“They learned fear before letters”: Palestinian mothers’ narratives of childhood in households affected by addiction

Parental substance use is widely recognized as a source of household instability with adverse consequences for children, yet limited research has examined how such harm is lived and interpreted within contexts of prolonged structural constraint. This qualitative study explores Palestinian mothers' narratives of childhood in households affected by paternal substance use in the occupied West Bank. Drawing on 30 first-person narratives shared on digital platforms, the analysis examines how fear, violence, emotional neglect, and stigma shape children's everyday lives over time. Using thematic analysis, five interrelated themes were identified: constant fear and unpredictability, exposure to violence and the normalization of harm, emotional neglect and premature responsibility, stigma and social isolation, and long-term psychological consequences coupled with fear of repetition. Mothers' accounts reveal childhood fear as anticipatory and cumulative, embedded in daily routines rather than confined to discrete events. The findings show how this behavior-related harm is intensified by political, economic, and social pressures that constrain protection and silence disclosure. By centering mothers as moral witnesses, the study reframes parental behavior as a sustained family condition that restructures childhood, identity formation, and future orientation.