In Israel, rising divorce rates and the retrenchment of neoliberal welfare provisions have intensified economic vulnerabilities among single-income households. While research has traditionally centred on single mothers' hardships, this paper examines how financial constraints, child support obligations, and diminished social safety nets converge to produce acute economic decline among divorced fathers. This decline manifests prominently in housing precarity, a condition this study terms "hidden homelessness": nominal shelter that nonetheless lacks stability, legal tenancy rights, or adequate living conditions. Makeshift arrangements including caravans, vehicles, parental homes, and expedient cohabitation expose fathers to estrangement from their children, psychological distress, and social invisibility.
Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 30 economically disadvantaged divorced fathers aged 33–55, the study analyses their experiences through four analytical lenses: the reconfiguration of class identity as expressed through housing arrangements; emotional well-being as a marker of altered class position; the redefinition of masculine and paternal identity under conditions of resource scarcity; and strategic adaptations to post-divorce economic adversity. The findings illuminate how neoliberal policies designed to reduce welfare dependency inadvertently produce new vulnerabilities and how men negotiate masculinity, fatherhood, and selfhood at the intersection of class demotion and residential instability. By situating these experiences within broader debates on gender, family dissolution, and social policy, this paper contributes to scholarly discourse on male identity and the multidimensional consequences of divorce beyond conventional economic metrics.

Authors:
Shlomit Benyamin, The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Shlomit Benyamin is a sociologist and lecturer at the Academic College of Tel Aviv–Jaffa, Israel. Her research focuses on ethnicity, inequality, housing insecurity, and families in poverty, and their intersection with social policy.

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