my friends how evil she is. I don't hide anything and I told them how she chased me out when I came to ask Father for pocket money. She is an evil wife and the whole world needs to know. I hate her and I want to hurt her. (AL.)

In Arab-Bedouin society the second wife is traditionally called Auntie and is supposed to be an aunt to the husband's daughters from his first marriage, to give them love and respect, and to connect them with their father. But because of the changes in the society that have weakened the tradition and the culture, the second wife no longer fulfills the traditional cultural role, and therefore she is unwelcome and rejected by all the members of the husband's first family.

Without Father There Is No Family

For young Arab-Bedouin women, family consists of a pair of parents and children. When there is no father in the picture, there is no family. The father's marriage to a second wife is experienced as a double loss—of their father and of their family. They liken it to death, a catastrophe that has befallen them with no warning.

A family is a father, mother, and siblings. A family is joy, love, a father who loves Mother and his children, a father who goes shopping with Mother and takes care of his children. That is a family. When there is no father there is no family. My family is disappearing. I have no family. Mother has disappeared inside herself. Father is with the second wife. And we, the children, have been left without a family and without Father. (N.)

N. paints a lively and dynamic picture of a family: joy, a good marital relationship, and parents’ affection and love toward their children. She sees that her father's second marriage has severely harmed her ideal picture. In her view, the absence of the father destroys the parenting and the entire family.

The Loss of Love and Attention

The loss is also experienced on the emotional level. The young women feel that with the father's remarriage they have also lost his love. They also feel that they are losing the love and attention of their mother, and therefore they fight the mother's fight and appropriate her pain, as is evident in the words of Y., age 18.

Now he will have daughters from the wife that he loves and then he will love them more than me? He’ll buy them more than [he will buy] me? I feel that I have lost Father. I wish he had died and not remarried…. I don't sleep at night because of all the thoughts. No one notices me. Father and his new wife, and mother with her pain, it pains my heart [cries]. (Y.)

The adolescent girl's trauma is apparent, as are her emotional state and the suffering she is experiencing because of her father's marriage to a young second wife, her age. Also evident are her sense of loss of her father's love and the closeness to him.

The father's decision to take a second wife creates a situation of pressure, stress, and trauma, in both the short term and the long term, for the adolescent daughters. Adolescence is a sensitive period and requires guidance, support, and the presence of two parents in the adolescent's life. Parents in polygamous marriages, especially in the first year, are not emotionally and physically available to address the needs of their adolescent children. Moreover, a father who abandons his first family may also cease financial support (Allassad Alhuzail, 2020).

The participants in this study experienced emotional disengagement and the loss of attention on the part of both parents—on the part of the father because of his remarriage and on the part of the mother because being wounded by her husband has made her emotionally unavailable. The adolescent girls report that they experience the pain of their mother and feel it even though she suppresses it, as can be seen in the words of RA., age 20, whose father took a second wife five years before.

I see and feel Mother's pain, her wound, even though she hides it and behaves as if everything is alright. It is sad to feel Mother's sadness and to see how she was abandoned and humiliated. She hides it but I feel it. It hurts me here [points to her chest]. It's not easy. It is very painful. (RA.)

As is apparent, RA. is sad because she feels her mother's sadness, and it pains her to see and feel her father's contemptuous attitude toward her mother. She feels the pain of her mother's abandonment and she is very hurt by her father's humiliating treatment of her mother and his preference for another woman.

RA., like other participants, feels the emotional pain along with physical pain, as is evident in the following quotation:

To my mother I show that I am strong and on her side. I hide my own pain. I suppress my sadness and that hurts even more. I feel a pain in my chest, my throat. My head is always thinking and painful. I feel that I have also lost Mother. (RA.)

The adolescent daughters are wounded both directly and indirectly by the father's second marriage. First, they are wounded by the father's emotional and physical distancing and the feeling of the loss of their father. Second is the outcome of the marriage and the wound to the mother, which impairs her functioning toward her daughters. The adolescent girls feel the mother's wound and are in turn wounded by it. They also feel the mother's emotional distancing and the loss of her attention, as is evident in the words of L., age 20.

I feel that this is a different mother. I had a mother before and a mother after. Before Father married his second wife, Mother was all ours. She loved me very much and my sisters, noticed when I was sad or happy and even could read my thoughts. After Father married, I lost all of this. Mother is apathetic, does not notice what I am going through, does not feel my pain, and has stopped reading my thoughts. I have lost my relationship with Mother, and it hurts. (L.)

In summary, the father's marriage to a second wife wounds the adolescents who prior to the marriage had a strong and supportive relationship with the father. The father's marriage is experienced as a traumatic loss—of the relationship, the father figure, the male figure, and the attention of both parents.

Discussion

In discussing the experiences of the young Arab-Bedouin women who sought help after their father's second marriage one must consider the theory of intersectionality of marginal identities. This will make possible a discussion of the social, rather than psychological, interpretation of their behavior—their opposition to their experience. Such an interpretation bears in mind the young women's position in a traditional society that is in transition and trying to maintain its culture and uniqueness.

The participants expressed feelings of loss, manifested as loss of the father, of fathering, of the family, and of love. It is possible to see the penetration of modernization and the exposure to a different kind of parenting and fathering within Arab-Bedouin society, which is trying to preserve its customs and its character. This preservation can be manifested in emotional distance between the father and his daughters and the perpetuation of polygamy.

Understanding the place of the young women in Arab-Bedouin society is crucial. Their gender excludes them and weakens them, and their status in the family is permanently lower than that of the sons. Their age also keeps them under the wing of their parents until they marry. Their ethnic affiliation and membership in a minority are additional constraining factors, and therapies offered to them are limited by the lack of knowledge and resources of the welfare services.

The study does show the beginnings of opposition on the part of the young women to the father's remarriage, but it remains within the family and does not yet seep out into the public sphere. Arab-Bedouin society objects to any feminist expression that threatens the traditional structure. Whereas the postcolonial feminist view is that that the aim of Western feminism is to undermine traditional structures, negate their legitimacy, and see them as factors of oppression and harm (Butler, 2004), feminists acting in this way in Arab-Bedouin society expose themselves to violence and tagging as enemies who upset the social order. Such a postcolonial approach fails to create a rich cultural vision that will enable an alternative collective cultural space, and contributes to perpetuation of the women's vulnerability (Ahmed, 2006).

True, Muslim women in positions of power and influence elsewhere have succeeded in speaking out and changing norms and even state laws. In Indonesia, for example, feminist women protested publicly and boycotted restaurants, and they also took action at the United Nations. Ultimately, in contrast to other Muslim countries where polygamy is legal and unconstrained, they succeeded in limiting its legalization and generated a public discourse that denounced the phenomenon (Mutaquin, 2018).

In Israel, however, Arab-Bedouin women are still far from bringing about such a change because of their status as young women in a minority society undergoing change and struggling for cultural survival. Their entry into higher education cannot be seen as a feminist revolution conducted by women for women, for their freedom to study remains dependent on a man's decision. Many Arab-Bedouin men worry that their social status will be harmed and that they will be exposed to ridicule if they allow a daughter to go on to higher education when she is of marriageable age (Palmor, 2018).

The resistance of the Arab-Bedouin daughters in this study to fathers who have radically changed their family structure into one that is inequitable can be viewed as an emerging form of feminist activity of young women experiencing a unique constellation of oppressions (Conway, 2007; Dosekun, 2015). The daughters’ hopes for the future seem to be driven by a localized version of Islamic feminism that emphasizes the empowerment of young Arab-Bedouin women through personal and professional achievement within their communities (Hammer, 2008; Marey-Sarwan & Roer-Strier, 2017). The bolder and more prevalent Islamic feminism is not yet widely accepted among Arab-Bedouin women in Israel (Allassad Alhuzail & Ranz, 2019).

Feelings of Loss

The voices of Arab-Bedouin girls who were adolescents when their families became polygamous emphasize their hurt and feelings of severe loss, which have many ramifications that can be manifested in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression over time. The traumatic symptoms exacerbate the symptoms of grieving and in the absence of treatment will continue for years (Kaltman & Bonanno, 2003; Sklarew et al., 2012). The current study's findings confirm these arguments; most of the participants expressed intense feelings and described post-traumatic symptoms.

The findings emphasize the experience of hurt that the fathers cause their daughters and also the daughters’ mothers. This accords with the findings of various studies of polygamous families (Allassad Alhuzail, 2020; Marey-Sarwan et al., 2018). However, the current study points to processes and dynamics that have not yet been described in the literature, namely, reduced parenting on the part of the mother following the father's marriage to a second wife and his change of residence.

The Context of Research on Families

The experience of members of Arab-Bedouin polygamous families may also be examined within the context of the general literature on families, family structure, and family-related risk factors. Of particular importance here may be the scholarship on separated, divorced, and reconstituted families. As the current study found, the literature on the processes and dynamics of families that have experienced divorce suggests that acute transformation of family structure may often lead to reduced parenting, including the parenting by mothers (Wallerstein et al., 2018). The literature on reconstituted families posits that remarriage of a parent is often extremely challenging for existing children and may often affect them adversely, as the current study found. Children may have particular emotional difficulties and even be in severe conflict with their parent's new spouse, whom they may demonize (Jeynes, 1999; Lussier et al., 2002; McNamee et al., 2014; Planitz & Feeney, 2009; Wallerstein & Lewis, 2004). Also, as the current study found, children may often defy the remarriage of a parent, either by means of clear and direct resistance or through disengagement from the remarried parent (Aquilino, 2006; Arditti & Prouty, 1999; Baum, 2004).

The study population is a population at risk but receives no targeted therapeutic intervention. Despite the legal ban on polygamy, there is virtually no attempt by the state to halt the phenomenon. And because of the policy of denial, there are no therapeutic strategies, explanatory programs, or programs for intervention in polygamous families (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2004).

Cohen and Manning (2010) argue that sometimes a definition of risk stigmatizes the parents and the family and ignores the contextual effects, such as the political context, social exclusion, discrimination, and poverty. The study's participants indeed suffer from exclusion. Moreover, the lack of recognition of the Arab-Bedouins as an indigenous people excludes indigenous knowledge and the use of it in treating these young women. Indigenous feminism sees recognition of a people's culture as a condition for recognizing the oppression of women, and Islamic feminism accepts polygamy as allowed by Islam—but only within the strict confines laid out by the religion (such as in the case of a first wife who cannot bear children).

García Coll et al. (1996) argue that influences such as social position, racism and its derivatives, and segregation should be taken into consideration when studying a minority. They also argue that patterns of family interaction should be conceptualized as a reflection of an adaptive culture, because these patterns represent a mix of history, traditions, and adaptive responses to specific contextual demands and barriers.

This strategy is especially important in light of the current study's findings: The feelings of the adolescent Arab-Bedouin girls receive no legitimization culturally and may even be perceived by their society as weakness. Therefore, inadequate application of culturally sensitive strategies may cause the suffering and distress of this minority population to be overlooked.

The National Prevention Council recommends ensuring a strategic focus on populations at very high risk and implementing community-based approaches that promote health and the needs of the community (National Prevention Council, 2011). However, communities at high risk that are sometimes characterized by what they lack socially or economically are unlikely to receive the resources, support, and opportunities that promote proper development (Kingston, 2011). The Arab-Bedouin population in Israel has one of the country's highest percentages of poverty, unemployment, crime, and violence.

Recommendations and Limitations

A preventive strategy and treatment are needed for the study participants. At the micro level, there is a need for family therapy programs to help the children and the parents cope with the polygamous family structure. Contextual family therapy, with an emphasis on ethicality, may provide a theoretical framework and practice (Wetchler & Piercy, 2011). Emotion-based family therapy may introduce the importance of feelings, especially of hurt and loss, and their authentic, direct expression, and thus free energy for parenting (Greenberg & Johnson, 2010). The existing support program, as noted above, does not provide therapy specifically geared to the ramifications of polygamy. I recommend that its staff be made aware of the findings of this study, be trained to provide targeted therapy, and help develop programs for appropriate intervention.

The findings of this study are relevant not only for social workers in Israel who work with the Arab-Bedouin population but for social workers wherever polygamy is practiced.

That the participants were a self-selected group is a limitation of the study, but the sample size is sufficient for them to be representative of Arab-Bedouin women who have suffered emotional distress resulting from their fathers’ remarriage and distancing from his first family. A further study is planned regarding polygamous families in which the father has not disengaged from his first family.

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.

ORCID iD

Nuzha Allassad Alhuzail

Author Biography

Dr. Nuzha Allassad Alhuzail, senior Lecturer, School of Social Work, Sapir Academic College, Israel. Her research deals with the implications of social change for the lives of three generations of Bedouin women; Poverty; youth at risk; Indigenous social work and social work in conflict areas; women in traditional, and religious societies.

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