The Media Line: When Sons Go to War, Who Takes Care of Their Mothers? 

When Sons Go to War, Who Takes Care of Their Mothers? 

Mothers of combat soldiers are not formally recognized by the state as a group requiring support, leaving many with few resources to help them cope with the psychological effects of having a child repeatedly sent into combat 

By Maayan Hoffman / The Media Line

M. is the mother of three sons. On October 7, her eldest, a commando in one of the army’s elite units, was at the Nova music festival. Her middle son was a fighter stationed on the southern border. For hours, she struggled to understand what was happening with her boys, barely hearing from them as the day went by. Eventually, overwhelmed by the uncertainty, she got drunk.

That night, her eldest son came home. He refused to talk about what had happened or what he had seen. Instead, he showered and got ready for bed. By the time he was ready to put on his pajamas, he received a call from his commander and left to join his unit. He did not tell anyone there that he had been at the Nova festival. 

The next time M. saw him properly was six months later. For six months, both of her sons were fighting in Gaza. 

Her oldest son has spent more than 500 days in reserve duty since the October 7 massacre, serving in Gaza, Lebanon, and Judea and Samaria. Her middle son was only recently released from the army and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Almost everyone in his unit, she said, is either dead, severely injured, or suffering from mental illness. Her third son has now enlisted in a combat unit as well. 

1. described how she has spent much of the past nearly three years “burying myself at work,” then coming home and sitting for hours on the living room couch doing nothing. The family has a dog and a cat, and they would come and sit beside her. In part, she said, caring for them kept her sane. So did her husband.

After that first night, she did not drink again, and she decided not to take medication. Instead, she got a tattoo, both to feel the pain and to have something meaningful to look at. 

“I haven’t slept properly since October 7,” M. told The Media Line. “When they are away, in Gaza or Lebanon, whenever someone would open the gate leading to the house, and I could hear it, I would be dying inside. I’m expecting bad news. Today, I am still afraid. Today, when my sons go into the reserves, I know no news is good news, and there are times I won’t hear from him for a week or 10 days.” 

She said that her son’s PTSD also puts her on edge. There are so many young men, she said, who have taken their own lives as a result of what they saw during the war. 

1. is a lawyer, and before October 7, she used to turn off her phone when she went into court. Now, the judge knows that she leaves it on, face up on the table, because her sons are in the army. At night, she sleeps with it beside her head.

Mothers like M. are the focus of a study published last month in the journal Symbolic Interaction. Titled “When Time Stands Still: The Destructive Experience of Ambiguous Loss among Mothers of Combat Soldiers,” the study examines what happens to mothers psychologically and emotionally when their sons are repeatedly sent into combat, and the threat of loss is constantly present. 

The research was conducted by Shirly Bar-Lev, head of the Dror (Imri) Aloni Center for Health Informatics and a senior lecturer in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at Ruppin Academic Center; Galit Itzhaki Draizin, a psychotherapist, profiler, and founder of the Israeli Center for Ambiguous Loss (WELL AL); and Agamit Gelb, a research fellow at Ruppin Academic Center and founder of Inner Forces, a social organization dedicated to strengthening the resilience of service members’ families in Israel. 

Gelb said the team began the study in January 2025 because they wanted to better understand what mothers experience when their children are in combat and how the war was affecting their lives. Anecdotally, the researchers had already seen signs that these mothers’ lives were changing dramatically. The study aimed to examine those experiences more systematically. 

The research included interviews with 25 mothers of combat soldiers, conscripts, and reservists. Participants were recruited through Facebook and WhatsApp groups, with the invitation to participate remaining open for six months. Each mother took part in a semi-structured interview lasting between one and two hours. 

Through those interviews, the researchers found that having a child in combat could fundamentally change a mother’s relationship with time, space, and even speech. Normal routines were put on hold, days became organized around waiting for news, and mothers’ sense of physical and emotional security narrowed as long as their children remained in danger. 

The researchers also examined how the mothers restricted what they allowed themselves to say and express. Some held back their fears or avoided certain conversations as they tried to remain strong for their children and fulfill what they believed was expected of them as mothers of soldiers. 

This experience is described by researchers as “ambiguous loss,” a form of loss in which a loved one is physically absent or psychologically changed but has not been definitively lost. For these mothers, their sons were still alive, but while they were in combat, the possibility of losing them was ever-present. 

“On the outside, externally, it may look like they were still working or doing everything they needed to at home, but internally, many mothers experienced feeling that time had stopped,” Gelb told The Media Line. “It really impacted their whole lives.” 

Gelb conducted many of the interviews herself. She said that sometimes, simply asking the first question was enough to make the women cry. 

“They said that no one asked them about their feelings until now, that they had tried to be so strong, but all of the emotions were stored inside,” Gelb said. “It was heartbreaking.” 

Gelb described some of the stories as uncanny. Some mothers dreamed at night about their sons’ funerals. Others put signs on their doors asking people not to knock, but to call first, because they feared that a knock could mean soldiers had arrived to tell them their son had been killed. 

For many mothers, the researchers found, life became an ongoing cycle of waiting. They repeatedly checked their phones, prayed, imagined what might be happening, and waited for their sons to return, only to begin the process again when they went back to the army. Everyday activities, such as doing laundry, preparing food, or washing dishes, continued, but the mothers often felt as though their lives had stopped moving forward. 

The researchers describe this as a contraction in which the normal connection between the past, present, and future begins to break down. For some mothers, time seems to stand still. Others become increasingly isolated from their broader social circles. The contraction can also affect how they communicate, with mothers consciously or unconsciously avoiding certain topics, words, or emotions while their sons are away. 

Throughout the paper, the researchers present individual cases illustrating these experiences. One mother, Nirit, described a significant decline in her daily functioning. She spent hours reading, stopped leaving the house, and became “pretty closed off in my own world.” 

Nirit said she considered taking a sedative for her anxiety but instead would sit and read or try to complete basic chores, such as doing the dishes or laundry. 

“I make little task lists for myself,” she said in her interview for the research. “Otherwise, I don’t think even those things would happen.” 

Yet mothers of combat soldiers are not formally recognized by the state as a group requiring support, leaving many with few resources to help them cope with the psychological effects of having a child repeatedly sent into combat. Gelb’s organization, Active Inner Forces, is a community initiative that provides mental health and resilience support for parents of combat soldiers during extended periods of war. 

“The state is not helping you in any way,” M. told The Media Line. “The army is not helping you in any way.” 

She said that if her son with PTSD needs something, she can afford to help him. But she often thinks about mothers who do not have the financial resources to give their children what they need while also struggling with their own sense of helplessness. M. said she threw herself into work, but she thinks about mothers who cannot get out of bed in the morning while their sons are at war and may ultimately lose their jobs. 

“What about those who don’t have someone to talk to?” M. asked. “Everybody is talking about the wives, the girlfriends. What about the parents? We have to be there for our kids, and if we’re not there for ourselves, we definitely won’t be able to be there for our kids.” 

As a result of the study, Active Inner Forces developed additional resilience and support programs for both mothers and fathers of combat soldiers. But Gelb said the larger goal is to ensure that these parents and their experiences are recognized. 

“We want to make sure that mothers and fathers of combat soldiers will actually get acknowledged, that they are really suffering, that they have a real trauma, and that they need to get the kind of support that is right for them,” Gelb told The Media Line. 

This report is part of Traumatech, a series developed and created by Maayan Hoffman and debuting on The Media Line. The series explores how Israel is building and exporting breakthrough mental health technologies that can transform life at home and bring hope to communities worldwide.