Raising children under fire: Civilian agency and intergenerational transmission in Colombia, Northern Ireland and Lebanon

Raising a child in a conflict area heightens the already fraught and complex relations between adults and young people. Parents employ strategic agency in how they protect their children from the dangers of conflict and teach them how to navigate it effectively. Yet the next generation is also often burdened with the promise of a better future, and adults may intervene in their education and mind-set with the intent to disrupt conflict trajectories. We explore how civilians respond to both conflict’s individual effect and recurring cycles of harm through their approach to raising children. We examine intergenerational transmission between adults and young people across six conflict-affected communities in Colombia, Northern Ireland and Lebanon. We argue that adults protect individual children from harm by either shielding or instructing them in conflict-related social navigation. Adults also seek to disrupt future conflict by mentoring children to avoid recruitment, transform intergroup biases or offer alternative conflict-resolution skills. We explore the creativity and limitations of these strategies, how maladaptive parenting can affect this transmission and the tension between protective and disruptive objectives.