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PARENTS ATTITUDES AND THEIR DEFINITIONS OF WAR AND PEACE

ABSTRACT. This study focused on the attitudes and conceptualizations of 140 parents about war and peace. Four cohorts of parents from the US and South Korea completed the Hawk/Dove attitude scale on war and peace and a questionnaire regarding how they would define the topics to their children. Th

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PARENTS ATTITUDES AND THEIR DEFINITIONS OF WAR AND PEACE

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    1. PARENTS’ ATTITUDES AND THEIR DEFINITIONS OF WAR AND PEACE Larissa V. Frias Judith A. Myers-Walls Child Development and Family Studies Purdue University

    2. ABSTRACT This study focused on the attitudes and conceptualizations of 140 parents about war and peace. Four cohorts of parents from the US and South Korea completed the Hawk/Dove attitude scale on war and peace and a questionnaire regarding how they would define the topics to their children. The parents were grouped as High-peace, Medium-peace, and Low-peace based on their attitude scores. High-peace parents described peace as involving positive actions to other people to attain it and also used current social relationships to define peace. Low-peace parents related peace to positive values and positive characteristics of people and situations. The definition of war as a strategy is different across the groups of parents. Low-peace group described war as an alternative for resolving differences while High-peace parents said that war is a result when communication is not used.

    3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS a) What are the parents’ attitudes regarding the topics of peace and war? b) What meanings do parents ascribe to peace and war? c) How do parents’ attitudes regarding peace and war relate to the meanings parents ascribe to these topics and how they describe these concepts to their children?

    4. PARTICIPANTS 140 parents of 3- to 15-year-old children from South Korea and the US 1991 (US parents) 1999-2000 (US parents) 2002 (US parents) 2003 (South Korean parents) Married: 79.9%

    5. PARTICIPANTS

    6. Educational background of participants (N=139)

    7. PROCEDURES The Parents, Children, War, Peace, and Terrorism Questionnaire was used Hawk/Dove Attitude Scale Likert format (SA, A, U, D, and SD) Originally had 13 items with four factors after Factor Analysis was conducted (Frias, Myers-Walls, and Khosravi, 2004) Factor 1: War is not a good solution to international problems Factor 2: War and taking lives are not justified Factor 3: A nuclear war will not happen in their or their child’s lifetime Factor 4: Disagreement on U.S. military action against terrorism South Korean parents completed only Factors 1, 2, and 3 items

    8. Hawk/Dove Attitude Scale (7 items) SA A U D SD Sometimes war is the best solution to international problems.R SA A U D SD All wars are evil. SA A U D SD Sometimes killing is justified. R SA A U D SD The lives of all persons are equally valuable. SA A U D SD There is nothing an individual can do to stop a large-scale war. R SA A U D SD The best way to avoid war is through military strength and mutual deterrence. R SA A U D SD The best way to avoid war is through disarmament and negotiation. R -- Reversed scores (Cronbach’s alpha is 0.754)

    9. Procedures (continued) Parents responded to two questions: a) If that child came to you tonight and asked, “What is peace?” what would you say? b) If that child came to you tonight and asked, “What is war?” what would you say?

    10. DATA ANALYSES Hawk/Dove Scale attitude data Total attitude score was computed by summing across the 7 items from factors 1 & 2 of the Hawk/Dove scale (the 2 items from factor 3 were highly correlated with Factors 1 & 2, while Factor 4 items were not included in the Korean sample) Parents’ attitude scale scores were grouped High-peace (upper third), Medium-peace (middle third), and Low-peace (lower third) based on the distribution of their scores Qualitative data reduction Identification of common themes and overarching categories on the parents’ responses Examination of the relationship between the parents’ attitudes and their ascribed definitions of war and peace

    11. RESULTS Attitude scale data Higher scores meant agreement with the “dove” end rather than the “hawk” end of the statements. In general, the scores for all the 7 items were characterized by a leaning towards peaceful attitudes, or the “dove” end of the scale. Mean total score = 23.13 ; SD = 5.841 Mean item rating score = 3.304 ; SD = .834

    12. Means and standard deviation of the 3 groups of parents based on their attitude scores

    13. Comparison of mean attitude scores of the High-peace, Medium-peace, and Low-peace groups of parents

    14. DEFINITIONS OF PEACE Low-peace attitude parents Getting along with others “Peace is a way to get along and able to talk to each other in a calm manner.” Positive description of people and way of living “Peace is when people of the earth are healthy. We all have enough to take care of our own basic needs. We can live together in joy and thanksgiving.”

    15. DEFINITIONS OF PEACE No war or fighting “Peace means there is no war between countries.” “Peace is when there is nobody fighting about anything anywhere in the whole world.” Related to positive values “Peace is when people share what they have with each other and respect one another’s views. Peace needs people to help each other when someone needs help. Peace allows people to be happy and then culture, like art and theater and writing, grows.”

    16. DEFINITIONS OF PEACE Medium-peace attitude parents Attaining peace involves working out differences “I’d say peace is when people work hard to solve problems, work hard to understand each other, and to respect each other. When they have a conflict, they use words NOT weapons.” “When people can work out their differences with respect and not fight.”

    17. Getting along with others with no fighting “Countries getting along together. Possibly, disagreeing over things, but not fighting over them.” “No violence or killing, people getting along.” Absence of war or fighting “Peace is absence of physical conflict. In the ideal, it is achieved by love, understanding, compassion, respect.” DEFINITIONS OF PEACE

    18. High-peace attitude parents Getting along by doing positive things for others “Peace is people getting along with each other caring for each other, feeling calm and confident within yourself and groups of people solving conflicts and problems in creative ways also being in harmony with the earth.” “Peace is people getting along together and helping each other.” Absence of war or fighting “The absence of war, a calmness people living without arguments and or fighting.” DEFINITIONS OF PEACE

    19. Defining peace using social relationships as a context “Living and relating without intentionally hurting one another. At his age, we talk more about peace between family, friends, and neighbors. The bigger sense of peace is pretty abstract for him.” “Eating dinner with our whole family together like we do now, talking to one another, going to kindergarten, and living in a very comfortable place where we can do what we want.” DEFINITIONS OF PEACE

    20. DEFINITIONS OF WAR Low-peace attitude parents Can be a solution to disagreements or conflicts between people or countries “Using violence, including military intervention, to solve a disagreement between countries.” “Violent fighting between countries when they can’t agree on issues. Killing and destruction sometimes is necessary through to protect our country and our freedom.” “A conflict between two sides who disagree on something so much they feel they must protect their beliefs and people by fighting.”

    21. DEFINITIONS OF WAR Involves fighting, killing, or hurting others with use of weapons “People have an argument and they fight with guns. Lots and lots of people fight. Many are hurt and killed. Even people who are not fighting get hurt and killed.” “Continuous fighting each other with airplanes, machines, chemicals, etc, killing each other until one side gives up.” “Just like children who argue because they have different opinions, different countries fight too which we call wars. When war happens, people kill each other with guns, break down buildings, there’s no food… it’s a scary thing. That’s why soldiers are protecting our country to prevent wars from happening.”

    22. DEFINITIONS OF WAR Medium-peace attitude parents Fighting another person or country to gain something “Just like when children fight over which toy they want, other countries fight as well with big guns and bombs.” “It’s when countries fight with each other, just like people do. There are times when countries fight because they dislike each other but for the most part, they do to better their country and benefit from it. Long time ago, countries used to go to war to make their lands bigger by taking away another country’s land.”

    23. DEFINITIONS OF WAR A way to resolve differences “When countries fight because of conflicting opinions.” “I would say that war is a fight fought by countries with different views on things such as culture, politics, religion, and human rights. I would explain that war generally is brought on by a country’s leaders, but is fought mostly by the people like you and me.”

    24. DEFINITIONS OF WAR High-peace attitude parents Failure to resolve differences by using strategies like communication and negotiation “War is between governments. It is a result of lack of communication. War kills people. Governments usually survive.” “When grown-ups choose not to talk to each other to solve problems, but rather to fight until they are ready to talk.” “War is groups of people who choose to use fighting with their strength to try and solve their differences instead of using their words.”

    25. DEFINITIONS OF WAR Involves opposing countries “War is when two countries try to settle an argument between them by fighting each other.” “War is when two countries get into a big fight. It is a very bad thing. Lots of people can get hurt or killed.” Results to loss of lives and killing “People fighting with one another and dying as a result.”

    26. CONCLUSIONS Parents’ attitudes generally leaned towards peace and non-violence. In general, the parents defined peace as a positive way of getting along with one another and absence of war. They defined war as fighting another group of people and usually results to loss of lives. Low-peace attitude parents described peace as related to positive values, characteristics of living and people, and absence of war or fighting. The high-attitude peace parents described peace in relation to relationships like families and friends. They also stated that in order to attain it, people should work and act positively towards other people. The Low-peace parents defined war as an alternative for resolving differences while the High-peace group stated that war can happen when communication and negotiation fails to resolve conflicts and disagreements.

    27. IMPLICATIONS In doing research on parents and their conceptualizations about peace and war, one needs to understand their attitudes and the context surrounding the participants. War and peace may be viewed differently by different people, thus it is imperative to consider the multi-dimensional nature of these concepts. For practitioners who work with families, there should be an awareness of the attitudes and ideas of parents towards peace and war and how these influence the definitions that they may communicate to their children.

    28. FUTURE DIRECTIONS Incorporate the cohort factor in the analysis of the qualitative responses of the parents to study the influence of context and surrounding events in their conceptualizations of war and peace Further analyses of the relationship between parent and child data including child’s reactions and child characteristics (e.g. gender, age) Further study of the relationship between quantitative and qualitative parent data More diverse sample of parents should be included in future research

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