ABSTRACT
Toward the end of the First World War, the American economist Irene Osgood Andrews wrote that “family life is defaced beyond recognition.” 1 A more accurate observation might have been that, as in any war, it was actually childhood that had been altered almost beyond recognition by the pressures and destruction of the war. Andrews’ remark transcends the Great War, of course. Since 1500, children and youths have been tightly bound up in every facet of Western warfare as observers, victims, and participants. Children and youths long to be part of the adult world around them, and wars provide an urgent opportunity to do so. The stakes are higher, of course, than in any other human enterprise. Wars can be catastrophic for children, but they can also be transformative and even liberating. Sometimes they are both.
