It appears that news reports on mediation are increasing, which may reflect a growing awareness and acceptance of the practice. Two recent examples demonstrate how mediation is increasingly being used in high profile disputes.

The first has to do with face masks. In an executive order, Georgia’s governor Brian Kemp has strongly urged, but did not mandate, that people wear face masks to help stem the spread of the Coronavirus. His order also suspended any local rules more restrictive than his own, including the mandate of mask wearing. However, several local jurisdictions have ordered people to wear masks in many public places.

This has lead to a lawsuit being filed against Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and members of the city council arguing that local authorities do not have the authority to mandate more, or less, restrictions than the governor’s orders. Governor Kemp’s lawsuit asks the court to block the city’s orders and prohibit Mayor Bottoms from making public statements asserting that both she and the Atlanta Council has such authority.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Barwick ordered the two sides to mediation to “make a good faith effort to resolve the issues involved in the case.”

The second is about racial equality. In Mankato, Minnesota, the School Board posted a photo of six members of the board with the district’s superintendent. The photo excluded the board’s only Black member. That board member asserted that the photo was but one example of, “intentional exclusion,” and systematic racism by his fellow colleagues.

The school’s superintendent acknowledged that the photo should not have been posted on the district’s website regardless of why one board member was not represented.

The omitted member requested that the board use the Bureau of Mediation Services to deal with the conflict. Multiple members issued statements supporting working toward racial equity on the board and in the school district. 

Will mediation be helpful in these and other high profile disputes? In many such cases, external parties have high expectations that the approach will be successful. However, as with all mediations, it is only the disputing parties themselves who must decide on the outcome and if, for whatever reason, mediation did or didn’t meet the expectation of each.

Part of “growing up” is our development of conflict resolution skills and researchers have been studying how they are learned over time.

A comprehensive review of 31 research reports on child (ages 2–10), adolescent (ages 11–18), and young adult (ages 19–25) studied strategies for ending disagreements with peers. For the most part, the researchers worked with middle-class North Americans of European ancestry. Peers were defined as siblings, friends, romantic partners, or acquaintances, including dormitory roommates and classmates.

Children end disagreements with coercion more often than with negotiation or disengagement. They are also more likely to end with negotiation than with disengagement.

Adolescents tend to end disagreements with negotiation rather than with either coercion or disengagement, with no difference with the use of either.

Young adults end disagreements with negotiation more often than with coercion or disengagement and with disengagement more often than with coercion. As experience may tell us as age increases from childhood to young adulthood, the use of negotiation increases. Coercion does not fall below disengagement until young adulthood.

When the peer relationship is considered separately, negotiation is prevalent in all peer relationships, except those with siblings. Friends, romantic partners and acquaintances resolve conflicts more often with negotiation than with coercion or disengagement. And more so with coercion than with disengagement. The studies go on to show how young adults end disagreements with siblings by typically using negotiation instead of coercion or disengagement. But compared to adolescents, who end arguments with siblings using disengagement over negotiation, they prefer coercion to end conflict instead of disengagement.

At what age, then, can children learn negotiation as a conflict resolution skill? Recently a new childrens book came to my attention called, “The Elephant that Blows Rainbows,” and it’s a fairy tale about mediation. The author, Dimitra Mousiolo, believes that even as children we can learn the tools to find solutions to most problems.