Between endurance and survival: Palestinian mothers’ narratives of addiction and the dilemma of divorce

This study examines how Palestinian mothers living with addicted husbands navigate the moral and psychological dilemma between staying in marriage and pursuing divorce. Drawing on thematic analysis of 30 first-person narratives shared in digital peer-support spaces in the occupied West Bank, the study conceptualizes addiction not only as a behavioral condition but as a relational and moral rupture that reorganizes family life. Findings reveal that marital decision-making is profoundly shaped by stigma, gendered expectations, and intensive social surveillance that frame divorce as a socially punitive act while moralizing women's endurance as maternal virtue. Mothers describe prolonged psychological distress marked by fear, depression, emotional paralysis, and life lived in suspension, as they weigh personal survival against children's wellbeing and anticipated social judgment. Children emerge as the central ethical justification for both staying and leaving, producing deep moral ambivalence. While endurance is normalized as duty and sacrifice, leaving is narrated as an act of reclaimed agency and moral resistance. The study challenges individualistic models of choice and highlights how motherhood operates simultaneously as a source of meaning and a mechanism of social regulation in addiction-affected marriages.