Life Span Development II School Age and Adolescence

Life Span Development II: School age and Adolescence 3 (2+1)

Lesson 28 : Emergence of morality and personality during adolescence

Building a Moral Code

When they reach adolescence, children no longer accept an unquestioning way of a moral code handed down to them by parents, teachers or even their contemporaries. They now want to build their own moral codes on the basis of concepts of right and wrong which they have changed and modified to meet their more mature level of development and which they have supplemented with laws and rules learned from parents and teachers. Some adolescents even supplement their moral codes with knowledge derived from their religious teaching.

Building a moral code is difficult for adolescents because of inconsistencies in the standards of right and wrong they encounter in daily life. These inconsistencies confuse them and impede their progress in building a moral code which is not only satisfactory to them but which will also lead to socially approved behavior. Sooner or later, most adolescents discover, for example, that peers of different socioeconomic, religious, or racial backgrounds have different codes of right and wrong; that their parents’ and teachers’ codes are often stricter than those of their contemporaries and that in spite of the breaking down of the traditional sex-approved roles, there is still a “double standard” which is far more lenient for boys than for girls.

Many adolescents feel that “social lies,” or lies told to avoid hurting other people’s feelings, are sometimes justified. The same sort of confusion is apparent in high school and college students’ attitudes toward cheating. Many feel that since it is so widespread, their contemporaries must condone it, and they also claim that it is justified when they are pressured to get good grades in order to be accepted by a college and thus succeed socially and economically in later life.