How children are affected by war.

Abstract

In modern wars 95% of the victims are civilians, for the most part children and their families. The book edited by Leavitt and Fox is an important contribution to this widely neglected problem of modern wars. It is a comprehensive collection of theoretical, empirical, and applied articles and gives a good overview of the latest developments in psychological research on children experiencing war and violence.In the first section general consequences of wars for the development of children are outlined. Goldson reports that the life of children is threatened not only by weapons but also by famine and disease caused by the breakdown of agricultural, medical, and social infrastructures in war. Garbarino and Kostelny conclude, from many years of field research, that children with intact relations to their mothers can cope with war situations without showing social maladjustment. But even where there is no immediate damage, there will be heavy negative consequences in the long-term and for further generations: In a war situation, for instance, it is nearly impossible to establish socialization conditions that allow social moral development on higher levels. Cicchetti, Toth, and Lynch describe the structural identity between the developmental conditions for maltreated children and for children in wars, and they develop an intervention program for those children.The second section starts with a comprehensive trend report by Klingman, Sagi, and Raviv on the effect of the Middle East Conflict on children. It is followed by empirical research on the Gulf War: Shilo-Cohen describes drawings of Israeli children produced during war and Bat-Zion and Levy-Shiff analyze their reactions to scud missile attacks. Toubiana investigates gender and geographic differences in Israeli children's reactions to the Gulf War and to Intifada, and Nader and Pynoos assess the reactions of Kuwaiti children to violence experienced in reality and in television. Qualitative methods are used by Masalha, who analyses dreams of

Fear of war: Relations to values, gender, and mental health in Germany and Israel.

“…Numerous studies of fear of conventional and of nuclear war have revealed that women express more fear than men (e.g., Hamilton, Van Mouwerik, Oetting, Beauvais, & Keilin, 1988, studies reviewed in Müller-Brettel, 1993). Two different explanations have been offered for this finding.…”