Parental Resilience in Contexts of Political Violence: A Systematic Scoping Review of 45 Years of Research

Abstract

Families suffer in particular ways during the violence and targeted deprivation of freedom and resources within political violence (PV), which includes wars, armed conflicts, and military occupations. While evidence is accumulating about the disproportionate impacts of PV on parents and children, we lack a clear, globally integrated understanding of how families suffer—and survive—PV. There is an urgent need to synthesize existing work to refine our understanding of parental experiences within PV—with particular attention to both how PV creates suffering for parents, and how parents strategize, caring for their families within the most horrendous of circumstances. In this systematic scoping review, authors explore how political violence impacts parenting. Using predetermined search strategies and inclusion criteria (peer-reviewed, empirical articles, published in English), searches within multiple databases, and tests of interrater reliability, 112 articles (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method) were identified. Authors organized and coded findings, determined common themes, and built a conceptual model connecting and integrating findings. Findings point to two crucial areas of parenting within PV: parenting efficacy and parenting practices, demonstrating how these are simultaneously compromised by and amplified within PV. Results uncover how much parenting within PV is intertwined with parental psychological and social well-being, and that parents cope with a variety of internal and external resources, including culture, community, religion, activism, flight, and emotional and logistical reconfiguration. Implications include that, within and after PV, interventions must focus on parental well-being, as well as the social and political situatedness of parents.