Role Strain and Systemic Barriers: A Qualitative Study of Somali Refugee Mothers in the United States

Abstract

Somali refugee mothers navigating parenting in the United States face compounding challenges that extend well beyond the initial resettlement period. This study employed a multi-method qualitative design, including utilizing a focus group and follow-up key informant interviews with Somali refugee mothers. Thematic framework analysis identified three overarching domains of challenges and resilience. First, a pervasive deficit of functional literacy, defined as the practical capacity to navigate American institutional systems, emerged as the primary stressor, superseding material poverty as a barrier to daily functioning. Second, significant intergenerational tensions were documented, including role reversal between mothers and children, erosion of parental authority, and breakdown of the traditional expectations that adult children provide financial and social support to aging parents. Third, single motherhood amplified all other stressors, producing progressive role strain and mental health decline in the absence of extended family support. Despite these challenges, participants demonstrated substantial resilience through informal mutual aid networks, religious practice, and deliberate cultural and linguistic preservation. Findings have direct implications for the design of culturally responsive resettlement programming, family counseling services, and mental health interventions for Somali refugee populations.

1. Introduction

Refugee mothers and their families face unique and multifaceted challenges as they navigate parenting in resettlement contexts that differ significantly from their countries of origin. The resettlement process involves not only physical relocation but also profound psychological, social, and cultural adjustments that shape parenting practices and family dynamics (Betancourt et al. 2015). For Somali refugee mothers in the United States, these challenges are compounded by the need to maintain cultural identity and traditional values while adapting to a new societal context with differing expectations regarding child-rearing, gender roles, and family structure (McMichael et al. 2011; Suleiman et al. 2024).

Somali refugees represent one of the largest refugee populations resettled in the United States over the past three decades, with significant communities established in states such as Minnesota, Ohio, and Utah (Minnesota Department of Health 2024; Suleiman et al. 2024; Utah Department of Health and Human Services 2024). Driven primarily by the collapse of the Somali state in 1991 and the ensuing civil war, the Somali refugee population in the United States grew from approximately 2500 in 1990 to an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 today (Connor and Krogstad 2016; Minnesota Department of Health 2024). The migration experience often involves prolonged displacement, family separation, and exposure to violence and trauma, all of which have lasting implications for family functioning and maternal well-being (Betancourt et al. 2015; DeSa et al. 2022; Ellis et al. 2008). Upon resettlement, Somali mothers must simultaneously manage the practical demands of establishing economic security, accessing healthcare and education systems, and securing stable housing while fulfilling their parenting responsibilities in an unfamiliar cultural landscape (Betancourt et al. 2015; Suleiman et al. 2024).

The process of acculturation presents particular challenges for refugee mothers, who often experience acculturative stress as they balance preserving Somali cultural traditions with adopting American norms and practices (Betancourt et al. 2015). This tension is especially pronounced in the realm of parenting, where mothers must negotiate differences between Somali and American approaches to discipline, education, autonomy, and intergenerational relationships (Bowie et al. 2017). Research has documented that refugee parents frequently express concern about their children adopting behaviors and values that conflict with traditional cultural expectations, leading to intergenerational conflict and challenges to parental authority (Deng and Marlowe 2013).

Despite these challenges, Somali refugee mothers demonstrate considerable resilience, drawing upon cultural strengths, religious faith, and community support systems to navigate the complexities of parenting in a new context (Betancourt et al. 2015). Understanding the lived experiences of these mothers, including both their challenges and their sources of strength, is essential for developing culturally responsive services and supports that promote positive outcomes for refugee families (Pavlish et al. 2010). The urgency of this understanding is amplified by the current political climate in the United States. On 20 January 2025, an executive order was signed by the president, indefinitely halting the arrival of thousands of refugees that had been preapproved by international treaty and Congress (Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program 2025). In January 2026, the Department of Homeland Security formally terminated Temporary Protected Status for Somali nationals, ordering affected individuals to leave the United States by 17 March 2026 (Department of Homeland Security 2026). The Somali community has been subjected to targeted federal enforcement operations, repeated derogatory rhetoric from the highest levels of the federal government, and coordinated media campaigns characterizing Somali Americans in derogatory terms, notwithstanding that the vast majority are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents (Al Jazeera 2025; CNN 2025; Masters 2026). These developments have created profound fear and instability within Somali communities across the country.

This political context underscores the precarity facing Somali refugee families and heightens the importance of research that documents both the systemic barriers they navigate and the resilience they sustain in the face of compounding structural and political pressures. While prior research has examined Somali refugee parenting broadly, the specific experiences of single Somali refugee women navigating parenting alone (following widowhood, divorce, separation, or abandonment) have remained underexamined in the literature. This population faces a distinct and compounding set of challenges that differ meaningfully from those of two-parent refugee households, and their experiences merit dedicated attention. This study aims to contribute to this understanding by qualitatively examining the parenting experiences of Somali refugee mothers in Utah, with attention to how contextual factors across multiple life domains influence their adaptation and resilience in motherhood.

Conceptual Framework

This study draws on the two complementary theoretical frameworks of Berry et al.’s (1987) acculturation model and Goode’s (1960) theory of role strain.

Berry’s model identifies four strategies through which individuals and groups navigate contact between cultures. First, assimilation, in which cultural identity is relinquished in favor of engagement with the dominant group. Second, separation, in which cultural identity is maintained while contact with the dominant group is minimized. Next, marginalization, in which neither cultural identity nor meaningful engagement with the host society is sustained. Finally, integration, in which both cultural maintenance and engagement with the dominant society are pursued (Bhatia and Ram 2009). Research has consistently found that the integration strategy is associated with lower acculturative stress, while marginalization is associated with the greatest difficulty (Berry et al. 1987). Refugees, who are involuntary migrants who lack the option of return, face particularly elevated acculturative stress compared to voluntary immigrant groups (Berry et al. 1987).

However, Berry’s framework has been critiqued for its universalist assumptions. Bhatia and Ram (2009) argue that Berry and his colleagues treat the psychological processes of acculturation as essentially the same across all groups, thereby failing to account for the role of race, racialization, power, and historical and political context in shaping the acculturation experience. Their research demonstrates that immigrants who consider themselves successfully integrated can be abruptly repositioned as outsiders by structural and political forces, suggesting that acculturation status is not a stable individual achievement but a condition continuously shaped by social conditions beyond the individual’s control. This critique is directly relevant to the population studied here, whose acculturation experience cannot be separated from the structural barriers documented in this paper, including the current federal political climate described in the Introduction.

A second anchor for this study is Goode’s (1960) theory of role strain. Goode defines role strain as the felt difficulty in fulfilling role obligations and argues that role strain is a normal feature of social life. Furthermore, the individual’s total role obligations are inherently over-demanding, and no one can satisfy all demands simultaneously. Goode identifies multiple sources of role strain, including participation in many role relationships with different and sometimes contradictory obligations, the competing demands within any single role relationship, and the existence of role sets in which a single social position involves obligations to multiple different people. He further argues that social structure determines how much freedom an individual has in managing role strain, including the mechanisms available for delegating, compartmentalizing, or renegotiating role obligations.

This framework is particularly applicable to Somali refugee mothers. In the Somali cultural context, the extended family system has role obligations stretching across a broad network of kin that provide collective mechanisms for managing the demands of parenthood. Resettlement in the United States removes these structural supports, concentrating on a single mother the obligations that were previously distributed across many adults. She also does so alone in an unfamiliar institutional environment, with limited language access and no equivalent community infrastructure. When the mechanisms Goode identifies for managing role strain are structurally unavailable, the result is compounding strain with few available paths for relief. Suleiman et al. (2024) document exactly this dynamic in their review of Somali parenting within a Western context, identifying the shift from communal to nuclear family parenting as a primary source of acculturative stress among Somali immigrant parents.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Qualitative Research Aim

This study aimed to qualitatively examine parenting experiences and challenges among Somali refugee mothers in Utah. Specifically, the research sought to explore how these mothers navigate parenting responsibilities while simultaneously managing the intersecting challenges of resettlement, acculturation, and family restructuring in a new cultural context. This study examined maternal perspectives on child-rearing practices, parent–child relationships, discipline approaches, and the transmission of cultural values across generations. A secondary aim was to document mothers’ experiences across multiple life domains, including healthcare access, economic security, housing stability, psychological well-being, social support systems, community integration, and educational/vocational development, to understand how these contextual factors influence their parenting experiences and identify resilience factors and community resources that support their adaptation to a new culture in motherhood.

2.2. Research Design and Participants

Utah was selected as the study site for three reasons. First, Utah is home to one of the largest Somali refugee communities in the United States, with an estimated 10,000 Somali families residing primarily in the Salt Lake City area, making Somali refugees the largest refugee group in the state (Gonzalez 2023; Utah Department of Health and Human Services 2024). Second, despite the community’s size, research on Somali refugee experiences in the United States has concentrated heavily on Minnesota and Ohio, leaving Utah substantially underrepresented in the literature. Third, the research team had established relationships with community organizations and Somali community members in Utah, which facilitated access and supported culturally responsive recruitment.

Employing a multi-method qualitative approach employing a multi-method qualitative approach, which included focus group sessions (n = 12 participants), the authors then conducted follow-up key informant interviews (n = 2), along with observational fieldwork (see

Table 1. Focus Group Participant Demographics (N = 12).

			Extended
			Parenting		Arrived	Previous US
		# of	Adult	Experienced	U.S. as a	Residence
Participant	Age	Children	Children	Child Loss	Minor	Before Utah
A	23	3	yes	no	no	no
B	39	7	no	yes	no	no
C	42	7	no	no	no	no
D	26	5	no	no	no	no
E	48	11	no	yes	no	no
F	41	6	no	no	no	no
G	28	4	yes	no	no	no
H	38	6	no	yes	no	no
I	50	3	no	yes	no	no
J	45	5	no	no	no	no
K	45	3	no	no	no	no
L	35	5	no	no	no	no

for the focus group participant demographics).

The two key informant interviews were conducted with Somali community leaders whose positional knowledge and community-level perspective allowed the research team to contextualize and deepen the themes emerging from the focus group data. Key informant interviews with community leaders are a recognized qualitative strategy for enriching participant-level findings with broader contextual insight (Ritchie and Spencer 1994). Participants were recruited through purposive sampling strategies, specifically employing purposive and criterion-based sampling to identify Somali refugee mothers living in Utah who met the inclusion criteria: female head of household due to widowhood, divorce, separation, or abandonment, primary caregiver responsibilities, and residency within Utah. Initial data collection occurred on 27 September 2025, with follow-up interviews conducted in January of 2026, to explore emerging themes in greater depth. Thematic saturation was reached through triangulation of data across both collection phases. Themes that emerged in the focus group were consistently repeated and expanded upon in the key informant interviews, and data collection concluded when no new concepts or variations were identified, consistent with Ritchie and Spencer’s (1994) framework analysis approach. Participants ranged in age from 25 to 60 years and reported between 1 and 7 children, with most reporting between 3 and 5. The sample reflected considerable diversity in migration history and family circumstance, including mothers who had arrived as minors, those who had experienced child loss prior to resettlement, and those continuing to parent adult children between the ages of 20 and 25.

2.3. Data Collection

The focus group session followed a semi-structured guide covering multiple domains: parenting adjustment, healthcare access and health practices, economic security and employment, housing stability, psychological well-being and social support, community integration and participation, and educational/vocational development. The guide was designed to elicit narrative accounts of participants’ lived experiences as Somali refugee mothers navigating life in Utah.

Follow-up key informant interviews used a refined semi-structured protocol exploring themes that emerged from the initial focus group discussion. Following standard qualitative practice, the interview protocol was iteratively refined based on emerging themes during data collection. A bilingual Somali–English interpreter simultaneously translated participants’ Somali responses into English during all sessions. An observer documented the English translations through detailed written notes recorded as close to verbatim as possible, with participants’ permission. Researchers maintained additional field notes throughout data collection to capture observations, non-verbal communication, and contextual details that informed preliminary analysis.

2.4. Data Analysis

The analytical approach employed thematic framework analysis, integrating both data-driven and theory-driven perspectives (Ritchie and Spencer 1994). The analysis proceeded through several stages. Initially, each researcher conducted multiple independent reviews of the field notes to develop a deep familiarity with the participants’ narratives. During this familiarization phase, researchers generated preliminary codes using both inductive approaches (codes emerging directly from participants’ responses) and deductive approaches (codes derived from the predetermined domains in the discussion guide). Initial codes were generated independently by each of the four researchers before any team discussion, ensuring that the coding framework reflected multiple analytical perspectives rather than a single researcher’s interpretive lens. All four researchers were involved in the coding process, and analytic rigor was maintained through the systematic application of a collaboratively developed codebook, iterative consensus-based resolution of discrepancies, and reflexive attention to researcher positionality throughout the analysis.

The research team subsequently convened to compare their independent coding, discuss emerging patterns, and collaboratively develop a unified codebook. Through iterative discussion, preliminary codes were collapsed, refined, and clearly defined. This codebook was then applied systematically to the complete dataset, with both researchers independently coding all focus group and interview documentation. The coding process remained flexible, allowing for the addition of new codes as novel themes emerged from the data.

Trustworthiness was established in accordance with Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. The primary mechanism for establishing analytic rigor was the consensus-based process through which researchers collaboratively reviewed discrepant codes, discussed competing interpretations, and reached agreement through iterative dialogue. As a supplementary indicator of coding consistency, interrater reliability was also calculated using Cohen’s kappa (Cohen 1960), yielding k = 0.86. Remaining discrepancies were resolved through collaborative review of the relevant passages and consensus-based decision-making. Following the completion of coding, thematic analysis was conducted to identify overarching patterns of meaning across the dataset that addressed the study’s research aims. Differentiation between themes related to structural barriers and those related to cultural transitions within families was guided by the interview and focus group data themselves, with participants explicitly distinguishing between challenges arising from navigating American institutions and those arising from shifts in family roles and intergenerational relationships. Codes were assigned to one domain or the other based on whether participants attributed the source of difficulty to external systems and infrastructure or to internal family dynamics and cultural change.

2.5. Background of the Researchers

The four researchers each brought important skills and knowledge to this study. The Somali researcher, who also served as the bilingual interpreter during data collection, had extensive experience conducting research in Somalia as a female community leader and social worker. Her dual role provided essential translation skills and cultural knowledge needed to ensure proper data collection and analysis. The three U.S. researchers had extensive experience working with diverse languages and cultures in international settings.

Although the research team’s familiarity with the Somali community in Utah was beneficial for study design and participant recruitment, efforts were made to construct discussion and interview questions as open-ended as possible and to interpret responses strictly based on participants’ statements rather than on the researchers’ prior assumptions. Several additional steps were taken to reduce research bias. First, researchers maintained reflexive memos throughout data collection and analysis, documenting their positionality and potential assumptions to support transparency in interpretation. Second, follow-up key informant interviews conducted in January 2026 provided an opportunity for prolonged engagement with the data and participants, allowing emerging themes to be tested and refined across two distinct data collection phases. Third, findings were shared with community members for member checking, providing an external check on the accuracy and cultural resonance of the interpretations.

2.6. Ethical Considerations

Research with forced migrants requires ethical commitments that extend beyond standard procedural protections. Jacobsen and Landau (2003) describe a dual imperative in refugee research regarding the obligation to produce academically rigorous knowledge and, simultaneously, to ensure that findings are policy relevant and of practical benefit to the populations studied. Mackenzie et al. (2007) argue that researchers working with refugees must move beyond harm minimization as the governing ethical standard and recognize an affirmative obligation to design and conduct research that offers reciprocal benefit to participants and their communities. Clark-Kazak (2017) further specifies that the particular vulnerabilities of forced migrants, including legal precarity, power asymmetries, and prior trauma, require that informed consent be understood as a relational and ongoing process rather than a one-time procedural event. Ahmad Ali (2024) extends this framework to research with refugee families specifically, calling for ethical mindfulness throughout the research process and attention to the competing obligations researchers hold toward participants, institutional review bodies, service providers, and community organizations.

These commitments shaped the design and conduct of the present study. Due to limited literacy among many participants, both verbal and written information (available in English and Somali) regarding the study was provided, explaining that participation was entirely voluntary and could be withdrawn at any time without penalty. Verbal informed consent was obtained from each participant individually. Consistent with Mackenzie et al.’s (2007) emphasis on reciprocal benefit, a shared meal was provided at the focus group session as a gesture of respect and appreciation for participants’ time and knowledge. No monetary compensation was provided. This decision was made at the explicit direction of the Utah Valley University Institutional Review Board, which determined that financial compensation was not appropriate given the vulnerability of the population and the risk of undue influence. As described more fully in the Institutional Review Board Statement below, given the non-intervention nature of this descriptive study, which used focus group and interview methods with adult participants, the Utah Valley University Institutional Review Board approved this research as Exempt under federal regulations.

3. Results

3.1. Qualitative Findings

The focus group and follow-up interviews yielded rich narrative data regarding the experiences of Somali refugee mothers navigating parenting and daily life in Utah. Thematic framework analysis of the documented field notes and interview transcriptions revealed eight interconnected themes organized within three overarching domains: structural and systemic barriers, acculturation and intergenerational conflict, and resilience and community support. Of particular note, the primary stressor identified across participant narratives was not poverty itself but rather the systemic inaccessibility of United States institutions and infrastructure. Participants described a pattern of being placed into a complex new environment with minimal orientation, left to discover essential knowledge through trial and error, often with significant consequences for their families. The following sections present these findings in detail, drawing upon participant narratives and researcher observations documented during data collection.

3.2. Structural and Systemic Barriers

3.2.1. Orientation and Information Gaps

The most pervasive theme across all participant narratives was the profound difficulty of navigating the systems and structures of daily life in the United States. Participants consistently reported that upon arrival, they received insufficient instruction regarding the basic mechanics of housing, transportation, and financial management. This lack of foundational orientation left mothers to learn through experience, a process that frequently carried serious consequences for their families.

Participants described being given a bus pass upon arrival, but receiving no instructions on how to use public transportation or locate essential services. As a result, Participant J walked to the grocery store, departing at noon and not returning until nightfall. For instance, one participant stated:

They gave me a bus pass, but no one showed me how to use it. I did not know which bus to take or where it would go. So, I walked to get groceries. I left when the sun was high, and I did not come back until it was dark.

—Participant J, age 45, 5 children

As a result, both Participant J and Participant F shared experiences of losing electricity in their apartments on the weekend. Neither woman knew how to locate or reset a circuit breaker, and their assigned caseworkers were unreachable until the following Monday. As participant F described it:

The lights went out. Everything went dark, and the heat stopped. I did not know what to do. I called my caseworker, but no one answered. I called again and again. It was the weekend. We sat in the cold and the dark for days, me and my children, until Sunday. I went outside and happened to find a man who spoke Arabic. I told him about the problem. He came and showed me a small switch on the wall. That was all it was. A small switch called a fuse box, and then we had light.

—Participant F, age 41, 6 children

Both families spent days without power, including heat, before someone was able to show them how to reset the breaker. These experiences were not isolated incidents but rather reflected a systemic pattern in which refugees were expected to navigate complex infrastructure without foundational knowledge. As noted during the discussion, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Catholic Charities, which served as the primary resettlement organizations for all participants, often operated with limited funds and volunteer staffing, and the support they could provide was finite in both scope and duration.

3.2.2. Financial Literacy and Housing

The challenge of managing finances in the United States emerged as a significant source of anxiety among the participants. The group described receiving government-issued debit cards upon arrival, but receiving no instructions on how to use them. Participants expressed fear and confusion regarding money orders, a primary method for paying rent, and reported that no one had explained the process to them. As participant H described:

When I arrived, they gave me a card, like a plastic card. But nobody told me what it is or how to use it. And the rent, they said, I must pay with something called a money order. I did not know what this is. Where do I get it? How do I put the money on it? No one explained this to me. In Somalia, if you are a few days late, your landlord knows you. He is patient. He understands. I was so ashamed. I was scared. I did not know the rules were so different here.

—Participant H, age 38, 6 children

This lack of financial literacy had direct and serious consequences for housing stability. One participant described the shock of receiving an eviction notice on the fifteenth of the month for late rent payment, noting that in Somalia, flexibility with rent payment timelines was customary and did not carry such immediate penalties. The following was related:

When I saw that paper on my door, I did not understand it, but I felt something was wrong. My heart was beating fast. I took it to a neighbor, and she read it to me and said you must leave. I started to cry In Somalia, there is more talking between people. You go to your landlord, and you explain, and he listens. Here, there is just a paper. No talking. Just you must go.

—Participant H, age 38, 6 children

The group collectively expressed that the rigidity of American financial systems, in which specific deadlines carried severe consequences, was both unfamiliar and frightening.

3.2.3. Transportation and Healthcare Access

Transportation emerged as a critical barrier that affected nearly every aspect of participants’ lives, including their ability to access healthcare. One participant described her first attempt at driving in the United States, during which she ran a red light because she had never been taught American traffic laws. Her decision to attempt driving was itself born of desperation, as she was trying to resolve an eviction notice and had no other means of transportation. As she described:

I do not know how to drive here. In Somalia, I never drove. But I had that paper, the eviction notice, and I did not know what to do or where to go, and there was no one to take me. So, I got in the car. I thought I must go and find help; I must show someone this paper. I was driving, and there was a light, and it turned red, but I did not know. I did not understand all the rules of the lights and the roads here. I went through it. Someone honked at me, and I was so scared I pulled over, and I was shaking. I was just trying to save my home for my children. I did not know what else to do.

—Participant H, age 38, 6 children

The intersection of transportation barriers and healthcare access was particularly problematic. Participants described a frustrating cycle in which the government scheduled medical appointments on their behalf but did not arrange transportation to those appointments. If a participant arrived early, she was told to leave and return at the appointed time. If she missed the appointment due to transportation difficulties, she was charged a fee. As an example, one participant said:

They made the appointment for me, but they do not help me get there. I do not have a car. I do not know the bus. So, I tried to go early, I walked a long time to get there early, and they said, no, your appointment is not until later, you must leave and come back. But I cannot just wait there, I have my children. So, I went home. And then I could not get back in time. And then they sent me a paper saying I owe money because I did not come. I did not come because I had no way to come. And now I owe money I do not have. After that, I thought it is better not to go to the doctor. Every time I try to do the right thing, there is a penalty. I do not want another paper telling me I owe something. So, I just don’t go. But my children need to see a doctor.

—Participant C, age 42, 7 children

This pattern of penalties for circumstances beyond their control led several participants to avoid seeking medical care altogether, creating a direct pathway from systemic barriers to health risks for their families.

3.2.4. Employment

Participants also expressed frustration regarding employment placement. One participant reported that the government assigned her to work as a cleaner, despite her possessing advanced skills in other areas, stating:

In Somalia, I had skills. I had work that I knew how to do well. I was not an uneducated woman. But when I came here, they looked at me, and they gave me a mop. They said, “You will clean.” Nobody asked me what I can do. Nobody asked me what I know. I wanted to work. I was so ready to work, but not like this. Not because I am too proud, but because I have something to give and they did not want to see it. When you come to a new country, you already feel like you are starting from nothing. You have lost so much. And then someone hands you a mop and says this is your place here, it breaks something inside you. I am a mother, I am a woman who has survived very hard things, I have knowledge and ability. I wanted to build something here. I wanted to contribute something real. Instead, I felt invisible. Like they had already decided what I was before they ever spoke to me.

—Participant D, age 26, 5 children

The group collectively emphasized the need for better matching of refugees to jobs that corresponded to their actual skill sets and prior experience, rather than arbitrary placement into positions that did not utilize their abilities. Participants framed this not merely as a matter of personal preference but as a fundamental issue of dignity and effective integration.

3.3. Acculturation and Intergenerational Conflict

3.3.1. Technology and Role Reversal

A second major domain of findings concerned the tensions arising from differences in acculturation rates between mothers and their children. Participants A and B described a reversal of traditional parent–child roles regarding technology. Their children helped them navigate smartphones and location services, effectively serving as cultural translators for the digital world. As Participant A said:

My child, she is ten years old, she takes my phone, and she shows me. She finds the place on the map, she tells me which way to go, and she helps me talk to people I do not understand. I am grateful for this. But inside I feel something that is hard to say. In Somalia, I was the one who knew things. I was the one my children came to. I was the guide. Here, my daughter looks at me sometimes like she is the mother, and I am the child who needs help. She does not mean to make me feel this way, she is a good girl, but when your child must teach you how to find the grocery store on a telephone, something shifts between you. I do not want her to carry this. She is a child. She should be playing. Instead, she is translating my life for me. It is a strange and painful thing to feel lost in front of your own children.

—Participant A, age 23, 3 children

While this assistance was practical and appreciated, it created a power imbalance in which children possessed knowledge and competencies that their mothers lacked, subtly but meaningfully shifting the authority dynamics within the household.

3.3.2. Economic Role Reversal and the Erosion of Elder Support

Perhaps the most emotionally resonant theme within the acculturation domain was the breakdown of the traditional Somali practice of adult children providing financial support to their aging parents. Participant D shared that she continued to send money to her own parents in Somalia, maintaining the cultural expectation of filial financial responsibility. However, her children in the United States, having become what she described as “Americanized,” did not reciprocate this practice. As she described it:

Every month, I send money to my mother and my father in Somalia. This is not a question for me. This is what a child does. This is what I have always done and what I will always do. But my children here, they have grown up in America now, they do not think this way anymore. They do not give to me. I do not say they are bad children. But something has changed in them that I do not fully understand. I raised them to know that family takes care of family. That’s when your mother is old, you are there. But America has taught them something different. And so, I am sending money to my parents with one hand, and with the other hand, I have nothing coming back to me. I am in the middle. I am holding both sides, and nobody is holding me. In Somalia, this would never happen. The children take care of the parents; this is the foundation of everything. When that breaks, something very deep breaks with it.

—Participant D, age 26, 5 children

Participant A echoed this experience, noting that her own children did not provide her with financial support. This represented not merely an economic hardship, but a fundamental disruption of the intergenerational contract that forms the foundation of Somali family structure, in which children are expected to care for their parents as they age. The collectivist orientation embedded in Somali family culture, which prioritizes intergenerational obligation over individual independence, stands in direct tension with the Western individualism that Somali youth rapidly absorb in American social environments (Hamid et al. 2025). The younger generation’s adoption of Western individualism left these mothers without the financial and social support they had expected in their later years.

3.3.3. Parental Authority and Discipline

The erosion of parental authority was a theme expressed both explicitly and implicitly throughout the discussions. Participant C stated that the cultural expectations inside the home frequently conflicted with the Western culture her children absorbed at school. In describing her sense of powerlessness in the face of this conflict in this new context, she explained:

At home, I teach my children our way… the Somali way, the Muslim way. I teach them how we speak to elders, how we dress, what we value, what is right. But then they go to school, and they come back different. They hear other things. They see other things. And I am their mother, but I cannot be with them every moment. America is very powerful. It gets inside them. And I am just one woman in one house. What can I fight against? There is nothing I can do.

—Participant C, age 42, 7 children

This description, offered quietly but with evident weight, captured a broader sentiment among the group regarding the loss of parental authority in the American context.

The shift in discipline practices provided a concrete illustration of this dynamic. Participant K, who arrived in the United States with seven of her ten children (three having died before immigration), noted a distinct difference in disciplinary norms. In Somalia, physical discipline was a common and accepted practice. In the United States, she made a conscious decision to abandon this approach, recognizing that American laws prohibited it. As participant K described:

In Somalia, if your child does something wrong, you correct them. This is normal. This is what every mother does. This is how my mother raised me and her mother before her. It is not cruelty … it is love. It is how you teach a child to become a good person. But here they told me this is not allowed. That if I discipline my child the way I was taught, someone will come and take my children from me. And so, I stopped. I made myself stop. But when I stopped, my children knew. They knew I could not do what I used to do. And something changed. They do not listen the same way. I tell them no, and they look at me, and I can see they know I have no way to enforce it. I lost something as a mother that I do not know how to replace. Nobody gave me something to use instead. They just took away what I had and left me with nothing in its place.

—Participant K, age 45, 3 children

While this adaptation reflected awareness of and compliance with the legal expectations of her new country, it also represented the removal of one of the traditional tools Somali mothers used to maintain authority within their households. This tension between culturally embedded disciplinary practices and host country legal standards has been documented among Somali families in the United States, where fear of child protective services intervention creates significant constraints on parenting behavior (Hamid et al. 2025). Several participants expressed fear regarding government or police intervention if they disciplined their children in ways that conflicted with American norms, creating an atmosphere of hesitancy and uncertainty around even routine parenting decisions.

3.4. Motherhood, Role Strain, and Mental Health

The intersection of motherhood, role strain, and mental health decline constituted a significant finding of this study. The participants identified that as single mothers, having experienced separation, widowhood, divorce, or abandonment, they carried additional burdens. The narratives of these women revealed a compounding effect in which the challenges of single parenthood were amplified by the absence of familiar support structures and the demands of navigating an unfamiliar society.

Participant A’s narrative was particularly illustrative of the compounding nature of these challenges. Her husband was removed from the home by government authorities due to domestic abuse. While she expressed gratitude for this intervention, she described the subsequent reality of navigating life alone in an unfamiliar country as overwhelming. She stated:

When they took him away, I felt something I did not expect. I felt relief. I will say that honestly. For the first time in a long time, I felt safe in my own home. And I was grateful—I was truly grateful that someone had seen what was happening and had stopped it. But then the door closed, and it was just me. Just me and my children in a country I do not know. No family nearby. No mother to call. No sister came to sit with me. In Somalia, even in hard times, there is always someone. Here, there was no one. I had to figure out everything alone, the rent, the school, the doctors, the bills, the bus, everything. When I came here, my mind was okay. I was strong. I had survived so much already, and I told myself I can survive this too. But it wore me down slowly. Every problem I could not solve, every paper I could not read, every night I could not sleep worrying about my children—it added up. After some time, I did not feel like myself anymore.

—Participant A, age 23, 3 children

She characterized her mental health as having been “healthy” upon arrival in the United States but described a steady decline as the demands of single parenthood accumulated. She elaborated further:

When I first came to America, I was okay. My mind was okay. I had been through hard things, but I was still strong, I could feel it. But then everything started coming at once. My child could not breathe, and I took her to the hospital and I did not understand what the doctors were saying, and I was alone. And now another child may need surgery, an operation, and again I am alone. I am the only one. There is no one to sit with me in the waiting room. No one to help me understand the papers they give me. No one to watch the other children while I am at the hospital. When I came here, I was healthy. But I am not the same now. Something has happened to me slowly. I can feel it.

—Participant A, age 23, 3 children

She had recently navigated a hospital visit for a child with breathing problems. She was facing the prospect of another child needing surgery for an appendectomy, all while managing these medical situations largely on her own. When asked about the mental health support she received, she responded:

Someone asked me if I was getting help, support for my mind, for how I was feeling. I thought about it. I wanted to give a real answer. But the real answer was “not much.” That is all. Not much.

—Participant A, age 23, 3 children

Participant A described the totality of her role strain by explaining that she had to fulfill all of these roles simultaneously, saying:

People ask me how I do it. I do not know how to explain it. I am the mother, I hold them, I feed them, I comfort them when they cry at night. I am the father, I carry everything, I make every decision, I figure out every problem. I am the grandparent, I try to give them the wisdom, the stories, the roots, the sense of who they are and where they come from. All of it is me. Just me. In Somalia, these things are spread across many people. There is always someone. Here it is all on one pair of shoulders. My shoulders. I am the mother, the father, the grandparents. All of it. Every day.

—Participant A, age 23, 3 children

This compression of multiple generational roles onto a single individual, combined with the absence of the extended family networks that would have distributed these responsibilities in Somalia, created a burden that several participants described as fundamentally different from the challenges of single motherhood in their homeland. Participant D, who was described by other participants as a community “helper” who had assisted many people, revealed that she had previously experienced her own period of profound helplessness, during which she cried daily and felt unable to cope. As the participant said:

People come to me now for help. I try to help everyone I can. But I want them to know, I was not always strong. There was a time when I could not get up. Every morning, I woke up, and I cried. Every single day I cried. I did not know how I would go on. I did not know how to do any of it, the language, the system, the loneliness, the cold. I felt like I was disappearing. Nobody knew this about me because I did not show it. But inside, I was not okay. I was not okay for a long time. I tell people this now because I want them to know that if I came through it, they can too. But it was very, very hard.

—Participant D, age 26, 5 children

The physical environment compounded these difficulties. Participants described the isolation of Utah’s winters, with their snow, cold temperatures, and early darkness. As one participant described:

When the snow came, I did not know what to do. In Somalia, I had never seen snow like this. It was everywhere—on the ground, on the cars, on the stairs. I did not know how to walk in it. I did not know how to dress my children for it. And I looked outside, and there was nobody. No one on the street. No one sitting outside. In Somalia, there are always people. You walk outside, and you see your neighbor, and you talk. Here, the doors are closed, and the people are inside, and I do not know anyone. I wanted to go somewhere—anywhere—just to not feel so alone. But I could not leave my children. They are under twelve, and I was told I cannot leave them alone or I will be in trouble with the law. So I stayed inside. The snow outside and four walls around me, and nowhere to go and no one coming. It was a very lonely feeling. I did not know a person could feel so alone.

—Participant H, age 38, 6 children

Participant A noted her struggle with the shift in daylight hours and the practical challenge of transitioning from wearing sandals in Somalia to heavy boots, stating:

In Somalia, I wore sandals. That is what we wear, it is warm, it is simple. I came here, and suddenly I needed boots. Big heavy boots. And I did not know how to walk in them at first. My feet did not know what to do. It sounds like a small thing, but it is not a small thing. Every morning, putting on those boots, I felt how far I was from home. Even my feet did not recognize their life anymore.

—Participants A, age 23, 3 children

Participants expressed feelings of isolation in neighborhoods where they did not know their neighbors and where the physical environment discouraged the kind of communal outdoor life that characterized their communities in Somalia. Legal concerns further constrained their mobility; participants expressed fear of leaving children under the age of twelve unattended, a concern rooted in their understanding of American child supervision laws, which effectively confined some single mothers to their homes.

Participants C and D provided additional perspective on the extended nature of parenting demands in the American context. Both women noted that they had extended their parenting roles far more intensively in the United States than they had in Somalia, particularly for adult children between the ages of twenty and twenty-five who continued to require significant support in navigating American systems. Participant C said:

In Somalia, when your child is twenty years old, they are an adult. They know how to live. They know the systems, they know the neighbors, they know how things work. You have done your job. But here, my child is twenty-two, twenty-three years old, and still, I must help them with everything. How to fill out this form. How to talk to this office. How to understand this letter that came in the mail. They are adults, but they are also lost, just like me. And so I am still fully a mother in a way I never expected to be at this stage of my life. In Somalia, I would have had some rest by now. I would have had some time for myself. Here, there is no rest. The parenting does not get lighter; it just changes its shape. I did not expect this. I did not know it would go on so long.

—Participant C, age 42, 7 children

Participant D reflected upon both the duration and the depth of her experience as a single parent, stating:

Someone asked me about my life, about me, not my children, not my cases, not the people I help. About me. And I had to stop and think. I have been doing everything alone for so long now. Everything falls on me. I wake up, and it falls on me, and I go to sleep, and it falls on me. And I realized, I am forgetting what it was like to be married. To have someone beside you. To not carry everything alone. I am forgetting that feeling. It has been so long.

—Participant D, age 26, 5 children

3.5. Resilience and Community Support

3.5.1. Internal Community Networks

Despite the substantial barriers and challenges documented in the preceding sections, participants demonstrated significant resilience and identified several sources of strength that sustained them through their resettlement experiences. When asked where they found support, the group provided a collective response that served as one of the most revealing data points of the study. As one participant stated: “Mostly each other. Our community.” In the absence of adequate institutional support, participants had formed an informal network of mutual aid that functioned as a surrogate for the extended family structures they had left behind. Participant D, despite her own previous period of difficulty, had become a central figure in this network. Participant A reported that after a year of struggling, she found Participant D, who became a critical source of support, noting that few others had been willing to help when she was crying and overwhelmed. She said:

For one year, I was alone with all of it. One whole year. I was crying, and I needed help, and I would go to people, and they would see me crying, and they would turn away. Nobody wanted to be around someone who was struggling like that. Nobody wanted to take it on. I understand -everyone has their own problems. But I was drowning, and I could not find anyone to take my hand. And then I found her. I found D. And she did not turn away from me. She saw me crying, and she did not leave. She sat with me. She helped me. After one year of feeling like I was invisible, someone finally saw me. That changed everything for me. Everything.

—Participant A, age 23, 3 children

Researcher observations during the focus group provided additional evidence of the strength of these community bonds. When new participants arrived during the session, the group greeted them with handshakes and quiet hellos, demonstrating established rituals of welcome and connection. The researchers noted the warmth between the women, suggesting a network that was both active and readily mobilized.

3.5.2. Religious Practice and Spiritual Anchoring

Religious practice emerged as a foundational element of participants’ daily lives and a source of continuity amid the disruptions of resettlement. During the focus group session, participants paused the research discussion to observe traditional prayer times. This was not presented as a disruption to the research process but rather as an unquestioned priority. As one participant explained:

When everything else was falling apart, when I did not understand the papers, when I did not have enough money, when I was lonely and scared—I still had my prayers. Five times a day, I stopped everything, and I prayed. It did not matter what was happening around me. That time belonged to Allah. And in those moments, I was not a confused woman in a strange country. I was just a servant of God, the same as I have always been. The same as my mother was. Prayer gave me a shape to my day when everything else felt like it had no shape. It reminded me who I am when everything around me was telling me I was nobody.

—Participant E, age 48, 11 children

The researchers noted this pattern as evidence that spiritual belonging and religious structure remained intact despite the considerable environmental and social stresses the participants described. The centrality of prayer in organizing the day provided a rhythm and sense of purpose that transcended the difficulties of navigating American systems and expectations.

3.5.3. Language and Cultural Preservation

Participants A, B, and C reinforced the importance of maintaining the Somali language within their homes, noting that their own mothers had modeled this practice of linguistic preservation. As one state illustrated:

In my house, we speak Somali. This is the rule. My children go to school, and they speak English all day. I know this, I accept this. But when they come through my door, they speak Somali. My mother did this for me, and I understood why, even when I was young. Language is not just words. It is everything that comes with the words, the way we think, the way we show respect, the way we tell our stories. If my children lose the language, they lose a part of themselves they cannot get back. I will not let that happen inside my own home. That I can control. That I will protect.

—Participant C, age 42, 7 children

Despite their children’s immersion in English-speaking school environments, these mothers insisted on Somali as the language of the household, viewing it as an essential vehicle for cultural transmission and identity maintenance. Participant F described additional strategies for preserving cultural heritage, including attending cultural events to help her children connect with their Somali identity.

I take my children to the Somali events, the celebrations, the gatherings, whenever I can find them. I want them to see other Somali people. I want them to hear the music and eat the food and be around people who look like them and talk like them. Because at school, they are immersed in another world completely. And I worry that if I do not show them where they come from, they will grow up not knowing. They will be caught between two worlds and belong fully to neither. When we go to these events, I watch my children, and I see something settle in them. Like they remembered something they had almost forgotten. That is why I go. That is why I will keep going.

—Participant F, age 41, 6 children

This deliberate effort to sustain language and cultural practices, even as participants acknowledged the inevitability of some degree of cultural change, reflected a nuanced understanding of acculturation as a process that could be actively managed rather than simply endured.

3.6. A Comparative Perspective

One participant offered a distinct but complementary perspective, having immigrated from Somalia to Egypt and then to New York City at the age of thirteen. As the oldest child in her family, she had assumed responsibility for raising her siblings while her mother worked, an experience that gave her early and intimate insight into the challenges of parenting within an immigrant context. Now a mother herself, with a one-year-old and a nine-year-old, she reflected on the parenting struggles shared by the group and considered how such difficulties might be alleviated. Her participation, though representing a different migration trajectory, reinforced several of the study’s central themes regarding the challenges of parenting amid resettlement and how immigrant and refugee mothers navigate competing cultural demands.

4. Discussion

This qualitative study examined the parenting experiences and challenges of Somali refugee mothers in Utah, with particular attention to how these mothers navigate parenting responsibilities while managing the intersecting challenges of immigration, acculturation, and family restructuring. Our findings reveal families contending with a complex set of overlapping stressors in which the primary source of difficulty was not poverty or cultural difference alone but rather the systemic inaccessibility of the institutions and infrastructure upon which daily life in the United States depends. At the same time, these mothers demonstrated considerable resilience through community networks, religious practice, and deliberate cultural preservation. The following discussion situates these findings within the broader literature on refugee resettlement, acculturation, and family adaptation.

4.1. Systemic Barriers and Functional Literacy

Perhaps the most significant contribution of this study is the identification of what might be termed a deficit of “functional literacy” as the central stressor for this population. Consistent with UNESCO’s conception of literacy as applied competency (UNESCO 2006), the authors used functional literacy in this context to refer to the practical capacity to navigate the institutional systems and daily infrastructure of American life, including reading notices, completing forms, managing financial transactions, using transportation systems, and communicating with service providers. It encompasses not merely the ability to read and write, but the applied knowledge and skills required to function independently within a specific societal context. Several participants in this study were unable to read or write in any language, signing their names with a mark rather than a signature. The mothers in our study did not describe their greatest challenges in terms of material deprivation or cultural homesickness, though both were present. Rather, they consistently described a pervasive lack of knowledge regarding the basic mechanics of American life, from operating household infrastructure to understanding financial obligations and navigating transportation systems. The consequences of these knowledge gaps were severe and immediate for their families, including loss of heat, risk of eviction, missed medical appointments, financial penalties, and physical danger. These findings align with a growing body of literature documenting the insufficiency of current refugee resettlement programs in providing practical life skills orientation (Phillimore et al. 2022). Bowie et al. (2017) specifically identified lack of language fluency as a compounding barrier for Somali parents in the United States, noting that when parents cannot communicate with authorities or navigate institutional systems, their parental authority is further diminished and their children’s role as mediators is reinforced.

Research on refugee resettlement in the United States has consistently identified a gap between the services provided by resettlement agencies and the actual needs of newly arrived families (Shaw et al. 2021). Organizations such as the International Rescue Committee and Catholic Charities, while providing essential initial support, operate under significant funding constraints and utilize volunteer staff which limits both the scope and duration of services they can offer. Our data are consistent with previous findings that this support is often too brief, too narrow, and too inflexible to address the breadth of challenges that refugee families encounter in their first years of resettlement (Phillimore et al. 2022).

The placement of refugee families in areas lacking proximity to grocery stores, documented both through participant narratives and researcher observation, further underscores a well-established pattern in the resettlement literature in which housing is selected based primarily on availability and cost rather than geographic accessibility of essential services (Phillimore et al. 2022). The concept of food deserts, well-established in public health research, takes on additional significance when applied to populations that lack both personal transportation and the cultural knowledge to navigate alternative food acquisition strategies (Sharareh et al. 2025). This intersection of geographic isolation and informational deprivation creates a compounding vulnerability that current resettlement models do not adequately address.

4.2. Acculturation and Intergenerational Dynamics

The intergenerational tensions documented in this study are consistent with established models of acculturation that recognize differential rates of cultural adaptation within immigrant and refugee families (Wahyuni and Rozimela 2025). Berry’s acculturation framework identifies the stress that emerges when family members adopt different acculturation strategies, and this acculturative stress was clearly evident in our data (Atay and Bayraktaroglu 2025; Berry et al. 1987). The pattern of children adapting to American culture, technology, and language more rapidly than their mothers, thereby creating a reversal of traditional family hierarchies, has been documented across diverse refugee and immigrant populations (Qaralleh et al. 2025; Usman et al. 2025), including specifically within Somali families navigating the competing demands of cultural preservation and American social integration (Hamid et al. 2025). However, the particular form this reversal takes within Somali families carries culturally specific implications that merit attention.

The phenomenon of children serving as cultural and linguistic brokers for their parents has been well documented in the immigration literature (Qaralleh et al. 2025). Our findings extend this understanding by revealing that the brokering role in these families goes beyond simple language translation into a comprehensive navigation of the family’s interaction with the outside world, including technology, institutional systems, and cultural norms. While practically helpful, this dynamic carries significant implications for parental authority. Research on immigrant family dynamics has shown that when children assume the role of cultural mediator, the traditional parent–child power structure can become inverted, leading to parental frustration, diminished self-efficacy, and family conflict (Bowie et al. 2017; Hamid et al. 2025; Osman et al. 2021a; Osman et al. 2021b). Our data are consistent with these findings and suggest that the effect may be particularly pronounced in Somali families, where respect for parental authority is deeply embedded in cultural and religious traditions.

The economic dimension of this intergenerational shift represents a particularly important finding. The traditional Somali family structure includes a clear expectation that adult children will provide financial support to their aging parents, reflecting a collectivist orientation that prioritizes family obligation over individual independence. Our data revealed a breakdown of this intergenerational economic contract, in which mothers continued to send remittances to their own parents abroad while their children in the United States, having adopted what the mothers characterized as “Americanized” values, did not reciprocate. This pattern represents more than a financial hardship. It signals a fundamental disruption of the cultural value system that organizes family life and provides a sense of security for aging parents. The collision between Western individualism and Somali collectivism, as experienced within the family unit, has been noted in other studies of East African refugee communities (Boyle and Ali 2010; Hamid et al. 2025), but the emotional weight of this loss as described by the mothers in our study adds qualitative depth to existing findings.

The shift in discipline practices further illustrates the tension between cultural preservation and legal adaptation. Research on refugee and immigrant families has consistently documented the challenge parents face in adjusting child-rearing practices to conform to host country laws, particularly regarding physical discipline (Hamid et al. 2025). Our findings reveal that the loss of culturally familiar disciplinary tools, without the concurrent provision of alternative strategies, leaves some mothers feeling stripped of their authority and unable to fulfill their parenting role. This sense of disempowerment has direct implications for the design of culturally responsive parenting programs that can bridge the gap between traditional practices and the host country’s legal and social expectations.

4.3. Single Motherhood, Role Strain, and Mental Health

The experiences of single mothers in this study illustrate the compounding nature of vulnerability among refugee women who have lost their partners through separation, widowhood, divorce, or abandonment. The literature on refugee mental health has established that unmarried refugee women face significantly elevated risks for depression and PTSD, and that social isolation is independently associated with increased odds of depression and anxiety (Brooks et al. 2022). Our findings are consistent with this literature and provide qualitative depth regarding the specific mechanisms through which these risks manifest in the Somali community.

Our data revealed a trajectory consistent with the cumulative stress model of refugee adaptation, in which the initial demands of resettlement intensify over time as coping resources become depleted. The experience of role strain, in which a single mother must simultaneously fulfill parenting functions that would traditionally be distributed across an extended family network, was a recurring theme (Goode 1960). In Somalia, the extended family provides a web of support encompassing childcare, financial assistance, emotional counsel, and practical help with daily tasks. The absence of this network in the American context transforms single parenthood from a difficult but culturally supported arrangement into an isolating and often overwhelming experience. This finding is consistent with research on the role of social support in mediating the psychological impact of forced migration, which has shown that the loss of extended family support structures has been identified as a significant contributor to poor mental health outcomes among refugee women (DeSa et al. 2022).

The physical environment and climate of northern Utah introduced additional stressors that are not often considered in the refugee resettlement literature. Mothers described the difficulty of navigating snow and cold temperatures, the disorientation of shortened winter daylight hours, and the isolation of neighborhoods that did not support communal outdoor life. Research on the role of climate and geography in refugee adjustment remains limited, but our findings suggest that environmental factors contribute meaningfully to the psychological burden of resettlement, particularly for populations arriving from equatorial regions. The legal and cultural expectation that young children not be left unsupervised effectively confined some single mothers to their homes, further limiting their ability to seek employment, access services, or build the social connections that might buffer against mental health decline.

4.4. Resilience and Community Coping

Despite the substantial challenges documented in this study, our findings also reveal significant sources of resilience among Somali refugee mothers. The formation of informal mutual aid networks, a coping strategy widely documented in the literature on refugee adaptation, was the primary mechanism through which these mothers compensated for the inadequacies of formal support systems. These networks, rooted in shared language, culture, and experience, provided practical and emotional support that resettlement agencies were unable to sustain beyond the initial placement period. Bowie et al. (2017), in their phenomenological study of Somali families in Seattle, found the same pattern, with parents drawing strength from community ties and the preservation of traditional cultural and religious values as their primary coping strategies, which is a finding that closely mirrors our own. The organic nature of these networks, built through personal relationships rather than institutional structures, speaks to what Ungar (2011) describes as communities’ ability to “sustain adaptability and support new growth” through culturally embedded patterns of interdependence.

The central role of religious practice in participants’ daily lives is consistent with research on Muslim refugee communities in Western countries, which has found that Islamic practice provides structure, meaning, and social connection during periods of upheaval and uncertainty (Panos et al. 2025; Cheema et al. 2014; Nurdin 2024; Suleiman et al. 2024). In research on disaster recovery and community resilience, faith-based coping strategies, including communal prayer and spiritual counseling, have been shown to help alleviate trauma and promote psychological well-being (Chan and Rhodes 2013; Panos et al. 2025). Our observation that mothers prioritized prayer time during the research session, treating it as an unquestioned necessity, suggests that religious practice functions not merely as a coping mechanism but as a foundational organizing principle of daily life that remains intact even when other aspects of life have been disrupted. As has been found in Muslim-majority communities responding to disasters, religious practice and leadership can fill both spiritual and operational voids left by the absence of formal institutional support (Cheema et al. 2014; Nurdin 2024; Panos et al. 2025).

The deliberate maintenance of the Somali language within the home represents another form of resilience identified in our data. Mothers’ insistence on preserving their native language, following the model set by their own mothers, reflects an understanding that language is a primary vehicle for cultural transmission and identity preservation. This strategy, practiced alongside an acceptance that children must also navigate English-speaking environments, suggests a form of selective acculturation in which families seek to preserve core cultural elements while allowing for adaptation in other domains. While structural and political conditions place significant limits on what any acculturation strategy can achieve (Bhatia and Ram 2009), this nuanced approach supports integrative models of acculturation, such as Berry’s integration strategy, which recognize the possibility of maintaining dual cultural competencies rather than framing cultural preservation and adaptation as necessarily opposing forces.

4.5. Implications for Practice

Our findings have several direct implications for family science, public health, social work practice, refugee resettlement policy, and community-based programming. The pervasive lack of practical orientation documented in this study points to a clear need for comprehensive life skills programming that extends well beyond the initial resettlement period. Such programming should address the specific mechanics of daily life in the United States, including housing management, financial systems, transportation, and healthcare navigation. These programs should be offered in participants’ native languages, with ongoing availability rather than a single orientation session upon arrival.

The intergenerational tensions documented in this study suggest a need for culturally responsive family counseling programs that address the specific dynamics of acculturation within refugee families. Such programs should acknowledge the legitimacy of both traditional family structures and the realities of adaptation, providing families with frameworks for negotiating cultural differences without framing either the parents’ or children’s cultural orientation as inherently problematic. Parenting classes that bridge the gap between host country legal expectations and traditional practices could help restore a sense of parental efficacy while ensuring child safety.

The mental health needs of single refugee mothers require targeted attention. Our data revealed that mothers received minimal psychological support despite describing progressive mental health decline. Mental health services for this population should be culturally appropriate, linguistically accessible, and integrated into existing community structures rather than requiring mothers to seek out unfamiliar institutional settings. The development of childcare cooperatives or respite care programs could address the practical barrier of child supervision that currently prevents many single mothers from accessing services or employment.

The employment experiences described in our data indicate a need for skills-based job matching programs that recognize and utilize the competencies that refugee women bring with them. Assigning refugees to low-skilled positions without consideration of their prior experience and abilities represents both a missed economic opportunity and a source of diminished self-worth that compounds other resettlement challenges.

The strength of informal community networks identified in this study suggests that resettlement programs should seek to support and formalize, rather than replace, these organic structures. Community-based organizations staffed by members of the refugee community, peer mentorship programs, and culturally specific gathering spaces could amplify the mutual aid that already exists within these communities while connecting them to institutional resources and information.

4.6. Limitations

The results of this study should be interpreted with consideration of several methodological limitations. This study employed a small sample of twelve focus group participants and two follow-up key informant interview participants, all residing in a metropolitan area in Utah. While qualitative research does not aim for statistical generalizability, the specificity of this sample to Utah means that the experiences described may not fully represent those of Somali refugee mothers in other regions of the United States, where resettlement resources, climate, community demographics, and cultural context differ. Cultural, regional, and socioeconomic factors may further influence the findings in ways that this study was not designed to capture. Somali refugee mothers residing in communities with larger and more established diaspora networks, greater access to culturally responsive services, or different socioeconomic profiles may report meaningfully different experiences from those documented here.

The reliance on a bilingual interpreter for simultaneous translation during data collection introduced the possibility of meaning loss or alteration. Although the interpreter was a Somali community leader with extensive research experience, the process of real-time translation inevitably involves interpretation and condensation that may not fully capture the nuances of participants’ original statements.

The use of purposive sampling and the recruitment of participants through community networks may have introduced selection bias, as women who are more socially connected may be overrepresented, while those who are most isolated, and potentially most in need of support, may have been missed. Additionally, the focus group format, while effective for generating rich discussion and identifying shared experiences, may have inhibited some participants from sharing more private or sensitive aspects of their experiences, particularly regarding domestic violence, mental health, or family conflict. The use of independent coding by multiple researchers and the calculation of interrater reliability (Cohen’s kappa = 0.86) provide some mitigation of concern, but the limitation should be acknowledged. Furthermore, future studies can be expanded to include the experiences of fathers, adolescents and adult children, and resettlement service providers.

This study was cross-sectional, capturing participants’ experiences at a single point in time. The challenges and coping strategies described may shift as participants gain more experience in the United States, as their children grow older, and as community resources develop. Longitudinal research that follows refugee mothers through different stages of resettlement would provide a more complete understanding of the trajectory of adaptation and the evolving nature of the challenges they face.

Despite these limitations, this study offers an in-depth examination of a population that remains underrepresented in the research literature and provides findings that are consistent with broader patterns documented across refugee communities. The themes identified here provide a foundation for future research and programmatic development to strengthen families that can be tested and expanded across diverse settings and populations. Future scholars might build on these findings in several directions. Longitudinal studies following Somali refugee mothers across different stages of resettlement would illuminate how functional literacy deficits, role strain, and intergenerational tensions evolve over time and whether they attenuate as community infrastructure develops. Comparative studies examining these dynamics across other refugee and immigrant populations, including fathers, youth, and service providers, would strengthen the transferability of these findings and deepen understanding of how structural barriers interact with cultural identity across diverse groups. Finally, intervention research testing culturally responsive functional literacy programs and family counseling models grounded in the experiences documented here would translate these findings into direct practice benefit.

5. Conclusions

Three overarching findings emerged from this research on the parenting experiences of Somali refugee mothers in Utah. The primary stressor for these mothers was not material poverty or cultural difference in isolation but rather the systemic inaccessibility of American institutions and the absence of adequate orientation to the practical mechanics of daily life. Mothers described their difficulties in learning to navigate housing, finances, transportation, and healthcare through trial and error, with consequences that included loss of essential services, financial penalties, health risks, and deepening psychological distress.

A significant intergenerational crisis was documented, in which mothers experienced an erosion of parental authority, a reversal of traditional family roles, and a breakdown of cultural expectations, such as the expectation that adult children would provide financial and social support to aging parents. The collision of Western individualism with Somali collectivist values, as experienced within the family unit, left many mothers feeling powerless within their own households.

Despite these challenges, this study revealed considerable resilience. Mothers relied on one another, forming informal networks of mutual aid that functioned in the absence of adequate institutional support. Religious practice provided structure and continuity, and the deliberate preservation of the Somali language within the home reflected a purposeful strategy for maintaining cultural identity across generations.

These findings underscore the importance of recognizing and supporting the existing strengths within refugee families and communities rather than approaching resettlement solely through a deficit-based lens. Refugee resettlement programs must move beyond initial placement and brief orientation toward sustained, comprehensive support that addresses the practical knowledge gaps creating cascading difficulties in the lives of newly arrived families. Culturally responsive family programming, accessible mental health services, and skills-based employment matching are essential. Most importantly, the voices of refugee mothers themselves must inform the design of these interventions, as they possess the most direct understanding of the barriers they face and the resources upon which they draw. This naturalistic study found that, even among a population contending with profound systemic and cultural challenges, there were significant sources of strength that could be leveraged to improve resettlement practices and community support.