When the Village Gets Bombed : Parenting in the Aftermath of War and Refuge

This dissertation aimed to unravel how parenting practices take shape in the aftermath of war and refuge. A mixed-methods systematic review and meta-analysis using meta-analytical structural equation model (MASEM; k = 38, N = 55,000) showed that war-exposure casts its effects on children’s internalizing and externalizing problems partly directly, and partly indirectly through reduced parental warmth and increased harshness, but not through reduced or increased behavioral control. A meta-synthesis (k = 10, N = 1,042) nuanced these linear patterns, suggesting that the impact of war exposure on parenting depends on the nature of the exposure, with bereavement resulting in more and rape in less parental warmth. In-depth interviews with 27 refugee parents explored how the accumulation and dissipation of stressors along the refugee process changed parenting.

In displacement, parents generally resorted more towards harshness, while in resettlement some parents resorted more to communication and limit setting and relied less on harshness. In addition, 55 refugee parents reported up to 10 times a day on symptoms of post-migration stress, parental self-efficacy, and supporting the autonomy of their children. Our dynamic structural equation modelling (DSEM) showed that parental self-efficacy played a key role in explaining why when refugee parents experienced more post-migration stress they grant their children less autonomy. Lastly, a randomized within-subject experimental design with 53 refugee parents using Interrupted Time Series Analysis within a DSEM framework showed that a brief intervention can (a) strengthen parental self-efficacy among refugee parents and (b) render parental self-efficacy less contingent on post-migration stress.