How a Mother’s Trauma Reaches Her Child’s Mind: New Evidence from Syrian Refugee Families

Among the more than 123 million people forcibly displaced worldwide by the end of 2024, children make up roughly 41 percent of the refugee population. For these families, war does not end when the border is crossed. It persists in memories, in nightmares, in the daily arithmetic of poverty and uncertainty, and, according to a new study, in the invisible channels of the parent–child relationship. Research published in BMC Psychology by Metin Çınaroğlu of İstanbul Nişantaşı University examined 200 Syrian refugee mother–child dyads living in Mardin, Türkiye, and found that a mother’s posttraumatic stress symptoms appear to reach her child’s emotional life and even her child’s executive functioning through one specific mechanism: parenting stress.

The study focused on children aged 6 to 11 years, a developmental window in which emotional regulation, selective attention, inhibitory control, and attachment representations are maturing rapidly. Mothers completed the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5, the Parenting Stress Index–Short Form, the Beck Depression Inventory-II, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 scale, and rated their children’s emotional and behavioral problems on the Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 6–18. Children, meanwhile, sat down with researchers and completed the Stroop Color–Word Test, a classic neuropsychological task in which naming the ink color of a conflicting color word requires suppressing an automatic response. Higher Stroop interference scores reflect poorer inhibitory control and selective attention.

The descriptive findings alone are striking. The mothers’ mean PCL-5 score was 42.63, and 40 percent scored above the probable PTSD threshold suggested by Turkish validation work. Depressive symptoms fell in the moderate range on average, and 71 percent of mothers scored at or above the Turkish cut-off for elevated anxiety. Nearly half the mothers reported war-related bereavement. Their children’s mean CBCL Total Problems T-score of 61.82 placed many youngsters in the borderline or clinical range, with internalizing difficulties such as fear, withdrawal, and somatic complaints more frequent than externalizing ones.

Correlational analyses revealed a dense web of associations. Maternal PTSD symptoms correlated with parenting stress at r = 0.56 and with child Total Problems at r = 0.44. Parenting stress itself showed the strongest link to child Total Problems of any variable in the study, r = 0.62, and was also associated with Stroop interference, r = 0.34. Crucially, the mediation models controlled for maternal depression, maternal anxiety, child age, and child gender, meaning that maternal PTSD symptoms retained a distinct association with parenting stress even after accounting for these related forms of distress.

The statistical heart of the paper lies in two bootstrapped mediation models estimated with 5,000 resamples. In the first, parenting stress significantly mediated the association between maternal PTSD symptoms and child CBCL Total Problems, with an indirect effect of 0.12, 95 percent confidence interval [0.058, 0.196]. The direct effect of maternal PTSD on child problems became non-significant once parenting stress entered the model, a pattern consistent with full mediation. Secondary analyses confirmed significant indirect pathways for both internalizing symptoms, indirect effect 0.104, and externalizing symptoms, indirect effect 0.093, suggesting that the relational pathway is not confined to a single symptom domain.

The second model extended the finding into cognition. Parenting stress significantly predicted Stroop interference after adjustment for covariates, and the bootstrapped indirect effect of maternal PTSD symptoms on Stroop interference through parenting stress was 0.052, 95 percent confidence interval [0.012, 0.103]. Child age was a strong predictor, with older children showing lower interference costs, as expected from normative developmental maturation of inhibitory control. Yet parenting stress remained associated with Stroop performance even after controlling for age, hinting that chronic family stress contributes to individual differences in executive functioning beyond ordinary maturation. The authors caution that refugee children’s cognitive performance also reflects disrupted schooling, interrupted language development, and multilingual adaptation, so the pathway should be interpreted within this broader developmental context.

What elevates the study beyond statistics is its embedded qualitative component. Thirty purposefully selected dyads, chosen to represent both high-risk and relatively resilient profiles, participated in semi-structured interviews, with younger children completing family drawings, story-completion tasks, and emotion-card prompts. Thematic analysis identified seven major themes, and attachment and separation–reunion narratives were the most frequently coded. Mothers described trauma memories reactivated by children’s crying or questions about Syria, emotional exhaustion, irritability, guilt, and the slide into harshness or silent withdrawal when overwhelmed. Children’s drawings showed omitted family figures, symbolic distance, and clinging proximity to the mother; their stories revealed fear of abandonment, reassurance-seeking, or avoidant silence.

The convergence between the quantitative and qualitative strands is the study’s central contribution. The mediation models demonstrate that the maternal PTSD–parenting stress–child outcome pathway is statistically meaningful; the interviews show that it is relational, embodied, and contextual. Parenting stress was not merely a score on a scale but appeared in mothers’ accounts of being unable to remain calm, of struggling to set consistent limits, of feeling that their child was difficult to soothe. Sensitivity analyses using the PSI-SF subscales found that the Difficult Child subscale carried the strongest indirect effect for child behavioral problems, followed by Parent–Child Dysfunctional Interaction and Parental Distress, and the main findings remained robust after additional adjustment for years in Türkiye, maternal education, household income, and war-related bereavement.

Importantly, the qualitative data also identified protective factors. Maternal warmth, consistent routines, school attendance, supportive teachers, religious coping, extended family support, peer relationships, and future-oriented hope characterized the more resilient dyads. Children with lower CBCL scores and better Stroop performance were more often described as having predictable routines and positive school experiences. This suggests that intergenerational trauma transmission is not inevitable; even when maternal PTSD symptoms are elevated, relational warmth and structured environments may buffer children against psychological and cognitive difficulties.

The clinical implications are considerable. Child mental health interventions for refugee families, the author argues, should assess caregiver trauma symptoms rather than treating children in isolation, and should simultaneously strengthen parenting capacity, emotional availability, and stress regulation within the mother–child relationship. School-based support matters too: concentration problems in refugee children may reflect trauma-related family stress rather than lack of motivation. The study’s limitations are acknowledged candidly. The cross-sectional design precludes causal inference, child symptoms were reported solely by mothers, raising shared-method bias concerns, PTSD was measured by screening questionnaire rather than clinical interview, and fathers were not included. Longitudinal and intervention research is needed to clarify directionality and test whether trauma-informed parenting programs combined with maternal mental health treatment can interrupt the pathway. Still, for the millions of refugee families navigating displacement, the message is clear: supporting children means supporting the stressed, trauma-carrying adults who raise them, and repairing the relational environment in which children recover, regulate, learn, and grow.

Subject of Research: Psychology

Article Title: Maternal posttraumatic stress symptoms, parenting stress, and child psychological and cognitive outcomes among Syrian refugee mother–child dyads in Türkiye: a mixed-methods study

Article References: Çınaroğlu, M. (2026). Maternal posttraumatic stress symptoms, parenting stress, and child psychological and cognitive outcomes among Syrian refugee mother–child dyads in Türkiye: a mixed-methods study. BMC Psychology, 14(1), Article 1358. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05202-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05202-0

Keywords: refugee mental health, PTSD, parenting stress, child development, executive function, Syrian refugees, intergenerational trauma, BMC Psychology, Maternal, posttraumatic, stress, symptoms