Parenting in times of war: A meta-analysis and qualitative synthesis of war-exposure, parenting, and child adjustment

This mixed-methods systematic review and meta-analysis sheds more light on the role parenting practices play in children’s adjustment after war exposure. Specifically, we quantitatively examined how war exposure shapes parenting behavior, and whether parenting behavior explains some of the well-known associations between war exposure and children’s adjustment. In addition, we meta-synthesized the qualitative evidence answering when and why parenting practices might change for war-affected families. We searched nine electronic databases and contacted experts in the field for relevant studies published until March 2018, identifying 4,147 unique publications that were further screened by title and abstract, resulting in 158 publications being fully screened. By running a meta-analytic structural equation model (MASEM) with 38 quantitative studies (N = 54,372, M_age = 12.00, SD_age = 3.54), we found that war-exposed parents showed less warmth and more harshness towards their children, which partly mediated the association between war exposure and child adjustment, i.e., more post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression and anxiety, social problems, externalizing behavior, and lower positive outcomes. War exposure was not associated with parents’ exercise of behavioral control. Through meta-synthesizing ten qualitative studies (N = 1,042, age range = 0-18), we found that the nature of war-related trauma affected parenting differently. That is, parents showed harshness, hostility, inconsistency and less warmth in highly dangerous settings, and more warmth and overprotection when only living under threat. We conclude that it is not only how much but also what families have seen that shape parenting in times of war.