Parents’ Experience During Wartime: Vulnerability, Complexity, and Parental Functioning

Although studies tend to focus on parents’ reactions and outcomes following crises retrospectively, the study aims to understand parents’ experiences, thoughts, and feelings during the early period of the war that began on October 7, 2023, following a large-scale Hamas terror attack on Israel. Twenty parents (age M = 32, SD = 4.8) were interviewed during the first month of the war. Three main themes and additional sub-themes through thematic analysis were raised. The first theme, an Experience of vulnerability, consists of three subthemes: Shock, uncertainty, and alertness; Sense of abandonment and helplessness; and Fear regarding oneself, others, and the unknown future. The second, Actual and perceived parental functioning, comprises three subthemes: Actual functioning; Unexpected parental functioning; and Parents’ judgment of their own functioning. The third theme, Handling complexity and uncertainty, consists of two subthemes: Complexity acceptance and Uncertainty management. The study revealed that vulnerability was a common experience and yet most of the parents overcame this experience and were functional. In contrast, we identified a discrepancy between the parents’ own functioning expectations and their actual performance, which surprised some parents for the better and others for the worse. In addition, parents showed different capabilities in acknowledging complexity and uncertainty. The findings provide a glimpse into parents’ perceptions of their functioning during wartime and present an in-deep view of how they accept and experienced uncertainty and complexity during wartime following the traumatic events that occurred in Israel on October 7, 2023.