title: Pre-Conception War Exposure and Mother and Child Adjustment 4 Years Later.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. alice.dadon@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Alice
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Shachar-Dadon
authors.affiliation: Center for Developmental Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Noa
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Gueron-Sela
authors.affiliation: Neonatal Department, Western Galilee Medical Center, Nahariya, Israel.
authors.forename: Zalman
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Weintraub
authors.affiliation: Neonatal Department, Sheba Medical Center, Ramat Gan, Israel.
authors.forename: Ayala
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Maayan-Metzger
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. Micah.Leshem@Psy.Haifa.ac.iL.
authors.forename: Micah
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Leshem
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations / Q000523:psychology*; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D000067453:War Exposure
keywords: Child adaptive behavior; Emotional availability; Maternal separation anxiety; Maternal stress; Parent-child interaction; Pre-conception stress; Transgenerational effects; War