Role of Parents in Moral Development

Even though the definiton of morality is various, it is the system of rules that regulates the social interactions and social relationships of individuals within societies and is based on concepts of welfare (harm), trust, justice, and rights. We learned in the lesson that moral judgments need to be obligatory, universal, unalterable, impersonal and determined by criteria other than agreement, consensus or institutional convention. While some theorists claim that morality stems from mainly parents’ influence on children through their parenting practices, disciplinary strategies, and parenting styles, some theorists assert that the hierarchical nature of parent-child relationships constrain children’s moral development. Although I do not ignore the effect of peers on children, I think that the role of parents is utmost importance in moral development of their children. For example, Piaget found that children’s conflicts over moral issues such as object possession (taking a toy or not sharing), rights, aggression, psychological harm-all moral issues- do occur primarily in interactions with peers.  Since peers have similar age with each other, children tend to follow how they behave toward each other. They learn the concepts of harm, justice and rights through these interactions. If the child is accustomed to steal money from people’s pockets, then his/her peers tend to follow him/her so that stealing and harming people will be normal behavior according to them. That is, their moral development can consist of harming and violating the rights. By directing their children to have friendship with particular peers, parents can provide these children to develop morally.

Another role of parents is related with being role-model. Various studies show that young children have social experiences with physical and psychological harm, fair distribution and the violation of rights through their experiences of rules, rule violations, and peer conflicts. By considering children’s possible social experiences, parents can help children gain moral development concepts.  Rather than giving advices to their children about moral concepts, parents should try to behave like that (not only saying but also doing) and to make them observe that their parents are respectful to each other’s rights. Or, by providing children to trust the parents, they can learn better the trust concept, for instance.

As parallel to these views, in the article, Smetana (1999) cites that affective component of family-child interactions provide parental warmth, involvement and support which enable children to develop moral reasoning. Hence, parents should be careful in their relationships with students and use affective interactions . Moreover, there is also cognitive dimension of parents’ roles. In the social domain view, parents’ communications with their children are crucial in the construction of moral knowledge. By explaining the reasons for rules, trying to apply these rules in the house, giving appropriate reactions when children violate the rules, parents can enable their children to think critically about their actions so that they obtain moral development.

Finally, it can be said that moral development of children is dependent on the role of parents during the construction of it. Hence, parents should be careful in selection of their children’s peers, have awareness about children’s possible social experiences and give importance to affective and cognitive components of parent-child interactions.