Intermarriages Between Western Women and Palestinian Men: Multidirectional Adaptation Processes

This article addresses cultural adaptation of Western‐Palestinian intermarried couples. Using in‐depth interviews, information was gathered from 16 participants, 7 Western women and 9 Palestinian men, living in Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Adaptation strategies are typified by the extent to which each spouse embraces the partner's culture. The data suggest that intermarriage engenders a multidirectional adaptation process. Patriarchy and East‐West power relations affect mainly the women, having to face marginalization on the basis of their gender and their foreignness. The men undergo a double process of cultural adaptation: to the Western culture and to their native culture after their return. Both the husbands’ extended family and the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict were found to affect both partners’ adaptation.     

In the Mind of the Beholder: Evaluation of Coping Styles of Immigrant Parents

The issue of coping with cultural transition, as in the case of immigration, has been the focus of extensive investigation in many domains. There is some diversity among scholars as to the relationship between change, stress, risk and well-being. Children, in particular, are regarded at risk since they experience parental stress and are exposed to two sometimes conflicting socializing systems. Consequently, parental modes of coping with “acculturation stress” are considered major factors in predicting immigrant children’s well-being. This article challenges existing views of a linear relation between parental coping and child well-being, suggesting that there is a great complexity and many variables that affect both parental coping strategies related to immigration and the definition of risk. We suggest that child development is affected by parental values and ideologies which form the “Adaptive Adult” image of the culture in which the children are raised. Immigrant parents confronted with a foreign Adaptive Adult image held by the socializing agents of the host culture may adopt one of the several different copying styles. The article describes three most common coping styles labelled by metaphores from the animal world: the traditional “uni-cultural” style which promotes conservation is represented by the Kangaroo strategy; the “culturally-disoriented” style which calls for rapid assimilation of children is represented by the Cuckoo metaphor; and the “bi-cultural” style, based on a meditative approach, is illustrated by the Chameleon’s ability to change its colour to blend in with the environment. Representatives of four professional sectors who are in daily contact with immigrant families, including educators, social workers, educational psychologists and paediatricians, were presented with three typical coping strategies and were asked to express their opinions regarding the adaptive and risk values of each coping style. By applying a qualitative research approach, results indicate that there are variations in the way the various stakeholders (parents and socializing agents) perceive basic concepts such as adaptation, risk and well-being. Consequently, their evaluations of the different parental coping styles vary, suggesting that it is all "in the mind of the beholder".     

Perspectives on Filial Responsibility Among Uprooted Families From South Lebanon

This study focuses on filial responsibilities among uprooted families. Views of 20 mothers and 20 adolescents and young adults from southern Lebanon residing in Israel were compared to identify the roles that adolescent children assume and the perceived effects of these roles. Eight domains of filial responsibilities were agreed upon: language broker, cultural broker, financial supporter and breadwinner, surrogate parent and sibling caretaker, emotional supporter of parents, mediator of family conflicts, heritage transmitter, and role model. The roles had simultaneous positive effects and negative effects. The discussion illustrates the importance of cultural context of country of origin and the host culture. Moreover, it suggests implications of the findings for research and practice.     

Parallel inference for massive distributed spatial data using low-rank models

Due to rapid data growth, statistical analysis of massive datasets often has to be carried out in a distributed fashion, either because several datasets stored in separate physical locations are all relevant to a given problem, or simply to achieve faster (parallel) computation through a divide-and-conquer scheme. In both cases, the challenge is to obtain valid inference that does not require processing all data at a single central computing node. We show that for a very widely used class of spatial low-rank models, which can be written as a linear combination of spatial basis functions plus a fine-scale-variation component, parallel spatial inference and prediction for massive distributed data can be carried out exactly, meaning that the results are the same as for a traditional, non-distributed analysis. The communication cost of our distributed algorithms does not depend on the number of data points. After extending our results to the spatio-temporal case, we illustrate our methodology by carrying out distributed spatio-temporal particle filtering inference on total precipitable water measured by three different satellite sensor systems.     

Suzi and Mr. S.: Gender role stereotyping in social workers' court reports in custody and access cases.

This paper analyzes the “gender strategies” of a sample of Israeli women social workers as evidenced in the recommendations that they write for the courts on custody and visiting rights for divorcing couples. Textual analysis of these reports reveals what Hochchild terms a “traditional gender strategy,” manifested in a consistent pattern of gender stereotyping. There are clear differences in the way the social workers present the husband and wife as persons, both separately and in relation to one another, and in the roles that they expect them to fulfill, with the man being assigned the provider role and the woman the parent role. Even the way they collect information about the two parents' relationships with their children is different. The paper concludes with a discussion of the practical implications of the findings.     

Fear of Intimacy and Hardiness Among Single Mothers by Choice: A Comparison to Divorced and Married Mothers

The phenomenon of nonmarital motherhood among upper-middle-class, educated women has increased dramatically over the last few decades in most industrialized countries. The purpose of the current research is to examine how women who elect nonmarital motherhood compare with women who elect other family configurations with respect to their personality characteristics. This research compares the fear of intimacy in close heterosexual relationships and hardiness of 61 single mothers by choice to that of 53 divorced and 60 married mothers in Israel. The findings indicate that single mothers by choice have a significantly higher level of fear of intimacy in heterosexual relationships compared to married mothers. No significant differences were found between the three groups of mothers in hardiness. Limitations and implications of the findings are discussed.     

Human Development Education for Social Workers in Multicultural Societies

In many countries, social workers are faced with the challenge of tailoring their practice to the diverse needs of children and families in multicultural realities. Our training and teaching practices, however, lag behind in their readiness to face this challenge. Attempts to reconcile cultural perspectives and postmodernism with the traditional goals of human development education are generally premised on the following assumptions: (a) postmodernist education fosters the ability to think critically and question assumptions underlying claims to knowledge; (b) theories should be evaluated for their usefulness and applicability to a more equitable society; and (c) a dialogic model of education in human development highlights the ‘inherently polysemous’ nature of human existence rather than transmitting a codified body of knowledge. The paper calls attention to the challenges of cross‐cultural psychology, indigenous psychology and postmodern critique and offers the means of confronting these challenges. Examples are based on teaching experiences in Israel and the US.     

Eighteen Months Old in Dublin

SUMMARY: The data reported and discussed in this article are taken from the Dublin Child Development Study, a longitudinal study which started in 1985 with interviews of 200 women expecting their first child. Using information gathered in the first 18 months of the children's lives, an attempt is made to describe the sample of children as they arrive at the age of 18 months. The findings on the children's development are placed in the context of the study's information on their parents and in the wider social context in which the families lived, in Dublin in the late 1980s.     

Divorce is a part of my life… Resilience, Survival, and Vulnerability: Young Adults' Perception of the Implications of Parental Divorce

A qualitative study among 22 young adults (20–25 years old) whose parents divorced during their childhood was conducted in Israel, using semi-structured, in-depth, open-ended interviews. Qualitative data analysis led to identification of three profiles, aiming at a grounded theoretical conceptualization. Three core themes were identified: the centrality of the family; short- and long-term implications of parental divorce and its relations to supportive coping resources; and perspective at young adulthood. Further analysis led to typifying participants by three profiles, which represent the grounded theoretical conceptualizations: resilience, survival, and vulnerability. The most prominent difference among the profiles was the relationships between participants and their parents, and their perception of ongoing parental responsibility. A thorough discussion of the results and their implications for future research, theory development, and practice are presented.