A study of Israeli mothers who conceived within a year after the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war found that war exposure was not associated with their children’s later sleep problems. However, mothers who experienced more emotional distress as a result of the war tended to have daughters with slightly more sleep problems. This association was absent in boys. The research was published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development.
War can have profound and long-lasting effects on the well-being of individuals and communities. Physically, it can lead to injury, disability, and death. Psychologically, it can cause anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Socially, war can disrupt families and communities, leading to displacement, loss of social support, and the breakdown of social norms. War can devastate infrastructure, reduce access to resources, and lead to poverty and unemployment.
Many studies suggest that exposure to war could render future generations more prone to mental and physical health issues. The stress related to war experienced by mothers might even impact children who were not conceived at the time of the conflict. Some research suggests that war exposure could detrimentally affect the mental health of future mothers and induce physiological changes that might influence their future offspring.
In this context, studies have found associations between maternal symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and their children’s emotional negativity, or maternal emotional distress related to war before conception and poorer adaptive behavior and socio-emotional functioning in their children.
Study author Emma Bolhuis and her colleagues wanted to investigate if there is a link between children’s sleep characteristics and their mother’s exposure to war and emotional distress caused by the war. They noted that sleep plays a crucial role in the development of children. Insufficient sleep and sleep problems in children are associated with deficits in more complex cognitive functions as well as with behavioral problems. Because of this, it is important to identify any links between maternal war exposure and their children’s sleep quality.
The study included 107 mothers who became pregnant one to twelve months after the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict and their children born from these pregnancies. They were recruited postpartum from either the Western Galilee Hospital or the Sheba Medical Center. The Western Galilee Hospital, located in northern Israel, was within the missile attack range during the conflict, whereas the Sheba Medical Center, situated in central Israel, was not.
When the children reached the age of ten, the study authors reassessed the mother-infant pairs. Initially, right after childbirth and approximately a year post-war, the mothers filled out questionnaires regarding their war exposure and emotional distress. At the age of ten, the researchers visited the children and their mothers at home, asking them to independently complete assessments of the children’s sleep (using the Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire).
Results showed that mothers exposed to war reported much more emotional distress than mothers not exposed to war. Mothers exposed to war tended to report higher sleep anxiety of their children. However, this was not the case with sleep quality reported by the child. There were no significant differences in total sleep problems between children of war-exposed mothers and those of non-exposed mothers.
What the researchers did find was a weak association between mothers’ emotional distress at the start of the study and their daughters’ (but not sons’) total sleep problems at age 10. In other words, the daughters of mothers who experienced more emotional distress (as a consequence of war) tended to have slightly more sleep problems.
“As war exposure per se was not predictive, whereas maternal emotional distress during wartime was predictive of child sleep problems, even after controlling for maternal pre-war stressful events, post-war stressful events prior to childbirth (including pregnancy), and current perceived stress, the outcomes of this study suggest that interventions aimed at decreasing maternal distress and increasing maternal resilience during the pre-conception period might benefit both mother and child, as animal findings also suggest,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about the links between war exposure and sleep characteristics of children. However, it should be noted that the one obtained association was weak and found only in daughters. Further studies are needed to confirm or disprove this finding, but also to provide a theoretical explanation for it.
The paper, “War exposure prior to conception: Longitudinal associations between maternal emotional distress and child sleep 10 years later,” was authored by Emma Bolhuis, Anat Scher, Hanit Ohana, Rotem Ad-Epsztein, Micah Leshem, and Roseriet Beijers.