The Longitudinal Impact of War Exposure and Parenting on Self-Development of Syrian Refugee Adolescents in Lebanon

Young people exposed to atrocities of war often experience adverse mental health. While it is well documented how war exposure impacts the psychological health of young people exposed to war, less is known about how such experiences impact self-development. Importantly, self-development is embedded in the social context, where multiple interactions within a given context can influence how the self develops. Specifically, war-exposed children who are displaced to low and middle income countries often report having been subjected to beatings, torture, and different degrading acts, which can compromise a child’s belief in one’s own capacity to succeed in specific situations, i.e., self-efficacy, and could reduce how much a child values themselves, i.e., self-esteem. Extrinsic factors, such as a parenting environment, can however mitigate or even exacerbate some of the negative impact of adversity on the development of self-efficacy and self-esteem in displaced children. In the present study, we focus on how a child’s social ecology (i.e., war exposure) interacts with extrinsic factors in the child’s environment (i.e., parenting) to give rise to intrinsic strengths (i.e., self-development: self-efficacy and self-esteem).
Methods:
Using mixture models, we will analyze two-wave data from the BIOPATH study (see McEwen et al., 2022) among a sample of Syrian refugee adolescents displaced in Lebanon (n = 1594, Mage = 11.44, SD = 2.44). Children reported on war-exposure at wave one, parenting (i.e., parental abuse, psychological control, acceptance and behavioral control) at both waves, and their self-efficacy and self-esteem at both waves. We will parse out different war exposure experiences on three dimensions, specifically, (1) exposure to bombs and shelling; (2) witnessing violence (e.g., witnessing or being subjected to torture, kidnappings, or beatings); and (3) being a direct victim of violence (e.g., kidnappings, torture, or bereavement). We will use each type of exposure to predict changes in child and adolescent-report self-efficacy and self-esteem over time. Finally, we will test whether the relation between specific war exposure experiences and changes in adolescent self-efficacy and self-esteem can be exacerbated or mitigated by different parenting practices.
Results:
Preliminary results suggest that exposure to more extreme forms of war (i.e., witnessing kidnappings, beatings and torture; and being a victim of kidnappings beatings and torture) is more harmful to children’s self-esteem than to their self-efficacy. On the long term, exposure to bombs and shelling was more harmful to self-efficacy, but not self-esteem.