Table 1 - uploaded by Mary Dellmann-Jenkins
Content may be subject to copyright.
Age, Gender, and Country of Participants
Source publication
There is increased interest by parents in communicating with their children about political violence. However, limited attention in the scholarly literature has focused on parent—child communication about war and terrorism. In response, the purpose of this study is to assess, within their respective ecological contexts, American and Northern Irish...
Context in source publication
Similar publications
Parenting behaviors are considered to be influenced by certain stressors, deriving from situational, contextual, or parental or child domains. The main goal of this study was to examine the interplay of children’s age, number of children and gender with parenting stress level among Kosovar mothers. The Parenting Stress Scale (PSS; Berry & Jones, 19...
Citations
... In particular, how best to communicate with preschool children about the violence and upheaval of the war is problematic for many parents. O'Malley et al. (2007) reported that it is common for parents to choose the tactic of silence and avoid talking to their children about war events. However, children may overhear conversations among people around them who are concerned about the war; they may be aware of radio and television news reports, and find them shocking and frightening. ...
... In our study, 44.0% of the parents responded that they do not talk about the war with their preschool-age child, and those parents also tended not to allow us to communicate with their children about the war. An international study, conducted in the United States and Northern Ireland, that assessed how children talk to their parents about war found that "children ages 7 to 11 are more likely than younger children to report talking to their parents about war, and they address more topics than do the younger children in their reports of what their parents said about war" (O'Malley et al., 2007(O'Malley et al., , p. 1639. The results of our study revealed that a considerable proportion of adults try to hide the war's painful themes from their children, and to protect them from discussions about the war's events and any resulting changes in daily life. ...
Lithuanian society supports Ukraine in its war with Russia. The two countries, Lithuania and Russia (the aggressor in the conflict) share a common border in the southwest of Lithuania, and Lithuanians are aware of the threat of an extended war. However, there is little information about how to discuss the events of the ongoing war with children. The aim of our study, which was conducted during the first months of the war, was to investigate the ways that parents talked about the war with their kindergarten-age children, together with their views on the impact of the war on their children’s emotions, behavior, and psychosomatic health. Parents in 5 kindergartens filled out an anonymous 15-item questionnaire, developed by the authors, through which we collected general data about each respondent and their child, their ways of communicating with the child about war events, and the impact of the war events on the parent and on the child’s emotions, moods, and behavior. Of the 116 parents who filled in the questionnaire, 93 (80.2%) responded that they had not talked about war with their children prior to Russia’s invasion, 44.0% of parents responded that they do not talk about the war in Ukraine with their child, and 57.8% parents indicated that their child had asked them about the war. In regard to the war’s effects on children, significant changes were reported in their behavior, play, and drawing. It is crucial to study the effects the recent war has had on children and find appropriate ways in which parents and educational institutions can contribute to their support. Preschoolers need to be informed and involved in the community life in age-appropriate ways. Drawing and play could be used to create relevant opportunities to talk in age-appropriate ways with preschool children about the ongoing war, to try to understand their perceptions, fears, and imaginings.
... The impact was mostly evident in children's socio-emotional development, and the effect was stronger as the conflict lasted longer. O'Malley et al. (2007) explained that preschool children are liable to imagine themselves in the violent situations to which they are exposed, resulting in ongoing emotional stress. ...
... Parents also tend to underestimate the posttraumatic stress of political conflicts on their children, and their initial response to the effects of trauma on their children may be denial (Liu, 2017). In addition, O'Malley et al. (2007) pointed out that parents fear talking with young children about wars and conflict because they believe that children are not able to understand these discussions. Segall et al. (2015) investigated parents' usage of ethnic categorization of Arabs and Jews during a SBR activity with their 5-year-old children and its relation to the children's beliefs. ...
... These results are in line with previous studies in Israel that showed that parents chose silence as a survival and coping mechanism with the conflict situation (e.g., Shamai, 2001;Slone et al., 2017). Similarly, following military interventions in Iraq and terrorist attacks targeting Britain and the United States, O'Malley et al. (2007) reported that parents' conversations about war with young children (3-6 years-old) were more scarce than with older children (7-11 years-old). Studies seem to indicate that parents' attempts to protect their children from information about violent events in contexts of conflict, war and terrorism are natural and universal (e.g., Masten & Narayan, 2012). ...
The Israeli‐Palestinian conflict has deleterious effects on children. Our research observed mothers' conversations with their 5‐7‐year‐old children about the conflict during shared book reading (SBR) of a fiction book, indirectly depicting the conflict. Using a mixed‐methods study, we compared the SBR of secular and religious Israeli Jewish mothers. We videotaped the SBR interactions and interviewed the mothers about the nature of their SBR conversations with their child and their perceptions of political socialization of children. The main findings showed that despite their tendency to perceive the conflict differently, secular and religious mothers shared the book similarly. Most of them preferred to talk about the conflict as little as possible with their child but appreciated the opportunity that the book provided them to discuss it in an age appropriate manner. Our discussion focuses on the potential of SBR to assist parents in explaining the conflict to young children.
... Yet, to the best of our knowledge, there are surprisingly few studies that address communications between parents and young children about political violence in Israel, or elsewhere (cf. O'Malley et al., 2007). ...
... The relatively young age of many of the children meant that the women shared the desire to shield them from what was deemed harmful knowledge and painful feelings. This finding fits those revealed by a study of American and Northern Irish children's (aged 3-6 and 7-11) reported conversations with their parents about war and political violence which found that age was a stronger predictor than gender and country in determining whether or not children discuss war with their parents (O'Malley et al., 2007). Yet, the mothers were well aware (sometimes taken aback, sometimes proud) that even their very young children were not only exposed to, but could also formulate a stand regarding the military conflict. ...
The article examines how Israeli Palestinian and Jewish middle-class mothers mediate military conflict to young children, through silence and talk. This mediation is underpinned by dissonance between the mandate to protect children from the adult world and to ready them for it, and between the idea of children as individuals and conflict as collective engagement. The article explores the discourses and practices used for managing this twofold dissonance, including differences in the privilege of silence for Palestinian and Jewish mothers.
... Parents' strategies include conversations about the events of the war, discussions about the child's feelings about the war, parents' expression of their own values or positions on the war to their child, and justifying the war by explaining how it may benefit the country or the world over time (e.g., Myers-Walls et al., 1993). In cases of intractable conflict, there is evidence that children as young as 3 years of age were capable of discussing conflict with parents, with references being made to war activities, negative consequences of war, weapons, soldiers, and even qualitative evaluations of war (e.g., for Ireland, see O'Malley, Blankemeyer, Walker, & Dellmann-Jenkins, 2007; for Israel, see Bar-Tal & Teichman, 2005). The possible effects of the epistemic authority of parents in intractable conflicts are reflected in the results of meta-analyses revealing strong correlations between parents' and children's views regarding intergroup attitudes (e.g., Degner & Dalege, 2013). ...
This article examines the political socialization of young children who live under conditions of intractable conflict. We present four premises: First, we argue that, within the context of intractable conflict, political socialization begins earlier and faster than previously suspected, and is evident among young children. Second, we propose that the agents of political socialization impart narratives of the ethos of conflict and of collective memory in young children that support continuation of the conflict. Third, we maintain that the great majority of the young children form systematic and coherent systems of beliefs, attitudes, and emotions that support the conflict as a result of political socialization and direct exposure to conflict. Finally, we suggest that the conflict-related contents absorbed by children have lasting effects on the solidification of children’s later socio-psychological repertoire. Our arguments highlight the serious consequences of political socialization processes on very young children in societies involved in intractable conflict.
... Parents' strategies include conversations about the events of the war, discussions about the child's feelings about the war, parents' expression of their own values or positions on the war to their child, and justifying the war by explaining how it may benefit the country or the world over time (e.g., Myers-Walls et al., 1993). In cases of intractable conflict, there is evidence that children as young as three were capable of discussing conflict with parents, with references being made to war activities, negative consequences of war, weapons, soldiers, and even qualitative evaluations of war (e.g., for Ireland see O'Malley, Blankemeyer, Walker, & Dellmann-Jenkins, 2007; for Israel see Bar-Tal & Teichman, 2005). The possible effects of the epistemic authority of parents in intractable conflicts are reflected in the results of metaanalyses revealing strong correlations between parents' and children's views regarding intergroup attitudes (e.g., Degner & Dalege, 2013). ...
This article examines the political socialization of young children who live under conditions of intractable conflict. We present four
premises: First, we argue that, within the context of intractable conflict, political socialization begins earlier and faster than
previously suspected, and is evident among young children. Second, we propose that the agents of political socialization impart
narratives of the ethos of conflict and of collective memory in young children that support continuation of the conflict. Third, we
maintain that the great majority of the young children form systematic and coherent systems of beliefs, attitudes, and emotions that
support the conflict as a result of political socialization and direct exposure to conflict. Finally, we suggest that the conflict-related
contents absorbed by children have lasting effects on the solidification of children’s later socio-psychological repertoire. Our
arguments highlight the serious consequences of political socialization processes on very young children in societies involved in
intractable conflict.
... Children in Lebanon living in areas exposed to, or consuming media reports about, Mideast conflicts listed varied occupations but these often coincided with a desire to help others. Whereas they neither exhibited signs of anxiety and other negative outcomes nor mentioned any family Downloaded by [Purdue University] at 15:35 18 March 2015 discussions about political conflict (as might be expected, see O'Malley, Blankemeyer, Walker, & Dellmann-Jenkins, 2007), it was striking how often and to what extent Lebanese children discussed their desire to help Lebanese people in their careers. They talked about becoming soldiers to fight "the bad guys" and to protect the Lebanese people but a military career was one of many that would involve protecting, helping, and restoring communities. ...
Families' communication with young children about work and careers has not been the focus of much systematic investigation. We contribute to family communication scholarship both by providing an overview of career socialization research involving children, and by presenting findings from a multinational (China, Lebanon, Belgium, and the United States) investigation of 800 children's discursive, cultural, and material socialization. Using a grounded interpretive approach and the theoretical lenses of intersectionalities and socialization messages, we found that children engaged in four communicative processes that intersected across cultural differences: (a) acting as designers of their own careers; (b) extracting cues to make sense of careers; (c) articulating meaningfulness based on local contexts, and (d) participating in families' concerted cultivation and/or natural growth practices.
... This developmental difference accounted for the large percentage (43 percent) of children across both studies who had no awareness of the war; nearly 84 percent of those who did not know about the war were age 8 or younger. This lack of awareness among younger children is conceivably the result of parents being less likely to discuss war with their younger children (O'Malley et al., 2007) and younger children being less likely than older children to have seen war coverage on television. This suggests that children who do not yet access common sources of political information are at an early point of developing their political awareness. ...
This research incorporated an ecological approach to examine American and Northern Irish children's understanding of the 2003 war in Iraq and the sources of information from which they acquired that understanding. Responses to interviews indicated that the children from the two countries had some common conceptions of and sources of information about the war. However, American and Northern Irish children also differed on several items, suggesting that the macrosystem (e.g. sociopolitical context) plays an important role in children's conceptions of the war. Additionally, the exosystem (media) also played an integral role, as did the microsystem (parents), although to a lesser extent. (Contains 1 table.)
This scoping review emphasizes the importance of understanding children's cognitive and socio-emotional capacities in navigating discussions about war and peace. Tailoring communication strategies to these developmental nuances enables meaningful dialogues between adults and children, fostering empathy and conflict resolution skills. Additionally, pedagogical interventions highlighted in the review aim to nurture peacebuilding skills among children, empowering them to contribute positively to their communities. In conclusion, by considering children's developmental needs and implementing effective communication and educational strategies, adults can play a crucial role in cultivating peaceful mindsets and behaviors in future generations.
Konflikty zbrojne na całym świecie to temat, który nieustannie przyciąga uwagę społeczeństwa i mediów. Tematem rzadziej omawianym jest perspektywa dzieci, które są potencjalnymi odbiorcami komunikatów o konfliktach. Jakie mogą być skutki psychologiczne, jak konflikty oddziałują na najmłodszych? Artykuł ma charakter przeglądowy. Jego celem jest zwrócenie uwagi na psychologiczną perspektywę obrazu konfliktów/wojen w oczach dzieci w wieku przedszkolnym oraz szkolnym niedoświadczających bezpośrednio skutków konfliktów, jak również poszukiwanie implikacji praktycznych, czyli omówienie, jak można im pomóc w radzeniu sobie z tym trudnym tematem.
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Human Rights Education (HRE) impacts the school environment, as well as the students and teachers themselves. What does teaching HRE in schools help to achieve? Empirical evidence shows that in primary and secondary schools HRE can help to clarify a child’s rights and responsibilities to participate in society, and HRE in school can develop the capacity of young people to “understand, clarify and appreciate similarities and differences among cultures. Not to judge, but to provide a framework for comparisons and assessments of the human condition” (Reardon, Human rights as education for peace. In: Andreopoulos GJ, Claude RP (eds) Human rights education for the twenty-first century. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp. 21–34, 1997, p. 27). Schools can help to create a safe space where human rights are known and understood, not as a heavy stick to encourage pro-social behavior but as a set of guidelines for critically engaging with each other (Osler and Starkey, Teachers and human rights education. Trentham Books Ltd, Sterling, 2010). Opening up the conversation on human dignity and empathy is just one of the many outcomes of HRE, and can be an effective tool to create a sense of intercultural respect and understanding. HRE can reduce bullying (Vasagar, Human rights teaching reduces bullying, study finds. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/nov/02/pupils-benefit-human-rights-lessons, 2010), and builds self-esteem (Howe and Covell, Empowering children: children’s rights education as a pathway to citizenship. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2007) in many ways that empower students and teachers. By pointing out the important part that schools play to empower students to become active participants in the school and in their community, HRE can empower children to see themselves as change-makers, and as being responsible for each other, in school and in the community.
