A Social–Ecological, Process‐Oriented Perspective on Political Violence and Child Development

Abstract

Youths’ risk for adjustment problems in contexts of political violence is well-documented. However, outcomes vary widely, with many children functioning well. Accordingly, moving beyond further documenting the risk for many negative outcomes associated with living in contexts of political violence, a second generation of research is moving towards identifying the mechanisms and conditions that contribute to children’s adjustment. Increasing support is emerging for understanding effects on children in terms of changes in the social contexts in which children live, and in the psychological processes engaged by these social ecologies. Selected themes are considered, including (a) the need to study multiple levels of the social ecology, (b) differentiating between the effects of exposure to contexts of political versus non-political violence, and (c) theories about explanatory processes. Selected research pertinent to these directions is reviewed, including findings from a six-wave longitudinal study on political violence and children in Northern Ireland.

Young Children in Intractable Conflicts

“…Moreover, this political socialization, despite its lack of uniformity, has a lasting impact on the lives of society members in their adulthood, and thus plays a major role in the dynamics of the intractable conflict due to the powerful nature of this context (Bar-Tal, Diamond, & Nasie, 2015;Cummings et al, 2014). Accordingly, this article examines political socialization in the specific Israeli context of intractable conflict, among Israeli-Jewish young children, providing a number of insights, implications, and consequences.…”

Political Violence, Armed Conflict, and Youth Adjustment: A Worldwide Perspective

“…reflect the need for understanding adjustment trajectories from a developmental perspective, including process-oriented tests of treatment effectiveness models (Cummings, Goeke-Morey, Merrilees, Taylor, & Shirlow, 2014;Cummings & Valentino, 2015).…”

Examining Bidirectional Pathways Between Exposure to Political Violence and Adolescent Adjustment in Northern Ireland

“…For example, emotional insecurity about the family (Cummings et al, 2012) or community have repeatedly been identified as mediating the effects of experience with SAB on child and adolescent adjustment (Cummings et al, 2014).…”

“…That is, the conceptualization adopted in most research is that contexts of political violence, for example, experience with such violence results in elevated adjustment problems in children. Moreover, the great majority of research studies in this area are cross-sectional (for discussion, see Cummings et al, 2014), so that the direction of interrelations between exposure to political violence and child adjustment problems cannot be determined. Thus, in the absence of longitudinal research, three possibilities for the directions of effect between political violence and child adjustment remain: (a) exposure to political violence is causally related to child Bidirectional Relations, Political Violence and Adolescent Adjustment 4 adjustment problems, (b) child adjustment problems are causally related to exposure to political violence, and (c) the direction of causal effects flows both ways.…”