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Family: Important primary institution to transmit moral values to children. child’s development of morality solely depends on the parents who are governed by their own conscience.
- Child rearing Practices: Parents who created a supportive atmosphere by listening sensitively, asking clarifying questions, presenting higher level of reasoning and using praise and humor their children’s moral understanding is better than the children of parents who lectured, used treats, made sarcastic remarks. Another study revealed that parents who use low levels of power assertion and high levels of warmth and inductive discipline and who encouraged participation in family decision making have morally matured children (Parikh, 1980).
Parents also act as models for children’s morality and parental expectations on children’s oral values will serve as models for children to adhere to moral standards.
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Peer Group: Plays an important role in transforming moral values, which child begins to learn at home. Though family teaches right and wrong, for the sake of peer group approval, the child gets carried away by peers. Piaget believed that interaction with peer group promotes moral understanding. Maturity of moral reasoning is correlated with the peer popularity, participation in social organizations and serving leadership roles. Peer group also act as an important role in modulating children’s moral behaviour.
- School: It is one of the most powerful institutions for moral development. Plays an important role in moulding, even the family and peer systems fail in teaching morals as the school system is governed by certain moral values.
Schools impose discipline on children, gives punishments for wrongs and praises for right things. To impress the authority and to avoid punishments the child learns to do right things as some children are called as ideal boys / girls.
Kholberg suggested that higher education is an especially important arena for moral development because it introduces young people to social issues that extend beyond familiar, face to face relationships to entire political or cultural groups. Children who have more academic perspective take opportunities, for ex. classes that emphasize open discussion of opinions) are more aware of social diversity and tend to be more advanced in moral reasoning (Mason and Gibbs, 1993).
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Social class: Plays vital role in influencing the child’s morality, especially children from low SES indulge in anti social activities to fulfill their basic needs.
- Religion: Every religion teaches a code of conduct and is guided by various moral principles. If the child is taught moral and ethical values of life through his religion, he is bound to develop sound personality.
Sometimes children are instigated by religion and they start hating people of other religions / castes, these negative values harm the unity and integrity. Every religion should teaches universal brotherhood and ethical values, care, concern for others.
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Community: Plays important role in shaping moral values of child and developing sound personality. Certain communities and cultures accept the child for his misdoings and teaches all negative values of life-stealing, hurting, killing and destroying and those who follow the techniques of their religion tend to be more moral.
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Mass Media: Psychologists proved that T.V. and Cinema influence the moral behaviour of children. As the suggestibility is more in children, parents should monitor children’s viewing.
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Intelligence: Longitudinal evidence generally supports that higher levels of cognitive development are related to higher moral reasoning. Children with high IQs generally tend to be more mature in their moral judgments than those of lower intellectual levels.
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Culture: According to Kholberg, moral development was learnt by imitation and reinforcement. It was influenced by the specific content of the rules and laws of a culture. He also believed that morality is based on universal principles that developed in an invariant sequence, regardless of the culture in which a person was raised. The moral judgments of the children or how children respond to situations are based on culture. Differences in culture makes differences in views of morality, they serve as a basis for differences in judgments about what is right and wrong. The differences generally are greater with age, as older children exposed to norms of their ethnic group than younger ones. Thus moral development occurs as the result of the joint, reciprocal, and simultaneous influences of individual development and cultural socialization (Navaez, Getz, Rest and Thoma, 1999).
Cross cultural research reveals that individuals in technologically advanced, urban cultures move through Kohlberg stages more rapidly and advance to higher levels than do individuals in non industrialized, village societies (Snarey and keljo, 1991).
- Gender: Males and females differ in their moral judgments. According to Carol Gilligan (1982) females rely on a morality of caring principle (ethic of care) rather than justice. Females place more emphasis on the maintenance of relationships, where as males place more emphasis on law and order. These differences have come from sex typed cultures where males and females grow up. Girls tend to form more mature moral judgments than boys.
Participants