People exposed to war and political violence are in danger not only of developing post-trauma – they are also more likely to behave aggressively toward members of their own family, impacting all areas of children’s lives even after the immediate threat of armed conflict has passed.
This was discovered by Israeli and Palestinian researchers working together in a study led by adjunct faculty associate Paul Boxer of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan. Boxer is an expert in the development, prevention, and treatment of aggressive and disruptive behavior in children and adolescents. The Israeli participant was Prof. Simha Landau of the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), who is also trained in criminology and psychology.
The Palestinian participant in the study was political science Prof. Khalil Shikaki who heads the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah and was dean of scientific research at al Najah University in Nablus.
The trauma affects family interplay and dynamics, creating harsh, aggressive interactions that transmit injury across the entire household system, the researchers wrote in the International Journal of Behavioral Development. The study was titled “Political violence exposure and youth aggression in the context of the social ecological systems and family stress models: A 4-wave prospective study of Israeli and Palestinian youth.”
It was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD, named for the sister of assassinated US president John F. Kennedy; she herself died in 2009 at the age of 88).
Studying aggression under conditions of persistent and intense violence
“We had long been interested in how experiences with violence impact children and families, but did not have the chance to study this issue under conditions of persistent and intense violence,” Boxer said. “In 2005, the NICHD offered a special call for proposals to examine the impact of violence exposure on children, and we put together this project in response.”
The researchers found that, “Exposure to conflict operates as a source of real persistent stress and increases aggressiveness between parents, like hitting, yelling, and other forms of combat – in turn, increasing their use of harsh forms of discipline with their children and ultimately the child’s tendencies to behave aggressively.”
They followed over 1,000 Israeli and Palestinian youth aged eight, 11, and 14, from 2007 to 2015, producing what is believed to be the first full cross-cultural test of how the macro-level stress of political conflict cascades through the household system to shape child development.
The data shows that war doesn’t stop at the borders of a battlefield; it enters homes. The researchers said that even years after the immediate threat has passed, its psychological and relational impacts can echo throughout families, influencing how parents relate to one another and to their children.
The study’s findings come at a time when global conflict is at record levels. In 2024 alone, more than 200,000 people were killed in armed conflicts, and one in eight people around the world lived within five kilometers of political violence.
During the decade covered by the research, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulted in the deaths of nearly 5,500 people, with 21% of them children and teens, tragically underscoring the devastating human toll of protracted conflict.
Beginning in 2007, they collected four waves of data from 451 Israeli Jewish teens and 600 Palestinian youths. They found that exposure to ethnic-political violence increases harsh parenting and, subsequently, child aggression that emanates from the family context (interparental aggression) and stress in the family. These results highlight the usefulness of applying the family-stress model to families exposed to ethnic-political violence, and the need for multi-level interventions for these families, they wrote.
“Based on the data we have, it has been surprising to see how interethnic-political violence really does impact all areas of a child’s life,” the authors declared. “This new paper further shows, interestingly, that family interactions impacted by the strain of issues such as food insecurity and parental joblessness can also be challenged by encounters with war violence.”
Although the study period ended nearly a decade before the current Israel-Gaza war, its implications are urgent. The researchers predicted that the current escalation of violence will probably intensify the family-level stress processes documented in their data. Their findings underscore the need for multilevel interventions that address both macro-level drivers of political violence and micro-level family processes that perpetuate harm.
Programs that strengthen parental mental health, reduce family aggression and promote nonviolent conflict resolution may help break the intergenerational transmission of trauma and aggression in war-affected communities, they suggested.
“Our findings provide clear rationale for ensuring that such programming includes activities and approaches that target spousal relationships and parenting practices to the extent possible, engaging whole families in services and not just children,” he said. “I hope our results humanize the impact of war on families that, by and large, are innocent bystanders in conflict zones.”
The study period predated the October 7 war in Gaza by eight years, but in addition to the ongoing level of Israeli–Palestinian conflict and violence, there were three key events – the three-week First Gaza War (Operation Cast Lead) of 2008–2009; an eight-day Israeli military operation (Operation Pillar of Defense) in Gaza in 2012 as a response to increased Gaza rocket attacks into Israel; and the 50-day 2014 Gaza War (Operation Protective Edge).
Previous research showed that economic crises create financial problems for families that resulted in debts and the inability to meet material needs; this, in turn, triggered many cases of family malfunctioning including emotional depression in parents and more conflict between parents, the authors wrote. This spilled over into the parent–child relationship and created hostility, harsh physical punishment and decreased warmth in numerous families.
The researchers concluded that although families can be resilient in the face of war and societal conflicts, parents can take steps to shield their children from the harmful impacts of violence in their communities, which will leave few families immune to the harmful effects. Chronic ethnic-political violence can “trickle down” through disrupted family relations to adversely affect children’s outcomes, so intervention to help them should be initiated.