This article examines age-related changes in the conceptions children and adolescents hold about peace, war, and strategies to attain peace. These were expected to change from concrete, materially related to abstract, norm-related conceptions. The conceptions were assessed by means of a semi-structured questionnaire presented to 101 Dutch children between 8 and 16 years of age and divided into five age groups (mean ages 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 years). Each age group consisted of approximately equal numbers of boys and girls to ascertain any gender differences. Developmental levels for children's understanding of the reciprocal nature of interpersonal relationships (assessed by means of role or perspective-taking tasks) were presumed to relate to their conceptions of peace and strategies to attain peace, in particular. In addition to a development from concrete, materially related conceptions to abstract, norm-related conceptions, the findings suggest a more complex developmental course. While 8 to 12-year-olds used concrete, materially related characteristics for peace, war, and strategies to attain peace, 14 to 16-year-olds mentioned abstract, norm-related characteristics only when strategies to attain peace from an everyday perspective were considered. As noted by Selman, most 12-year-old children understood the mutual or reciprocal nature of interpersonal relationships. The latter understanding was primarily associated with the more abstract, norm-related level of reasoning involving ideas about human attitudes and universal rights.

No abstract

Previous studies reported that children's first coherent utterances about peace and war were evident between the ages of 6 and 8, where verbalization of war preceded verbalization of peace. In the following years, children develop fairly well-defined ideas. This conceptual development was assumed to be part of and to reflect children's development of interpersonal understanding. In a longitudinal study, 44 Dutch children between the ages of 6 and 10 (i.e., three repeated measures through age ranges of 6.0 to 7.1 1,7.0 to 8.1 1, and 8.0 to 9.1 1) were interviewed about conceptions of peace, war, and strategies to attain peace. The longitudinal data were consistent with earlier results that the concept of war developed prior to the concept of peace. Concrete aspects such as friendships, absence of quarrels, and absence of wars dominated images of peace, whereas weapons and soldiers, war activities, and consequences of war dominated images of war. A more abstract, norm-related level of reasoning was not evident.Children grow up with daily exposure to information about global issues such as war. They overhear snatches of conversation from their parents discussing the news. They are directly informed by the media, predominantly by television. In addition, children are confronted with terms like peace, war, and conflicts through their school's environment and with their peers. The young child will develop an understanding of peace as well as of war.Various investigations on children's conceptions of peace and war in the 60s and the early 70s (cf. Wlvik, 1968;Cooper, 1965;Rosell, 1968;Tolley, 1973) reported that children develop insights into the conceptions of peace and war at a Requests for reprints should be sent to

This article presents findings from a Dutch-Swedish comparative study on children's conceptions of peace and war. Interviews with 416 Dutch and Swedish girls and boys between 7 and 17 years of age were conducted. The findings show a fairly stable core content of the concept of peace and war for children of all ages. Variations according to nationality, age, and gender were mainly found in the content elements that older children added to the core content of peace. These variations are discussed within a sociocultural developmental perspective comparing Dutch and Swedish conditions for learning and developing concepts of peace and war.In recent literature on children's conceptions of peace and war, the impact of individual as well as contextual factors has been considered (cf.