My Home is Not My Castle: Follow-Up of Residents of Shelters for Homeless Youth

The paper presents a follow-up evaluation of Israel’s first two shelters for homeless youth. The main research questions were: (a) Did the youngsters achieve the shelters’ main goal of reaching a normative and suitable post-shelter residence? (b) How do the youngsters evaluate their stay at the shelter and its impact on them? (c) Is there a relationship between youngsters’ post-shelter residence and their evaluation of the shelter stay? Data on 345 youngsters were collected through follow-up telephone interviews with the youngsters, their parents, and community social workers. The findings indicate that the majority of these youngsters left the shelter to living arrangements that were normative but not necessarily fitting with their wishes and needs. Most of the youngsters were satisfied with the shelter, but no relationship was found between general satisfaction and achievement of the shelters’ declared goal. The discussion focuses on the significance of the findings with regard to the declared and operative goals of shelters.     

INSULATION IMPOSSIBLE: MONETARY POLICY AND REGIONAL DEBT SPILLOVERS IN A FEDERATION

This paper studies the effects of monetary policy in the presence of debt spillovers within a monetary union. When capital markets are integrated, the fiscal policy of any member country will generally influence equilibrium wages and interest rates across the whole union. We ask whether there exists a monetary policy which can offset these spillovers. Within a general class of monetary policy rules, there does not exist one that completely insulates agents in one region from fiscal policy in the other. These debt spillovers will affect welfare through two channels: intertemporal efficiency and redistribution.     

Working‐class mothers’ school involvement: a class‐specific maternal ideal?

Recent ideological shifts, along with budgeting constraints, have made parental involvement in the schooling process necessary. Such expectations have increased the toll on working‐class mothers, who now have to assume responsibility in three time‐consuming areas: child care at home, school involvement and labour market participation. In analysing how mothers deal with this threefold expectation, research has focused on class‐specific maternal ideals and practices, but rarely directed systematic attention to how these concurrent expectations shape the maternal ideals they embrace. Moreover, few studies have examined how mothers’ maternal ideals shape their employment interruptions. The current paper considers how working‐class mothers rationalize the maternal ideals they embrace with regard to school involvement and examines how they negotiate them vis‐à‐vis other possible maternal ideals. Interviews of 48 Israeli low‐income mothers reveal that educational success is consensually perceived as critical for maximizing life chances and that this understanding evolved from the gradual realization that school involvement through extensive mothering – where women rely on others to meet their children's schooling needs – must be replaced by school involvement through intensive mothering – namely, personal presence‐based nurturing. We draw some implications relevant to the debate over class‐based maternal ideals.     

Conservative and alternative motherhood in popular Israeli TV series

The present study analyzes the models of motherhood reflected and constructed in two popular Israeli television series that center around mothers. The analysis reveals the change in social norms and values regarding the institution of motherhood in Israel, while also shedding light on the construction, reproduction, and distribution of the dominant and alternative discourses of motherhood in neoliberal countries, and the global diversity of this discourse. Using critical discourse analysis, the study shows a dialectic flux in the representation of Israeli motherhood between the tendency to preserve preexisting notions and the propensity for innovation. It demonstrates the move from a collective society in which motherhood constitutes a woman’s civil duty to her nation and serves as a source of power in the public sphere, to an individualistic society where motherhood is also a private identity and universal practice. While the emergence of an ambivalent mothering discourse in the few years between the two series reflects the development of an alternative feminist voice in the Israeli public sphere, both series still reflect the deeply embedded conservative social presumption that every Israeli woman should become a mother at some stage in her life.     

Social workers' emotional labour with families in poverty: Neoliberal fatigue?

This study examines the emotional labour of social workers serving families living in poverty. Based on in‐depth interviews and focus groups, the study concentrates on frontline social workers' emotions when faced with increasing levels of poverty, growing caseloads, and neoliberal social policies in Israel. Findings highlight 3 interrelated aspects of the emotional labour of social workers involved with impoverished families: (a) the emotional flooding social workers experience in their professional routines, (b) the various practices of emotional labour they use to cope with the emotional backlash of their encounters with these families including emotional numbness, emotional Othering, and emotional splitting, and (c) confirmation of the harmful influence of institutional policies on their emotional well‐being and ability to respond effectively to the increasing demands of their clients. Based on Hochschild's theory of emotional labour, we maintain that social workers' emotions should be studied in the context of a specific social, institutional, and political background.     

The value and rationale of gender‐specific intervention with at‐risk adolescent girls

Gender‐specific intervention (GSI) with at‐risk adolescent girls (ARAGs) is highly prevalent in Israel and elsewhere; professionals commonly consider GSI to be beneficial for ARAGs. However, despite the popularity of such programmes, there is little empirical support for their effectiveness and almost no critical examination of their theoretical rationale. The aim of this qualitative, naturalistic study was to explore how experienced professionals in this domain perceive the value and rationale of GSI with ARAGs, based on in‐depth, semistructured interviews with 15 female Israeli professionals. All of the interviewees claimed that overall, GSI is the “right” or most effective way to work with ARAGs. The discussion reviews the empirical support for participants' assumptions regarding the value of GSI for ARAGs and critically considers the potential drawbacks of GSI with ARAGs.     

The mommy wars: on the home front and waged abroad

Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Atlantic article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” published in 2012, generated huge response, well beyond what already has become typical in the intensifying mommy wars in the United States. It also drew considerable attention globally. Within one week of publication, Slaughter’s “lament” attracted a million readers. Slaughter’s explanation of why she quit her high powered job, and then Yahoo’s choice of the then-pregnant Marissa Mayer as its new chief executive, provoked another round of mommy wars. The research reported here on how journalists dealt with the controversy compares the US, with its tradition of heated controversy over working mothers and neoliberal opposition to structural supports for families, and Israel, where attention to Slaughter was somewhat surprising, given the presumption in Israel that mothers will work outside the home. Journalistic discourse in both countries tended to frame the work–home conflict as a women’s issue, to be addressed by women journalists, and not men. Moreover, writers tended to address the issue anecdotally, in terms of personal experience but ignoring structural issues and structural solutions and ignoring how solutions for middle-class professional women or women at the “center” may not work for other kinds of women.     

Explorations of the effect of experience on preferences for a health-care service

The standard assumption in economic theory is that preferences do not change as a result of experience with the commodity/service/event. Behavioral scientists have challenged this assumption, claiming that preferences constantly do change as experience is accumulated. This paper tests the effect of experience with a health-care service on preferences for maternity-ward attributes. In order to explore the effect of experience on preferences, the research sample was decomposed into three sub-samples: women pregnant with their first child (no experience); women after one delivery (single experience); and women after more than one delivery (multiple experiences). The preference patterns of the three sub-groups were estimated and compared. A Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) was employed for establishing the relative importance of five attributes. Socio-economic background variables were also considered. The basic findings are that preferences change significantly as a result of experience with the health event; that the effect of experience is attribute-specific; that the extent of past experience (number of deliveries) is irrelevant; and that the effect of experience differs by socio-economic status.     

Harsanyi's impartial observer theorem with a restricted domain

In this paper we extend Harsanyi's impartial observer theorem by showing that the large domain of social lotteries can be significantly restricted – it is sufficient that the domain consists only of constant extended lotteries. Received: 27 December 2000/Accepted: 12 September 2001 We thank Simon Grant, Edi Karni, Atsushi Kajii, Ben Polak, Yemima Thompson and John Weymark for their comments and the Israel Institute of Business Research for financial support.