Negotiating housing insecurity: Parenting in poverty and the struggle for home

Among the arenas that reproduce inequality for marginalized groups, housing remains one of the most important. Guided by scholarship on housing insecurity among the poor and parenting amidst poverty, this article investigates the lived experience of parenting within the intricate landscape of housing insecurity. To do so, we draw on in-depth interviews with 100 low-income parents who rent a house in Israel. Our findings show that amidst severe housing challenges, parents constantly enact strong social agency by striving to secure decent housing for their children. Our analysis also reveals how three main facets of housing insecurity permeate and shape everyday parent–child relationships: overcrowded living conditions, economic tensions, and emotional and health challenges. We employ the concept of “negotiation” to offer a threefold conceptualization of our findings regarding parenting experience in the shadow of housing insecurity.