How has parenthood changed during the full-scale war? We asked our Treatfield specialists to talk about the challenges parents currently face, relying on their own experience or on how the requests in therapeutic work have changed.
The full-scale war has fundamentally changed the lives of Ukrainian families. For parents, this has become a special trial: they had to simultaneously keep themselves together, make rapid decisions, and remain a support for their children when the earth was trembling under their feet.
I know from my own experience what it's like — when in one day you have to pack a suitcase, take the children in your arms, and set off into the unknown. Evacuation and forced emigration with children is not just about the journey, distance, or borders. It is about an internal rupture between the necessity to save and the fear of leaving home. About the responsibility for every step, about emotions that cannot be put "on pause," and about attempts to be strong, even when strength is running out.
During the war, parents face a double emotional burden: they must appear calm for their children when they themselves can barely contain their anxiety. Children look for stability in adults, and parents — in themselves. Life in conditions of uncertainty deprives them of the opportunity to plan the future, and when children ask "When will we go home?" or "When will the war end?" — the hardest thing is that there is no honest answer right now. Adaptation in a new environment is a separate story. A new country, language, school, different rules. It is difficult for children, but parents also have to go through their own adaptation while simultaneously supporting their children, solving issues of everyday life, documents, housing, and their own emotions that accumulate inside. But if they stayed at home, then the challenges of safety, power outages, conscience, guilt, — these are the things that do not allow them to breathe out even for a moment.
There is no single correct solution, universal for everyone.
A feeling of guilt often stands nearby — for leaving, for the children's fears, for fatigue, for "insufficient" resilience. As well as for the fact that the children remain in danger.
The constant mode of emotional mobilization, complicated by everyday life, gradually exhausts them, and even the strongest parents can feel burnout. Without internal resources, it is difficult to remain the support that children need every day.
In such conditions, self-care turns into a vital component of parenthood. It is not about selfishness, but about the ability to support others. Even the smallest things help — a warm morning drink, a short walk, familiar rituals that restore a sense of control. It is important to allow yourself to ask for help, divide the burden, take breaks, find at least a few minutes of silence. It is important to remain honest with yourself: to allow yourself to cry, to be afraid, to grieve. Community — other Ukrainians, neighbours, teachers, friends — can become a temporary support when one's own resources are depleted. And the memory of the path already taken adds quiet, but genuine internal strength.
One of the most important discoveries in the war is that sometimes you can cry even next to your child. This does not destroy their sense of security if the adult explains simply and clearly: "I am upset because it is difficult for me. But I am here. We are together." Children should see that emotions are normal. That it is okay to be upset and to grieve, and that it is not necessary to endure everything like an "iron man" without emotions. This teaches children not to devalue their own experiences and to process them healthily and openly. Emotions do not make you weak — they make you alive.
The war has posed huge challenges to parents: from evacuation and adaptation to life during air raids, bombings, and power outages. But it is precisely self-care, honesty in feelings, and the ability to find support in the small things that help maintain balance. Children grow up observing us, and the best thing we can give them is an example of living, true resilience: with emotions, vulnerability, and love that holds on even in the darkest times.
With hugs, to all parents who hold this world for their children on their shoulders.
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From my experience with clients who have children, the following questions are often raised during psychotherapy sessions:
- own effectiveness in relationships with their children
- organization of safety for children and loved ones
- adaptation in another country (for those who left due to the war) or adaptation in a new place for IDPs
- financial provision for the family
- children's learning processes
- the future of their families and children separately
Of course, forced displacement can affect parents, changing family structures and roles within the family.
IDP status or forced travel to another country is sometimes accompanied by loss of social status, uncertainty about the future, and financial constraints or lack of material resources, which, of course, will affect the emotional state of parents and can lead to an increase in conflicts in the family, increased tension in relationships or a decrease in warmth in relationships.
Responsibility for the family's safety and financial resources can cause huge pressure on parents.
Parents' tendency toward perfectionism can hinder their adaptation, as it is associated with self-criticism, which generates depressive thoughts and symptoms.
When there is a feeling of discrepancy between the ideal and actual "I," a divergence between one's expectations and actual functioning. The more disappointment, the more negative emotions.
And when it is difficult for parents to regulate their own emotional states, their ability to regulate their children's emotions also decreases, which affects mutual sensitivity. This worsens the structure within the family, causes mutual dissatisfaction or even hostility between parents and children.
In families who have remained in their cities in Ukraine, parents are concerned about safety issues, often they live with the fear that their children may suffer physical trauma or that their lives are under threat from shelling. Because of these fears and anxieties, parents sometimes become overly protective or controlling.
However, as is known from modern research, excessive care, as well as excessive parental control or a strict, all the more rigid, attitude towards children are more likely to be harmful to a child's adaptation and may impede the child's development according to their age-related tasks. In particular, such parental behaviour can exacerbate the symptoms of traumatic experience in a child. Because the child's sense of safety within the family, next to their parents, decreases, and the child's access to social support is limited, which is vital for recovery and restoration from traumatic impact. In addition, excessive restriction of a child's behaviour, as well as excessive care, reduce autonomy and a sense of safety in the world in general, which can lead to anxiety disorders.
So, in therapy, I often hear from clients about their experiences and doubts about how to be helpful and supportive, but not to overly protect and control their children, as in practice it is not so easy to maintain a balance between love and permissiveness, the desire for the best and the suppression of autonomy or child's initiative and creativity.
But from our own experience and from modern research, we see that the longer families stay in war conditions or forced displacement, the more they try to normalize their lives. Factors of resilience during the war can be self-compassion; authentic self-acceptance; the discovery of new personal strengths; strong emotional bonds between parents and children.
For children, a protective factor can be the positive experience of how parents help them regulate their emotions. For example, when parents encourage children to openly share feelings, distract their attention, play with them and spend time listening to their stories, reflections, experiences, help in solving problems, support feelings and emotions without judgment.
Supportive parental behaviour helps children perceive stressful situations as less threatening and more manageable and serves as a protective factor against children's psychological distress.
The mental health of parents is vitally important for the formation of children's own adaptation mechanisms, stress resistance, and the development of skills to create reliable and warm relationships, solve problems, and cope with their own lives. As someone said, the family is the first school where we learn to love. And teaching this by one's own example, I think, is an important task for parents, despite the war and other life circumstances; so I want to wish every child exactly such a family where they will gain the experience of love and safety to be themselves.
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Parenthood is inherently permeated with anxiety for the child's life, and this is forever. But the war fundamentally affected the background in which we live and raised all our internal horror. Accordingly, usual developmental needs have transformed into a need for survival and stabilization first of all.
At the very beginning of the war, we, the Parents, became that conscious buffer for the children to protect and survive in the new conditions. Over time, questions of adaptation increasingly arise before us: where to get the resources to endure all this; how to help the child survive in this world and form their attitude toward what is happening; how to build boundaries when there is chaos around; where to find the strength to make important decisions, because changes can affect fateful areas — the choice of place of residence, country of study, changes in the family system itself, and so on.
Our psyche is plastic and adaptive enough. It accepts new challenges and adapts to the new environment. We have become those Parents who continue despite everything to "protect" their child and simultaneously respond to the usual normative, natural, actual needs of children according to their age (regressions and crises have not been cancelled). With our example, we show children how to live in this difficult world. Accordingly, the most pressing issue becomes how to preserve oneself. The fact that the oxygen mask is put on oneself first, then the child — are not empty words, but deeply therapeutic.
If at the beginning of the war "parental" requests were more related to experiencing fear, to the right to experience strong emotions in general, searching for a form of their expression, searching for resources, finding clear and understandable words to explain the situation to the child. Then now I notice clients moving toward recognizing their exhaustion, how the war has transformed us, and searching for resources to continue their parental path and do what is possible.
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War systematically violates the foundations of being on which the feeling of safety, predictability, and normality is built.
And parenthood during the war becomes a real challenge. That is why many people do not dare to give birth to children in such circumstances.
Because being parents now is indeed quite difficult.
After all, we face several types of challenges:
Constant existential choice. Where to sleep today, whether to go to work, whether to leave the child, where to live, whether to tell the truth and how to tell it — simultaneously with the desire to protect the child's life and their mental state. There are many such choices, and each one comes with risk, danger, and internal anxiety.
Feeling of guilt. Due to difficult choices and limited resources. Every choice is not ideal and contains certain losses, risks, and a price we pay for it. We constantly doubt ourselves: "Did I do the right thing?, Did I do enough? Am I a good mom/dad if I choose or do this way?" Our strength, attention, and energy are very exhausted. Often you want to be "for the child," but lack internal support.
Strong fatigue. And it is difficult — parenthood is no longer about routine, but about the struggle for safety and stability.
Changes in family structure, roles, and support. If one of the parents is at the front, or forced to move, or works a lot, the burden of responsibility falls on the other. Or changes in schedules, distance, the absence of usual support, shared rituals. The family changes — and often faster than people can adapt. This adds a feeling of confusion, loneliness, and overload.
Increase in psychological vulnerability not only of parents but also of children. If parents experience anxiety, PTSD, or emotional exhaustion, this significantly increases the risks to the children's psyche. Research shows that in zones of intense shelling, parents have an increased level of PTSD, and the probability of anxiety disorders, depression, sleep disturbances, and behavioural changes increases in children.
Additional stress for families with special needs, for example, those with children with disabilities. The war adds layers of danger, deficit of resources, need for support — and then parents reach the limits of "endurance" (resources, time, psychological support) faster.
Parenthood during the war is about moral dilemmas, ruptures, fatigue, responsibility that is constantly present. About an insane burden even in providing for basic needs — both personal and children's.
But at the same time, the war forces us to rethink many things, gives the opportunity for deeper presence, and changes our meanings.
Parenthood becomes more conscious. What could have been automatic before — "feed, put to bed, take to school" — now has new meaning. Due to limited resources and greater involvement, we can choose what is really important to us, rather than relying on the opinions of others or general ideas of "good."
More value appears in time spent together, in expressions of love and attention. The emergence of family rituals that precisely create a sense of safety and stability.
Legalization and respect for complex feelings in both children and adults, which were previously neglected or of which people were ashamed.
Honesty between generations is growing. Children see adult emotions — fear, anxiety, fatigue. And this honesty sometimes becomes more fundamental than the image of the "strong father/mother."
What do parents and, through them, children really need now?
In this reality, parents need:
The right to be vulnerable — the right to fatigue, anxiety, doubts, guilt. Without the "idealization of parenthood," without the feeling that one must endure everything alone, without self-condemnation or condemnation from the environment.
A container of support and understanding — family, friends, community, colleagues, perhaps a therapeutic field. A place where one can be honest, express fear, anger, confusion, powerlessness.
Emotional and psychological resources — everything that can fill you up: rest, recovery, rebooting even in microscopic doses. Because, as research shows, this is the only way parents can remain "containers" for their children.
A space of stability — rituals, predictability, safety. Even if safety is temporary, conditional: a daily routine, simple rituals, a feeling of home, conversations with children, explanations, support — all this reduces anxiety in the child, gives a sense of support. Consciousness of influence: understanding that how we hold ourselves, how we react, what emotions we give — matters. For the child's development, for their psyche, for their sense of self in a world where safety is violated. And therefore, care for one's own psyche, for recovery, is needed.
Support at the community and societal level: resources for families, psychological support programs, spaces for unburdening, social support, tolerance for those who cannot "hold on," who are tired, who are in great pain.
Parenthood during the war is not about idealness, not about "how to raise a successful person." It is care for the preservation of life, humanity, and love in a cruel and relentless context.
This is a trial of deep responsibility and love. And not as heroism, but as a daily presence, even if it is scary, even if it hurts, even if there are no guarantees.
Our families in this difficult time can become a space that provides emotional support, a safe "little home" amidst the chaos, closeness, and empathy. This way we feel that we are not alone in the face of the horror that has befallen us.
