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Social Psychology and Society
2025. Vol. 16, no. 4, 127–147
doi:10.17759/sps.2025160408
ISSN: 2221-1527 / 2311-7052 (online)

Family as a resource for overcoming difficult life situations in children affected by hostilities

 
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Abstract

Context and relevance. Children who have suffered to some extent as a result of hostilities, including those living in the territories directly affected by hostilities, experience the psychological consequences, such as maladjustment, manifestations of post-traumatic stress disorder, depletion of psychological resources necessary to survive and overcome these hard life situations. Family, parents and other important adults play a crucial role in child’s overcoming such consequences.
Objective. To clarify the role of family and parental individual resilience in their children coping with hard life situations and traumatic experiences related to hostilities.
Hypothesis. Family resilience and parental individual resilience manifested themselves as psychological resources of children, contributing to the successful overcoming difficult life situations associated with hostilities.
Methods and materials. The study involved parents (legal representatives) of children of preschool and primary school age from six regions of the Russian Federation, to varying degrees affected by hostilities. The data of the survey of parents of 1671 preschool-age children aged from 1 to 8 years (М = 5,4, St.Dev. = 1,5; 51,7% boys), and data from a survey of parents of 3702 primary school children of 1-4 grades aged from 6 to 12 years (M = 8,9, St.Dev. = 1,2; 51,0% boys). The following psychodiagnostics were used: to inventory the traumatic experience of children: 1) a list of psychotraumatic events related to hostilities aimed to assess the children experience; 2) Screening technique for assessing the condition of children who survived the consequences of hostilities (Ulyanina et al., 2025); 3) Parental questionnaire for the assessment of traumatic experiences of children (Tarabrina, 2001), to assess the psychological resources of the family and parents; 4) Family resilience assessment Scale (FRAS-RII) (Gusarova et al., 2024), Brief resilience scale (BRS) (Smith et al., 2016), Russian version of Markova et al., 2022.
Results. 1) According to parental estimations; prevalence of hard life situations caused by traumatic experience associated with hostilities, is higher in children of primary school age compared to preschool children; 2) traumatic experiences of children and adult family members are positively connected with signs of maladjustment and PTSD and negatively – with the child’s own psychological resource in both age groups; negative interconnections of traumatic experience with family resilience and parent’s individual resilience are found only for primary school children; 3) parent’s individual resilience and the family resilience along with the child’s psychological resources showed negative correlations with signs of maladjustment and PTSD contributing to the child’s overcoming the difficult life situations associated with hostilities.
Conclusions. The results of the study highlight the role of family in children’s overcoming the negative psychological consequences of traumatic experiences associated with hostilities Family resilience and parent’s individual resilience manifested themselves as one of the key psychological resources protecting children of preschool and primary school age from negative psychological consequences of traumatic experiences.

General Information

Keywords: family, parents (legal representatives), child, hostilities, overcoming, hard life situations, maladjustment, traumatic experience, signs of PTSD, psychological resources, family resilience, individual resilience

Journal rubric: Empirical Research

Article type: scientific article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/sps.2025160408

Funding. The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project number 25-28-01370, https://rscf.ru/project/25-28-01370/.

Received 23.09.2025

Revised 31.10.2025

Accepted

Published

For citation: Ulyanina, O.A., Yurchuk, O.L., Aleksandrova, L.A., Nikiforova, E.A., Faizullina, K.A. (2025). Family as a resource for overcoming difficult life situations in children affected by hostilities. Social Psychology and Society, 16(4), 127–147. (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.17759/sps.2025160408

© Ulyanina O.A., Yurchuk O.L., Aleksandrova L.A., Nikiforova E.A., Faizullina K.A., 2025

License: CC BY-NC 4.0

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Information About the Authors

Olga A. Ulyanina, Doctor of Psychology, Associate Professor, Head of the Federal Coordination Center for Provision the Development of Psychological and Pedagogical Assistance in the Education System of the Russian Federation, Moscow State University of Psychology & Education, Corresponding member of the RAE, Chief Researcher of the Research Center, Academy of Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia; Professor of Faculty of Social Sciences, School of Psychology at National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, Moscow, Russian Federation, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9300-4825, e-mail: ulyaninaoa@mgppu.ru

Olga L. Yurchuk, Candidate of Science (Psychology), Head of the Department of Scientific and Methodological Support, Federal Coordination Center for Provision the Development of Psychological and Pedagogical Assistance in the Education System of the Russian Federation, Moscow State University of psychology and education, Moscow, Russian Federation, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3221-2945, e-mail: yurchukol@mgppu.ru

Lada A. Aleksandrova, Candidate of Science (Psychology), Leading Analyst of the Federal Coordination Center for Provision the Development of Psychological and Pedagogical Assistance in the Education System of the Russian Federation, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology & Pedagogy of Distance Learning, Moscow State University of psychology and education, Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, School of Psychology at National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, Moscow, Russian Federation, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3539-8058, e-mail: ladaleksandrova@mail.ru

Ekaterina A. Nikiforova, Head of the Department of Scientific and Methodological Support at the Federal Coordination Center for the Provision of Psychological Services in the Education System of the Russian Federation, Moscow State University of psychology and education, Moscow, Russian Federation, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0488-6497, e-mail: k.Nikiforova.2014@yandex.ru

Kseniya A. Faizullina, Candidate of Science (Education), Head of the Expert and Analytical Department, Federal Coordination Center for the Provision the Development of Psychological and Pedagogical Assistance in the Education System of the Russian Federation, Moscow State University of Psychology & Education, Moscow, Russian Federation, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2985-9332, e-mail: fajzullinaka@mgppu.ru

Contribution of the authors

Olga A. Ulyanina — research ideas; annotation, writing and design of the manuscript; research planning; monitoring of the research.

Olga L. Yurchuk — writing and registration of the manuscript; monitoring over the research.

Lada A. Aleksandrova — application of statistical, mathematical or other methods for data analysis; data collection and analysis; visualization of research results.

Ekaterina A. Nikiforova — annotation, writing and design of the manuscript; data collection and analysis.

Kseniya A. Fayzullina — annotation, writing and design of the manuscript; data collection and analysis.

All authors participated in the discussion of the results and approved the final text of the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethics statement

All participants were informed about their participation in the study, familiarized with the goals, objectives and methods of the study, and expressed their voluntary informed consent to participate in the study.

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