By examining and interpreting family drawings of 20 Bedouin-Arab children from polygamous families, Lev-Wiesel and Al-Krenawi (2000) provided
evidence that polygamy can considerably affect children’s psychological and emotional well-being. In particular, the children in the study tended to draw their
biological mothers’ figures larger and placed them higher on the page than of the other wives in the polygamous family. Further, while children of senior wives
revealed their mothers’ superiority in their drawings, children of junior wives tended not to represent this social status. Most notably, 36% of children did not
draw their fathers at all, all of these representing children of the most senior wife. Of those who did, the father figure was consistently smaller in size than the
figure of the biological mother, irrespective of the location of the figures on the page. According to the researchers, the latter findings may reflect unresolved
negative attitudes toward their fathers on the part of the children. Moreover, these results may suggest that the fact that each child from polygamous families is
compelled to share his/her father and all his resources with the wives and children of other families within the system may induce confusion about the boundaries
of his/her nuclear family (Lev-Wiesel & Al- Krenawi, 2000)