Parenting following the Death of a Child in War or Terror Attack: “Hyper-Enfranchised Loss”

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the experience of parenting following the death of a child in a terror attack or war in Israel, from a socio-cultural perspective. The study was conducted according to the Three-sphere Context Model in qualitative narrative research. In-depth, semi-structured life story interviews with 18 Israeli parents who were bereaved in national circumstances and were raising at least one minor surviving child were analyzed according to a narrative-contextual method. The analysis focuses on the multi-dimensional socio-cultural context as expressed in the interviews and as referenced in extra-textual sources as an explanatory framework. The following cultural themes were salient in the interview texts: child-centeredness, the of Jewish survival, the unraveling of the Hegemonic Bereavement Model following the Yom Kippur War, the Holocaust as a template of the construction of loss, the appropriation of the deceased child as a national martyr, and the motif of Jewish heroism and the hierarchy of grief. Following a discussion of the findings using Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious, a new concept of “hyper-enfranchised” loss and grief is presented. For some parents this hyper-enfranchisement helped them to carry on as parents, while for others it constituted a burden. Finally, Terror Management Theory is employed to help explain the grief and parenting processes presented in the findings.

Keywords:

• Parental bereavement
• hyper-enfranchised loss
• war death
• terror attack
• terror management theory

Introduction

Israeli society has coped with the challenges of death in war and terror attacks since its inception. This difficult reality has led to the construction of socio-cultural perceptual frameworks concerning collective identity, grief, and memorialization (Bilu & Witztum, 2000). This context has a profound impact on individual and family bereavement and adaptation following the loss of a close relative in national circumstances (Possick et al., 2008; Witztum et al., 2016).

Much has been written about the lives of bereaved parents following the loss of a child, but there has been relatively little focus on parenting the remaining living children following the death (Haylett & Tilley, 2018; Shankar et al., 2017). The majority of the studies to date concern parenting after a still birth or the death of a child in infancy. The purpose of the current study is to explore how parents experience parenthood toward their living children following the loss of a child in a war or terror attack within the Israeli context.

Parental bereavement

The death of a child goes against the natural life course, and its impact on the parent may be catastrophic and life-long. The literature considers the death of a child, especially when it occurs suddenly in violent circumstances, as a traumatic loss that includes both acute and ongoing grief as well as post-traumatic symptoms. Parents who have lost a child are at risk for what has been termed complicated grief (Auster et al., 2008; Lichtenthal et al., 2013) or prolonged grief disorder (PGD) (Parkes, 2020). These syndromes are characterized by ongoing, intense sorrow, extreme lability, and preservative involvement with the deceased that causes significant dysfunction and does not lead to meaning reconstruction of the loss and its integration into the life of the bereaved parent (Boelen, 2006; Malkinson, 2007). Studies have indicated that the death of a child has a negative influence on the self-worth of parents, their interpersonal relationships, and their ability to invest in their surroundings. The shock, numbing of the senses, depression and disorganization may persist for decades (Haylett & Tilley, 2018). Parents are intensely involved in a dialectic between the desire to be close to the deceased child and his/her memory and the deep pain that leads to avoiding the memories (Hooghe et al., 2012). In addition, parents experience themselves as vulnerable and exposed following the loss and feel anger, hopelessness and at times responsibility, in the wake of the abandonment of the child who died. At the same time, they have a need to reorient the self in relation to the deceased child, the living family members and to the world in general (Haylett & Tilley, 2018; Shankar et al., 2017; Stroebe & Schut, 2015). These difficulties are particularly prevalent following unnatural death in violent circumstances. In a meta-analysis on the prevalence of PGD in individuals bereaved due to unnatural death causes based on twenty-five studies (n = 4774), Djelantik et al. (2020) found that almost 50% of individuals screened positive for Prolonged Grief Disorder.

Bereaved parenting

A central finding was that bereaved parents had difficulty in finding a balance between the incompatible tasks of the need to parent the surviving children and the need to grieve the deceased child (see Shankar et al., 2017) and between providing for the needs of others and the needs of self. These conflicts negatively impacted their capability to care for surviving children particularly in the initial phases. On the other hand, most of the bereaved parents reported positive relational changes such as communicating more frequently, having additional family time, and growing closer. For some bereaved parents the need to provide concrete care for the family while remaining emotionally present provided a reason to continue on. A minority of parents felt that their family relationships had suffered and had become more distant. It was suggested that a greater connection to the deceased child on the part of the parent led to a greater disconnection from surviving children. Another salient issue was that bereaved parents experience fear and anxiety regarding the potential for further loss and struggled to find an appropriate level of protectiveness over their children. Attempts to keep their family safe was also identified as a coping strategy. A recent qualitative study of mothers and fathers in the US whose children died from cancer (Haylett et al., 2021) added a number of additional themes such as realizing one’s own powerlessness and choosing to be intentional as a parent, hanging on to what was while renewing family life again, and desiring others’ validation of their emotions and experience. A qualitative study of parenting children following the death of a child in a ferry disaster, conducted in a very different cultural context, South Korea, found similar themes to those in the Haylett & Tilley meta-analysis (2018), but added that parents felt that it was their responsibility to preserve the deceased child’s presence within the family and help the surviving children continue bonds with the deceased sibling (Lee & Khang, 2020).

The death of a child in war or terror attack: The Israeli context

Since the establishment of the State, death and bereavement in national circumstances has been held in high regard, since they served as a rehabilitation of the image of the passive Jewish victim in the diaspora. This is especially true of those whose children died on the battlefield, but non-combat military deaths and even death in terror attacks are also cast as sacrifices in the struggle for Jewish sovereign independence (Lebel, 2006). In addition, those killed in national circumstances were considered by Israeli society as “our children,” in what came to be characterized as collective bereavement in which many different groups identified with the bereaved parents (Lomsky-Feder & Ben-Ari, 2007). This identification was found to be a supportive factor in the adaptation process and meaning reconstruction for the parents following the loss (Lichtenthal et al., 2013; Malkinson, 2007; Neimeyer et al., 2014; Possick et al., 2008;). On a personal level, in a study on the experience of the death of a child in military action in Israel, parenting after death was described as different in nature from parenting beforehand in that it included a demand to preserve an intense emotional commitment to the deceased son. In addition, parents felt a sense of responsibility to their surviving children as a way to commemorate their deceased sons (Hamama-Raz et al., 2010).

The current research

The purpose of the current study is to add to the limited existing research regarding parenting following the death of a child and to examine the impact of the death on parenting within the specific circumstances of war and terror in the Israeli socio-cultural context, from the perspective of the parents. The research question was: What is the experience of parenthood following the death of a child in war or terror attack in the Israeli context?

Method

Research type

This qualitative research study was conducted according to the life story method in the narrative genre, in which participants are asked to tell their life stories in general or around a particular aspect of their lives, in this case, parenting (Rosenthal, 1993). As the findings will demonstrate, the narratives are largely an attempt by the participants to reconstruct their identities as parents following the loss of a child in a war or terror attack. Loseke (2007) has stressed the importance of exploring the reflexive relationships among cultural, institutional, and personal narratives of identity. This is so, since stories are developed, told, heard, and evaluated within particular historical, institutional, and interactional contexts, which include the apriori assumptions of the storytellers and the listeners (Gergen, 1994; Loseke, 2007). The findings reported here, emerged from a socio-cultural, contextual analysis of the personal life stories of the participants and the dialogue that followed (Zilber et al., 2008).

Sample

The inclusion criteria were: Jewish Israeli parents of a child who was killed in a war or terror attack at least one year ago, who at the time of the study had at least one child under age 18 living at home. It is important to note that there are many Palestinian Arabs in Israel and on the West Bank whose children were killed in national circumstances. They were not included in this research since the one of the foci was the socio-cultural context which is much different and requires a separate study. Data collection continued until data saturation was achieved, i.e., enough data was collected to enable developing adequate answers to the research questions and new data tended to be redundant (Sandelowski, 2008). A total of 18 participants were interviewed, six couples (who were interviewed separately) and six individuals, 10 were mothers and 8 were fathers. Two of the deceased children were under age 2 at the time of their death. The rest were aged 16–21. The time since the death ranged from 2–14 years. Eight children were killed in terror attacks, and 4 were killed as soldiers in the Gaza Wars. The number of children that the parents were raising ranged from 2–9.

Table

Name	Family status	Age at time of interview	Age at time of death of child	Number of children (including the deceased)	Name of deceased	Birth order + Age of child at time of death	Number of years since death	Cause of death
Miriam	Married to Aaron	55	45	10	Nathan	5th 19 years old	10	Shooting Break in to place of study
Aaron	Married to Miriam	57	47	"	"	"	"	"
Vered	Married to Harry	55	42	5	Harel	1st 18 years old	14	Suicide bomber on bus
Harry	Married to Vered	57	44	"	"	"	"	"
Edith	Married	35	22	5	Rotem	1st 7 months	14	Shooting Break in to home
Yael	Married	53	41	5	Lior	1st 16.5 years old	12	Drive by shooting in car
Fran	Married to Eli	46	44	7	Sharon	1st 24 years old	2	Stabbing Break in to community
Eli	Married to Fran	49	47	"	"	"	"	"
Nadav	Separated	49	46	6	Lavee	1st 21 years old	3.5	War
Orly	Married	54	52	7	Elad	2nd 26 years old	2	Stabbing on street
Maddy	Married to Oriel	51	48	7	Noam	3rd 21 years old	3.5	War
Oriel	Married to Maddy	52	49	"	"	"	"	"
Dorit	Married to Dan	48	44	4	Eyal	1st 21 years old	3.5	War
Dan	Married to Dorit	50	46	"	"	"	"	"
Rachel	Married	40	24	4	Almog	1st 1.5 years old	16	Suicide bomber on street
Michael	Widower	57	54	3	Ray	1st 21 years old	3.5	War
Eran	Married to Leora	49	44	7	Uriel	2nd 16 years old	4.5	Drive-by shooting on street
Leora	Married to Eran	46	41	"	"	"	"	"

Data collection

Participants were recruited through acquaintances of the researchers and NGOs that support terror victims, and by using snowball sampling. The researchers had no prior direct acquaintance with the participants. There was no conflict of interest between the participants and the researchers. In the initial phone contact, the purpose of the study, i.e., learning about parenting following the death of a child in war or terror as well as the academic sponsorship of the project was presented. The parents chose a time and place for the interview. Most chose to be interviewed at home; two chose to be interviewed in their offices. Each parent was interviewed by the first author, a female social worker with experience in treating bereaved families. They were interviewed individually to allow for a safe space to share sensitive material openly and honestly. There is often tension between bereaved parents in the context of differences in ways of grieving and coping with the loss. In addition, one or both parents may try to protect the partner by not revealing or expressing pain (O’Neill & Keane, 2005). The length of the interviews averaged one and half to two hours. They took place in the years 2017–2018.

The interviews were loosely structured. They began with an open invitation to tell life stories in the context of the loss of child and the continuation of the parenting role. The second stage of the interview was a dialogue between the teller (participant) and listener (researcher) to deepen and expand topics that were introduced in the initial monologue and to introduce topics based on the flow of conversation. Examples of probes used were: Has being a parent changed for you since the death of your child? Has your partner’s parenting changed in your view? How do you and your partner relate with each other as parents since the death of your child? The interviewer wrote entries in a research diary with all of her impressions as well as reflexive comments.

Data analysis

The interviews were analyzed by both authors, who have qualitative research experience as faculty members in a school of social work in an Israeli university. They were analyzed according to the contextual model (Tuval-Mashiach, 2014; Zilber et al., 2008). This method of analysis focuses on how the individual narrative is embedded in larger socio-cultural stories. The model relates to three contextual levels—the intersubjective context of interviewer and interviewee, the immediate social context, and the cultural context. The researcher must be aware of how the interviewee-interviewer relationship influences what is told and the way it is told. Analyzing the social context involves recognizing the normative world views in the interviewee’s social milieu as well as social structures and the position of the interviewee within them. Finally, the texts were analyzed in light of the meta-narratives, myths and ethos that imbue collective cultural meanings to the life story.

The focus here is on the social and cultural contexts. All of the meaning units in the texts that referred to these contexts were extracted and examined through a cross-case comparative analysis, in which themes were developed. In addition, the researchers employed both personal and academic extra-textual knowledge of the society and the culture of the interviewees. This contextual knowledge will be presented in the findings section as an interpretive lens through which to view the interview texts.

Research ethics

The research proposal was approved by an academic ethics committee (#AU-SOC-AW-20150712), Prior to the interview the participant’s written informed consent was obtained. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim; the names of the participants were coded in the transcriptions. The data was stored in a secure computer; it is accessible only to the researchers and available to other researchers on request. The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Trustworthiness

The research is presented here according to the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (Tong et al., 2007). In order to ensure that the research findings would be credible, transferable, dependable, and confirmable (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) the following strategies were employed: 1. Theoretical triangulation through use of different theories in the analysis process; 2. Prolonged exposure through in depth interviews and extensive clinical experience of the researchers in the field of bereavement; 3. Documentation of systematic data analysis; 5. Thick description of the Israeli context; 6. Extensive use of verbatim quotes from the interviews in the presentation of the findings; 7. Reflexivity throughout the research process including journalling (Kenton, 2004).

Findings and interpretations

The findings presented here focus on the interaction between Israeli cultural themes regarding both parenthood and national bereavement and the narratives of parenting following the loss of a child in war or terror attack. The following cultural themes were salient in the interview texts: child-centeredness, the myth of Jewish survival, the unraveling of the Israeli hegemonic model of bereavement, the motif of Jewish heroism and the hierarchy of grief, and the Holocaust as a template of the construction of loss. The findings are presented along with the extra-textual sources that were employed in the analysis in accordance with the contextual method (Tuval-Mashiach, 2014; Zilber et al., 2008).

Child-centeredness

At the outset, it is important to consider the unique characteristics of Israeli culture regarding the family. Israel is a “familist” society, that prioritizes nurturing children. Israeli parents are very focused on their family life and the social messages that stress the importance of the well-being of children above parents’ needs (Gavriel-Fried et al., 2014; Yefet, 2016). This is reflected the following passage from Leora’s interview.

The maternal experience came very very easy to me, and they [the children] didn’t make it difficult for me in any way. Also, I am not a person who is planned and organized, so they simply entered in the flow of life, and also, I don’t know, I think that with seven children I nursed about 17 years, and til today, two kids sleep with me in the bed. Like something not heavy, and in the first years I also felt like a wonderful mother, that is I was very synchronized, very sensitive.

For some this means repairing the damage by preserving their family as it was prior to the death, at all costs, including suppressing signs of bereavement as in the following example of one of the couples interviewed:” Our home will not be sad. We focus on life, on family growth” [Miriam]. “We continue forward, don’t stop the growth. A parent has to be an anchor and a back rest for his children” [Aaron].

Other parents who have lost a child are absorbed in reconstructing their parenthood for the sake of their surviving children as Nadav explains:

If the parenthood before [the death of his son] was very supportive of the wishes of the children, that what they wish for, we are there to help them, because this is the purpose of our parenthood; this will cause our children to be happy by fulfilling their dreams, o.k., today it’s no longer the same thing. If there is something dangerous, if before things flowed and we didn’t think that we had influence on something that will happen to them in our decisions, so suddenly, now, in everything, yes So we don’t let them go to school alone. When Noa goes to a friend, she doesn’t come home alone. We go to bring her.

Others pointed out lessons learned from the death that prompted them to reinvent themselves as parents not only for their children’s sake, but for themselves as well:

Dan: Certainly after what happened to Eyal, I understand the price I paid, because what I didn’t understand then is that…the experiences don’t return. If you weren’t there, it won’t happen again. And there is no experience of one child that is like the experience of another child. Each one is a world in and of itself…. Now I know to tell you today that I have moderated this [time spent parenting] a bit, a great bit, and I enjoy it more. Like, true, it’s not fun to drive Shane [a surviving son] to the neighboring town, but it’s an opportunity to be with him together in the car, and to talk with him, to be with him… to see what he’s doing…But that’s because today I understand that in all likelihood, there are things that won’t come back.

The myth of Jewish survival

Those bereaved parents continued their parenting following the loss in light of the overarching cultural myth of Jewish survival. The Jewish people view themselves as the perpetual phoenix who rises from the ashes, as the Passover Haggadah (prayer book) states: “That which stood for our ancestors​ stands for us…In every generatio​n they stand up against us to destroy us…” In the context of death in Israel in war or terror a ttack, the parents see themselves as bound to commit themselves to their children as part of the Jewish survival phenomenon. They do so actively by attempting to protect the well-being of the surviving children. This is especially crucial for them since in their view the State failed to protect the children. As Rachel states: “The responsibility to protect my children is mine alone, as a parent.”

Other parents, particularly parents of adolescents, focus on the quality of their parenting as the death of a child has led to the stark realization that the parent-child bond is very fragile and needs to be actively and sensitively nurtured, even when this is “very difficult,” as can be seen in the following example.

Michael: We are a family…. I try to preserve this and give them [his surviving children] this, but I won’t say that it’s not difficult. It is very difficult [Pause] Let’s say that my relationships with them and especially with the oldest daughter, take a large part of my conversations with professionals and in my thoughts…It’s difficult, it’s very difficult.

The unraveling of the Hegemonic Bereavement Model following the Yom Kippur War

Parents who are bereaved in national circumstances are embedded in yet another dynamic cultural myth—that of the traditional Zionist ethos that affords these parents special status. The “family of the bereaved,” particularly the parents, are treated as an aristocratic elite who are granted a place of honor at national ceremonies and events. In return for this elevated status, the unspoken expectation was that the bereaved parents accept the tragic death of their child and remain patriotic supporters of the State, become the memory bearers of the deceased and their heroic spirit, and serve as an inspiration for others while silently bearing the internalized pain of the loss. Lebel (2006) termed this unwritten contract “the hegemonic model of Israeli national bereavement.” This model began to unravel following the Yom Kippur War. The Yom Kippur War was fought in 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states. The war began with a surprise attack by the Arab forces. At the outset of the war, the dominant sentiment was that Israel’s survival was at stake, but ultimately Israel emerged victorious. There were significant casualties on both sides with 3,000 Israeli deaths. The country went through a period of demoralization following the war and began to question the hegemonic model of bereavement. Parents demonstrated their intense grief in their homes and communities. This process reached its climax after the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Bereaved parents were no longer willing to grant automatic legitimacy to the military and civilian leadership and their decisions. Furthermore, they vocally objected to hiding their pain and conforming to the rule to cry privately and expressed intense grief even in public memorial ceremonies (Lebel, 2006).

The collapse of the pretense of effective coping of bereaved parents following the Yom Kippur War, had a profound impact on the next generation of bereaved parents (the generation of the study participants). Some of the study participants feared that mourning at home would damage their children and became determined to carry on in their previous parental functioning at all costs, as Maddy reflected:

With everything that happened with all of the children there, with all of the families that were destroyed…everything that happened in the Yom Kippur War. Parents didn’t, they stopped functioning.

The memory of the toll that open and fully expressed bereavement took on families whose loved ones fell in the Yom Kippur War, triggered caution regarding the place of grief and commemoration in the homes of the research participants. Some opted for a dialectic of pain alongside growth. Others were more fearful that expressing their own grief would have a negative impact on their children. Maddy, for example asks for feedback from her children regarding sharing memories of Noam, her son who was killed in combat, in light of her experience of families who lost a child in the Yom Kippur War.

Once in a while I say to the children, “OK, so did we talk too much about Noam?” “No, Mom, it’s OK, calm down, no (laughs)”…I don’t want to burden too much with the memory…Like again, the Yom Kippur War is stuck for me here [points to her chest], because they [bereaved parents] talk about it all the time… and you hear that everything is depressing, and even today there are families that are falling apart.

Fran also worries about her children in the context of bereavement and their ability to work through the loss in light of the fallout from bereavement following the Yom Kippur War.

During the Shiva [week long mourning period], a number of people came to us and said to me “I am a bereaved brother or a bereaved sister, and my parents destroyed my life.” Or someone said to me, “only at age 40 something I understood that I was an unfulfilled bereaved sister. I never felt that I had the right to speak about my brother, to ask about my brother, because, you know, that was also a different generation, the parents of Yom Kippur.”

The motif of Jewish heroism and the hierarchy of grief

The “hierarchy of grief” is comprised of social norms that determine who is entitled to grieve (Robson & Walter, 2012). In Israel, death of a child in war, followed by death in a terror attack, are at the very top of the hierarchy of grief, and the bereaved parents are accorded recognition, honor and appreciation (Lebel, 2014). Dan described this phenomenon in response to the interviewer’s question, “Is there significance to the way in which your son was killed?”

It also has significance for the society. The society is looking for heroes, and we are a society at war, in unending military battle and we are looking for heroes, and heroes are those, that however sad it is to say, happens in circumstances of battle. On the day we become Switzerland, then apparently we won’t ask, how it happened. We won’t have to teach the future generation values, contribution, to give your life for the nation.

To Eyal, it happened in the best way, because in the way it happened the whole world envelops him, us… Last week we were at Eyal’s base… so Dan could tell them about Eyal and tell them how important it is in his eyes as a bereaved father, how he sees them as future officers. The IDF, the State of Israel paid for our whole family’s flight to Eilat… and when Dan sits as a father or Dorit as a mother and they say, we had a son in the national league, like he was a hero… and if G-d forbid, it had happened in a different situation, didn’t wake up in the morning, traffic accident, then they already wouldn’t do this façade for us. All of this happens because Eyal was a soldier in the State of Israel who was killed defending the homeland, in Gaza, from a missile, and like he is at the top of the pyramid of heroes, like he is standing on the podium.

Dan accepted his changed status as the father of a national hero, speaking of himself as a bereaved father in third person, thus emphasizing his new parental identity as the father of a war hero, even as he labels the preferential treatment he receives as a “façade.”

Michael embraced his status as a father who was bereaved in national circumstances, since it provides him with a measure of consolation.

Look, I don’t know how other parents can cope with the circumstances of accidents or mistakes. It seems to me simply a catastrophe, because it’s really for no purpose, Ray fell in heroic circumstances, that he saved his soldiers, so there is maybe a little, I wouldn’t say consolation [but] pride, yes, it wasn’t for no purpose.

Even among those who were killed in national circumstances there is a hierarchy of loss—dying in the course of protecting others is at the pinnacle of heroism. Lebel (2014) points out that parents of terror victims struggled to have their children’s deaths commemorated on Israeli Memorial Day which was traditionally reserved solely for military deaths, the ultimate sacrifice. Note how Ariel explicates the relative hierarchy of heroism based on the purpose of the sacrifice, that is present even in military deaths:

That Noam was killed in a war, and in fact during battle, makes it a little easier, even though easy is the wrong word. I think that if God forbid, he had committed suicide or had been killed in a car or training accident or even if he had been killed in war from a mortar bombshell that had landed near him in a troop assembly area, then it would have been more difficult. The circumstances make it easier, because it wasn’t in vain.

It was primarily fathers who cast their son’s death in the military as heroic in their own eyes and the eyes of others. When mothers did so they did not fail to stress the pain of the loss and the similarities between loss of a child in other circumstances.

Today I am more aware of families who lose a child in a difference framework. I’m not sure that is a difference. The grief is grief, the loss is loss, especially in sudden death. But a child who is killed in the army or in war, the surroundings envelope more, I think, the heroes. It doesn’t matter what they did, they are heroes. When they disappear all at once, the loss is loss in any case, the sense of missing out, the sense that they didn’t fulfill, that we didn’t fulfill, of the sense of losing out on all of the things you didn’t say.

The Holocaust as a template for the construction of loss

While parents of soldiers who died in the military, enlisted the framework of heroism, parents of victims of terror attacks used the Holocaust as template for the construction of their loss. Theories of intergenerational transmission of trauma posit that the Holocaust constitutes an ongoing source of collective anxiety among the Jewish people and national anxiety in the State of Israel. This largely unconscious anxiety is reactivated when a traumatic loss occurs in the context of what is perceived as the struggle for the survival of Israel as a Jewish state (Possick et al., 2008). Mann-Shalvi (2014) suggested that this collective anxiety informs parenting patterns in Israel and this may be especially so among parents of children who have been killed in national circumstances. The ethos of “the Jewish mother” who has worried about and protected her children in times of destruction, may be the template for the bereaved to gather their strength for the sake of their surviving children or to give birth to future children. This may require setting aside their own suffering and trauma. The Holocaust, the greatest loss the Jewish people endured, echoes throughout many of the interviews, particularly in cases in which the child was a victim of a terror attack.

Edith related to the Holocaust in the context of the meaning-construction process of the death of her infant daughter:

He [her husband] very quickly connected to, he had also a grandmother, and also a grandfather and grandmother, that the three of them are Holocaust survivors…They right away told us during the Shivah and afterwards, that’s it, it’s over, you continue, like “don’t, don’t think, [have] more children,” “don’t get stuck there,” like that’s like their [the deceased’s] last will and testament.

While Edith didn’t have other children at the time of her daughter’s death in a terror attack, she mentioned the legacy of survival after the Holocaust that helped her to come out of herself and become a parent again.

Harry, whose adolescent son was killed by a suicide bomber, used the Holocaust template as a means of making sense of the death, and perhaps also as a way of lessening his personal responsibility as a parent who failed to protect his child.

My sacrifice or my loss is not only mine, it is a national loss…In this case when they attack innocent civilians because they are part of a nation. Therefore, it’s similar to the Holocaust, that they didn’t come to the Jews in an individual way for something they did, but they came to them because of what they represent, that means they represent the Jewish people, and the people are attacked essentially…When the group is attacked and you are part of the group the containment is different for you, because in general the group is a protective environment.

In yet another direct allusion to the Holocaust, Rachel wove her personal devastation with that of her grandmother who relocated to Israel after losing everyone and everything in the Holocaust:

We left like after the Holocaust, two suitcases, without knowing anyone, without knowing much about where we were going, without a friend on the other side, nothing, like that. And all the time I looked at the seat to see where Almog [her 1 ½ year old who was killed in a suicide attack] is. And with a lot of very, very difficult feelings about the State, very, very difficult. It can’t be that my grandmother went through the Holocaust, and my father and Amir’s [her husband] father served in the military and the country that was supposed to protect its most delicate flowers didn’t do its job. And I think that in each and every generation the Jew has to look inside and find the place that he thinks is most protected for him and his family. I think that’s our first obligation. “And you should guard your lives very, very much” [a quote from the Bible]. A state is OK, if it does its job to guard the Jew. And if the United States at the same time can guard me better, so there I'll go, for the sake of my children to come.

Rachel related with painful irony, how the expectation that the State would protect the Jewish people following the Holocaust, was completely dashed. She took off for the U.S. in order to protect not only herself, but her parenthood, her future children. It is interesting that in this passage Rachel spoke about the loss of her child, but not of her mother who was also killed in the terror attack. The emphasis here is on the parent’s responsibility to protect the child. In this case the biological parents and the Motherland, the State, failed to do so. Following the death of her daughter, Rachel redefined her primary parental obligation: “The responsibility to protect my children is mine, as a parent, and I will do it in my way.”

The appropriation of the deceased child as a national martyr

The national circumstances of the child’s death sometimes led to the parents’ perception that the child had been cast as a public sacrifice on the altar of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This changed the experience of parenting from the purely private-family sphere to the public arena, a change that seemed to be inevitable but was often unwelcome, as Edith, a mother whose 7-month-old daughter was killed in a terror attack, explained:

It was very difficult for me in the beginning that they mention her in all kinds of events, all kinds of memorials…Like each time I felt, like, I said,” so why are they talking about her like this…How can they talk about elevating her soul, I heard this at some memorial. What?! They didn’t ask me. I don’t know whose memorial this is. Who is touching her for me?

It was like I felt very private. I couldn’t, like that she was killed “for the sanctity of God.” She was killed! I don’t have a baby! Like this is my thing! What does it matter how?

Fran expressed similar sentiments, albeit less intensely and with an eye toward the impact of the loss on her living children. She made efforts to downplay the schema of Sharon as a national martyr, in order to return her daughter to her place in the family:

I all the time said that I feel that afterwards, that she was scattered for us to every corner, and became a public figure, and thousands came here to console the mourners, part of them we didn’t even know at all. I feel that I have to gather her back.

After the Shivah, when we went up to the cemetery, we returned home and sat the children down. We told them that the Shivah is finished and Sharon “the saint” we are setting aside and returning the Sharon that we knew home, that she also aggravated them and fought with them, like every child, this in addition to her being talented, and very straightforward and genuine, and this is the real Sharon and with her we will continue to live.

Fran wanted the memory of her deceased daughter to be “real,” rather than a national symbol of martyred sainthood. In this way she could also ensure that her living children’s positive and negative feelings toward their deceased sister were validated and thereby promoting a continuing sibling bond with her.

A more extreme position that completely negated the notion of the deceased child as a national sacrifice in the context of parental bereavement was expressed in Orly’s narrative:

It’s as if someone who died in an event like this, special, communal, it’s accepted to think of someone who was killed this way, that it was because he was a Jew, so it has some kind of virtue. So it’s customary to think about it as if it’s a good thing. But when I was in a group of women who lost their children in car accidents and illness, I felt that it’s the same thing, no differences. If he was killed in a stupid car accident or from just cancer or something, it doesn’t hurt less, it’s not less difficult. It’s all the same thing from the perspective of the loss. To lose a child is to lose a child.

By dismissing the significance of the national circumstances of the death in the parental bereavement process, Orly attempted to normalize the death of her child by incorporating it with other personal circumstances of child loss.

In contrast to Orly, other parents found that incorporating the child’s death in national or religious schemas, helped them to find consolation. Aaron related to his son’s death in a terror attack on a yeshiva (a school for Talmudic study) as a divine decree, and believed that his child was “chosen” by G-d.

You have to understand just, like, “they were killed to sanctify Your holy name” [a quote from the prayer book]. That means it was intentional, that is a very high level…G-d chose him…He was chosen.

By preserving his faith in G-d, Aaron believes that the ultimate responsibility for his children’s lives is not his own nor anyone else’s.

Over the years I came to all kinds of insights…A father of a soldier who was killed told me all the time, “They were in the tank. If they would have driven this way, and if they hadn’t gone out [to the battle], doing this and not doing that, if they///” So all of these questions, from a certain perspective we are exempt from them, because we have the basic belief that if it happened, then it is G-d’s will. And then the frustration, it prevents that at least, not the sorrow, but at least the frustration. That means, the sorrow is enough, you don’t have to add the frustration to it.

By assigning the ultimate responsibility for the death to G-d, Aaron was aware that he protected himself from obsessive rumination (See Neimeyer et al., 2021). It may be the circumstances of the death, a terror attack on a religious institution, that enabled Aaron to do so.for continuing as parents of the deceased child as well as the surviving and future children.

These examples illustrate how the national context of the loss interacts with the parents’ bereavement and the parenting of the surviving children. It seems that the construction of the deceased child as a hero or as a victim of the continuation of the Holocaust, gives meaning to the death, thus adding another dimension to their parenthood, that of taking an active part in publicly commemorating the deceased child. At the same time, they feel the need to preserve the continuing place of the iconic “national” child in the family, by maintaining family roles and rules as they were before the death.

The findings presented here indicate that the unique cultural context of Israeli parents whose children were killed in national circumstances have far-reaching implications

Discussion

Israeli society has been coping with the challenges of war and terror, including the death of soldiers and civilians for more than a century. This ongoing threat to survival has created unique socio-cultural perspectives and practices around familial and national bereavement (Lomsky-Feder & Ben-Ari, 2007; Rubin et al., 2012). The current research supports previous findings that cognitive schemas of parents of children who were killed in national circumstances are based on a broad national/historical context that includes collective intergenerational memories connected to Jewish and Israeli historical events with an emphasis on national tragedies (Mann-Shalvi, 2014). The findings demonstrate how these cultural schemas affect the parenthood of Israelis who have a child who was killed in national circumstances i.e., war or terror attack as they face the task of continuing the bond with the deceased child as well as parenting their surviving children.

Jung, developed the concept of the collective unconscious, as a body of archetypes, symbols, myths, and beliefs shared intergenerationally by individuals who are part of the same collective. According to Jung, every person is connected unconsciously to a collective memory of his/her culture’s history, a memory that influences his current experience and action. The collective memory is expressed in stories and metaphors (Von Franz, 1987). This notion expands our ability to understand the phenomenon of parenthood beyond the current time and place. For example, the archetype of the (over)protective Jewish mother who ensured her children’s survival after pogroms, is expressed in the current research by those parents who are focused on providing a secure and stable anchor for their surviving children, a safe place after the profound loss in the context of national (in)security. This coalesces with the overarching cultural myth of the Jewish people as eternally positioned on the threshold of annihilation (Mann-Shalvi, 2014).

Another Israeli cultural archetype is that of heroism in the struggle for Jewish independence in the face of insurmountable odds, which sometimes are overcome as in the Hanukah story and sometimes are not, as in the story of Massada and the Latrun battles in the 1948 War of Independence (Lissak, 1984; Rubin et al., 2012). This meaning construction of the loss helps most of the parents deal with their pain. It is interesting that the heroic motif was also adopted by some of the parents whose children were killed not as part of an active struggle, but in terror attacks. This coincides with Possick et al.s’ (2008) findings that parents of terror victims often describe their children’s murders as “dying for the sanctification of God’s name." In the current research, it is the parents of terror victims who evoke the Holocaust as a way of framing the death within a context that is today spoken about and processed publicly in Israeli society. The Holocaust deaths represent what for decades were considered passive victims, but have been transformed into highly personal and collective honored losses.

The perceived appropriation of the deceased child as a communal sacrifice in accordance with the Jewish and Israeli tradition, could be termed “hyper-enfranchisement” of the loss and grief. Doka (2008) developed the concept of disenfranchized grief as grief following a significant loss that is not socially validated, or publicly mourned. In such cases although the person or family is experiencing grief, there is a lack of social recognition of a right to grieve or claim social sympathy and support. Studies have demonstrated that circumstances of disenfranchized grief have a negative impact on post-loss adjustment (e.g. Neimeyer et al., 2014; Mahat-Shamir & Leichtentritt, 2016). The current study shows that hyper-enfranchisement can be perceived as either helpful or stressful. In either case, it has an impact on the experience and practice of parenting after the loss. Some parents perceive socio-cultural hyper-enfranchisement as a burden and they try to erect a barrier between themselves and the society. Their parenting is characterized by focusing inward on their surviving children, giving priority to the children’s feelings, well-being, and safety, incorporating them in the intimate familial process of creating continuing bonds with the deceased child, and ignoring the cultural message that the deceased child, by virtue of the circumstances of his/her death, is a national hero and/or a communal sacrifice. Others find that the national appropriation of the deceased child gives meaning to the death as part of the pantheon of Jewish and Israeli martyrs. In addition, it lessens their feelings of responsibility and guilt for not having adequately protected their children, since they understand that the victim was not personally targeted, but rather serves as a representative of a persecuted collective.

Finally, the findings in this study may be understood in light of Terror Management Theory (TMT) (Pyszczynski et al., 1997; Solomon et al., 1997). According to TMT, people use various psychological mechanisms to increase feelings of immortality and self-transcendence in order to reduce anxiety aroused by mortality salience, particularly when life is threatened. The death of a child, an object of continuity beyond one’s own life, significantly increases mortality salience (Harvell & Nisbett, 2016). Among the primary anxiety buffers in the face of mortality salience are enhancing self-esteem and strengthening affiliation with a shared culture and collective, as a symbolic extension of the finite self (Castano et al., 2002). The focus of the parents in this study on collective, historical cultural myths, whether or not they embrace or reject them, binds them to a narrative that transcends their own and their children’s (both living and deceased) lives. Parenthood in and of itself in this context may enhance or impede terror management. On the one hand, parental self-esteem can be increased by investing in surviving offspring as a biological and symbolic immortality mechanism (Yaakobi et al., 2014), in light of findings that suggest that parenthood confers rewards in terms of life meaning (Hansen, 2012). On the other hand, in a country that faces ongoing security threats, the increased mortality salience engendered by the death of a child in national circumstances raises anxiety around the safety of surviving children (see Zanbar et al., 2023)

In conclusion, distant and recent collective history has an impact on the parenting experience and practices of parents whose children were killed in national circumstances. The conscious and unconscious collective memory as well as the socially constructed hyper-enfranchisement of the loss, helps parents to incorporate the parental trauma into existing socio-cultural schemas thus promoting personal meaning construction, a vital component in adjustment and positive change following loss (Neimeyer et al., 2014). At the same time, the internalization of the cultural archetypes can increase mortality salience that leads to stifling existential anxiety, over-focusing on protecting the surviving children and/or preserving parental and familial patterns even when they are not congruent with post-lost reality and experience. Essentially these cultural archetypes and the challenges they present are part of the collective context of daily life in Israeli society and have an impact all parents, but they are intensified exponentially in cases of the death of a child in national circumstances.

Study limitations and directions for further research

Israeli parents who are bereaved in national circumstances are a privileged group in Israel. They receive significant social and financial support, including unlimited psychotherapy. All of the participants are “veterans” of therapy aimed at processing the loss, and thus their responses may not have been spontaneous. Also, it is possible that because of their status, some of the research participants tended to respond in socially desirable ways. Finally, much of the recruitment of the sample was accomplished via the snowball technique in which participants recommend others in the social network. This may have limited the variation in the sample.

While this study was conducted within a very particular cultural context, we believe the ideas of the collective unconscious, hyper-enfranchised grief, and cultural mortality salience can be applied in other countries and cultures where parents lose children in military conflicts and terror attacks on civilians. There may be a limitation in the transferability of the findings since in Israel parents whose children will killed in national circumstances are at the very top of the hierarchy of grief and as such receive a great deal of collective recognition as well as direct financial support and treatment services by the government. This is not always the case in other countries. It is important to develop research focused on questions about how other kinds of widely circulating cultural stories shape personal narratives in other contexts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aviva Weinberger

Aviva Weinberger, PhD, is a lecturer at the School of Social Work, Ariel University, Israel. She is a licensed family therapist and supervisor. She treats families traumatized by terrorism and has developed community interventions related to collective stress. Her doctoral dissertation dealt with the parenting experience following the loss of a child in a terror attack or war.

Chaya Possick

Chaya Possick, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the Master degree program at the School of Social Work, Ariel University, Israel. She is a licensed family therapist and supervisor and has developed trauma-informed family interventions. Her research interests include coping with long-term security threats, family bereavement as a result of terror attacks, and qualitative research methods.