How to disable a container and its children in Swing

I cannot figure out a way to disable a container AND its children in Swing. Is Swing really missing this basic feature?

If I do setEnabled(false) on a container, its children are still enabled.

My GUI structure is pretty complex, and doing a traversion of all elements below the container is not an option. Neither is a GlassPane on top of the container (the container is not the entire window).