Abstract
Evidence is accumulating for the transgenerational effects of maternal stress on offspring. A particular increasing concern is the possible transgenerational effects of community exposure to war and terror. Here, 107 mothers that had been exposed to war, were assessed with their 3 year old children (52 % girls) who had been conceived after the end of the war, and thus never directly exposed to war. The circumscribed nature (missile bombardment) and temporal limits (34 days) of the tragic 2006 Lebanon war in the north of Israel, affords a unique methodological opportunity to isolate an epoch of stress from preceding and subsequent normal life. We find that war experience engenders higher levels of mothers’ separation anxiety, lower emotional availability in mother-child interaction, and lower levels of children’s adaptive behavior. The novelty of these findings lies in documenting the nature and strength of transgenerational effects of war-related stress on offspring that were never exposed. In addition, because these effects were obtained after 4 years of a continuing period of normality, in which the children were born and raised, it suggests that an extended period of normality does not obliterate the effects of the war on mother and child behavior as assessed herein. Despite the study limitations, the results are indicative of persisting transgenerational effects of stress.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to acknowledge gratefully the contribution of our students, assistants and colleagues, Motti Gini, Tehila Mazal, Shirly Moshe, Einav Haskell, Rotem Paz, Ortal Rahamim, Maya Wajc, Michal Schmeltzer, Hofit Maman, Guterman N, Osnat Harari, Mazor A, Adva Sharabi, Jay Schulkin, Tamar Ben Yoav, Ronit Azriel, Smadar Shaul, Neta Gat, Adi Yona, Hila Sagi.
We are most grateful to the mothers and their children who volunteered to participate in the study.
This study was funded by the US-Israel Binational Foundation (grant number: 2005383), and by a fellowship granted to the first author by the ISEF foundation.
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Dr Zalman Weintraub died tragically in 2015 and we dedicate this paper to his memory.
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Shachar-Dadon, A., Gueron-Sela, N., Weintraub, Z. et al. Pre-Conception War Exposure and Mother and Child Adjustment 4 Years Later. J Abnorm Child Psychol 45, 131–142 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0153-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0153-9