Children from Northern Ireland born since the second IRA ceasefire in 1997 have opinions marked by the sectarian divide, a new survey has uncovered.
State of Minds: The Children, the largest survey of its kind, polled 667 children chosen randomly from 35 schools as part of an investigation carried out for the BBC.
It found that while there were signs of new commonality between Protestant and Catholic children, many attitudes reflected age-old divisions.
It found that Protestants were more likely to define themselves as British and Catholics more likely to see themselves as Irish, but equally, about half of the schoolchildren from each denomination also saw themselves as "Northern Irish".
Asked to name prominent politicians, young Catholics were four times more likely to name Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams while Protestants were three times more likely to name the Rev Ian Paisley.
Prof Paul Connolly, of Queen's University Belfast, who helped design the poll, said the signs of common ground were encouraging despite the persistence of certain attitudes and evidence suggesting that children from the two communities were living separate but parallel lives.
"Our research raises fundamental questions for us as a society in terms of how we should deal with the segregation that exists," he said.
Prof Connolly also suggested that a grounding in a particular culture was not necessarily a bad thing but that it could be done in an inclusive rather than exclusive way.
"One way of doing this is to encourage children's sense of being Protestant or Catholic alongside also helping them to recognise that they are all part of a wider and shared identity as Northern Irish. Perhaps the most positive finding from our research is that many children are already beginning to think in this way," he said.
Poll findings included the strong tendency of young Protestants to view Belfast as their country's capital whereas just 39 per cent of Catholic children do. Only 4 per cent of Protestant children view Dublin as their capital city.
A third of Protestant boys identified themselves more closely with a Rangers football shirt whereas nearly 40 per cent of Catholic boys identified more closely with a Celtic shirt.
Children from the two communities also reflected divisions in sporting allegiances. Catholics said they played Gaelic games whereas Protestants were much more likely to say they played hockey.
Socio-economic backgrounds did not emerge as a key factor, with children from more deprived areas as likely as those from more affluent backgrounds to express the same views.
Gender emerged as a notable factor in sectarian attitudes, with boys much more likely than girls to want to play with children from their own community and to have negative attitudes to those from the other community.