Toddlers’ Moral Development in the Context of Parent-Child Interactions Eva Beckeringh
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Student number: 10003151 Master: Youth at Risk Course: Master thesis Course Year: 2018-2019 Supervisor: Dr. P. J. Hoffenaar
Second grader: Dr. A. L. van den Akker Words: 5115
Abstract
To explore the ways in which parents interact with their toddlers about morally-laden issues, transcripts of conversations between 12 parents with their firstborn child (six boys and six girls) in their home environment during play were studied. The coding of the transcripts was based on the Moral Foundations Theory which describes five moral foundations. Different dyads showed different ways of discussing morally-laden issues; most children showed knowledge about Care and Authority, but mostly in a passive way. Where some parents tried to discuss the morals with their children, others chose to tell their children what was expected without giving them the opportunity to react. Overall, the foundations Care/Harm and
Authority/Subversion were relatively shown the most, Fairness/Cheating was shown to a lesser degree and Loyalty/Betrayal and Sanctity/Degradation were not shown at all. An explanation for this finding could be that moral development happens in stages, but it could also be possible that the foundations Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal and
Sanctity/Degradation become more apparent outside the parent-child play context where possibly more people are involved and other topics prevail. Further research should focus on moral development in toddlers in contexts where other foundations could also be stressed.
Of all animals, human beings are most successful. A reason for this success is the power they accomplish by working and living together. To remain successful, it is important that all people belonging to a certain group live their lives according to the principles of what is right and wrong. These principles are referred to as morals. Being a ‘good person’ involves living to the morals of the community (Ayala, 2010).
Obviously, parents in particular are interested in raising their own children into good people (Sunil & Verma, 2018) and because they are the first moral authority that children encounter, they can be expected to lay the base for moral development in their children. Moreover, parents are the primary source of moral education because children, especially toddlers and preschoolers, spend most of their time with their parents. Because parents are most and already from the beginning present in their children’s lives, there are many opportunities for morally-laden conversations.
Although it is well-known that parents are important in the moral development of their children, most research on the children’s moral development in the context of parent-child interactions has focused on parent-child relationship characteristics and parenting strategies (Wainryb & Recchia, 2016). Relatively few studies have been done on the sort of morally-laden parent-child conversations and the role of both parent and child during these
conversations (Wainryb & Recchia, 2016). One way to promote moral behavior in children could be by reinforcing the desired behavior, but research on parental socialization of prosocial behavior suggested that parents are not responsive in the sense that they are explicitly reinforcing the prosocial behavior of their children (Bower & Casas, 2016). But if parents do not explicitly reinforce the desired behavior of their children, in what way are they moral socializing their children then? To answer that question, it seems necessary to broaden the view on parental contribution to children’s moral development and move beyond explicit reinforcement and by analyzing the passing on of moral values within the family.
The first years of a child’s life already sets the stage for moral development (Dahl, 2019). As preschoolers spend most of their time at home with their parents, this is the most dominant context in which children acquire morals. Hence, to draw conclusions about the parental contribution to children’s moral development and to analyze the interactions between parent and child concerning morally-laden issues, it would be best to study them in their natural environment where the actual interactions between parent and child takes place (Dahl, 2017). Dahl (2015) already analyzed videotaped observations of naturally occurring helping behavior himself and showed that parents only show reinforcement after spontaneous helping behavior of the child. Although the findings from latter study are based on behavior in the natural environment, the focus is only on helping behavior and does not say anything about other moral behavior. So, in order to make statements about the ways parents moral
socializing their children in their natural environment, more research on the interactions between parent and child in their natural environment is necessary.
The Moral Foundations Theory
Several theories describe and explain the development and the construction of morals (e.g., the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation, Model of Moral Motives and the Theory of Dyadic Morality), but the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) (Haidt, Joseph, & Graham, 2014) is perhaps the best known of all. The Moral Foundations Theory makes it possible to describe multiple moral domains and is for that reason suitable to explore the ways parent and child interact on different morally-laden issues.
The Moral Foundations Theory (Haidt et al., 2014) states that there are different foundations that all human beings possess because they once were adaptive from an evolutionary point of view. These foundations are the basis for cultures to build there moralities on and even though the basis is the same, different cultures give form to these foundations in a different way and therefore moralities differ between cultures.
There is good evidence for at least five foundations of which the first one is
Care/Harm. Originally the Care/Harm foundation was educed in mothers who had to take care of their babies. Since human babies are largely dependent of their caregivers, especially mothers, in order to survive, it is not imaginable that mothers learned how to take care of their babies only after they were already born. Babies of mothers who were sensitive to their needs had a greater chance of surviving than babies of less sensitive mothers. Of course, having sensitive caregivers is still important for the survival of children, but the Care/Harm
foundation is grounded in more than that alone. Already from a young age, children are told to be nice to other people, not to hurt them and to comfort other children when they are showing distress.
Another adaptive strategy is cooperation with others. Not only were certain goals only achievable when cooperating with others, people also reaped the benefits of others’ gainings. Of course, the people who were profiting from the sharing of others were expected to do the same. So in order to let the cooperation stay beneficial for all, the sharing had to be fair. This is grounded in the Fairness/Cheating foundation. Still, you can recognize this foundation already in the upbringing of toddlers when they are told to share their toys and their treats.
As is explained by the Loyalty/Betrayal foundation, living in groups and cooperating with others had another advantage; the chance of surviving a threat of a rival group was bigger when working together. To be assured of the group’s protection, it was important to stay loyal to the group. Nowadays, you can still recognize this foundation in that people are attached to their family members and friends and appreciate each other’s loyalty to one another.
This living and working in groups brings along the need for social rules in order to maintain order and justice. Only with collective agreement on ranking and respect for authority, sensitivity for social rules can exist. As is grounded in the Authority/Subversion
foundation, the authority has the control role and is responsible for maintaining order and justice. In the socializing process the Authority foundation becomes apparent when parents for example tell their children to do what is asked of them just because they tell them to do so.
The last foundation that all human beings possess is Sanctity/Degradation. Being disgusted by certain things such as toxic foods and dirty or deceased people, this foundation initially made it possible for human beings to avoid threats to their health. And still, people are disgusted by (animal) corpses, feces, and rotten foods (Haidt, Joseph, & Graham, 2014).
As already mentioned before, these foundations used to be adaptive and were triggered by specific causes. Nowadays, the circumstances which people live in are much different than the circumstances our ancestors lived in, but still the foundations are adaptive in order to live in groups (Haidt, Joseph, & Graham, 2014).
Based on the foundations of the Moral Foundations Theory (Haidt et al., 2014), which I will refer to by using only the first word of the foundation, I will describe the occurrence of different morally-laden conversational interactions between parent and child in their
naturalistic environment. Describing the interactions, I will take an
interactionist-constructivist perspective (Dahl, 2019). Interactionist in that the moral development takes place during constant interactions between parent and child, and constructivist in that it takes children’s effort to interpret, scrutinize and evaluate the interactions between themselves and their parents. According to the interactionist-constructivist approach, children develop morality in different contexts and not only in those where parents specifically try to teach their children about morality. Moreover, they play an active role in developing ideas of right and wrong (Dahl, 2019). Their role during the interactions with their parents however, could be passive by repeating their parents’ words, but could also be an active one by using their own words and actively participate in and contribute to the interactions with their parents (Cole Wright & Bartsch, 2008).
To summarize, with this study I will describe whether issues from multiple moral domains belonging to multiple moral foundations are being discussed between parents and their 2-year olds. Moreover, I will describe how these moral issues are being discussed and will try to classify these ways afterwards. Lastly, I will examine if children have an active or passive role during these conversations.
Method Procedure
To study the moral development of children in the context of parent-child interactions, I decided to use transcripts of audio recordings that are accommodated in the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) online database (MacWhinney, 2000). As part of the TalkBank system, CHILDES accommodates transcripts of child speech. These transcripts are contributed by researchers all over the world and are freely accessible (MacWhinney, 2000). The transcripts from the Manchester Corpus (Theakston, Lieven, Pine, & Rowland, 2001) are in English and are based on interactions that children in the age of two to three years old have with their parents. Moreover, the interactions took place during pretend play in the living area of the home environment of the children. The recordings took place during home visits of the researcher who visited the same families.
Child-parent pretend play is an opportunity for parents to teach their children moral values, but also for children to acquire moral values (Edmiston, 2007). During pretend play, child and parent can pretend to be whomever they like to be, and engage in any imagined setting they wish. Pretend play allows them to explore possible identities in an interactive, social setting. Moreover, according to Edmiston (2007), pretend play has an effect on how children acquire ideas of how people ought to behave and in that way develop ethical identities. Also of importance was that both parent and child used speech while
To code the transcripts I used ATLAS.ti (ATLAS.ti Scientific Software Development GmbH). In this scientific software program there is room for hundreds of documents. Also, it is possible to list the codes of choice so that all the excerpts of interest are coded in an easy and in the same way. At a glance it is shown what and how many times each code is used. Transcripts
The transcripts in the Manchester Corpus (Theakston et al., 2001) consisted for the most part of, to me, meaningless characters by the transcriber. Because these characters are of no value for this study and made the transcripts unclear, I first had to delete all the characters in order to make it possible to analyse the speech. For example, where a transcript (Anne - 011007b) consisted of 45 pages in Word, Times New Roman, font size 12, it consisted of 16 pages after deleting the irrelevant characters, such as:
1789 %mor: co|yes .
1790 %gra: 1|0|INCROOT 2|1|PUNCT
1791 *INV: www . 1792 %add: MOT 1793 *CHI: xxx . 1794 %com: counter 232 1795 *MOT: www . 1796 %add: INV 1797 *CHI: xxx . 1798 %tim: 25:00 1799 %com: counter 237
I chose five transcripts for each dyad randomly so a total of 60 transcripts were coded. Participants
The Manchester Corpus consists of transcripts of audio recordings from a longitudinal study of six English-speaking boys and six English-speaking girls who were living in either Manchester or Nottingham, United Kingdom. All the children were first borns, from middle-class families and cared for primarily by their mothers. At the start of the study, all
participating children were between 1,8 and 2 years of age. They were recruited through local nurseries and advertisements in newspapers.
Coding
To describe the moral development of children and the moral socialization by parents, I made a distinction in morally-laden issues based on the five moral foundations as is
explained by the Moral Foundations Theory (Haidt et al., 2014). Words that are typically used for morals (e.g., good/bad, right/wrong, nice/mean, etc.) made it possible to identify when the conversations were morally-laden. After identifying the morally-laden conversations, I identified the initiator of the concerning morally-laden conversation. Based on whether the child initiated the conversation, and if the child used morally-laden words creatively or only by copying the words used by the parent, I coded the participation in the morally-laden conversation by the child as active or passive.
Results Care
Pretending to be someone else gives the child the chance to take the role of the caregiver and to care for anyone or anything involved. As is shown in the following: Excerpt 1: Anne - 020210a
MOTHER: Let's put the pig. Where are the pigs, Anne?
CHILD: There. Any more piggy? Oh. Oh dear. What's the matter? I lost you. Oh dear. MOTHER: Oh dear. Was he lost?
CHILD: Yeah.
MOTHER: Oh no. Was he with all the others? Oh dear. CHILD: Are you alright, baby?
MOTHER: Are you alright, baby? CHILD: Oh dear.
MOTHER: Oh. Oh, Anne.
After the mother asks out loud where the pigs are, the child takes the lead in caring for the pig that was supposedly lost. In this excerpt the mother has a passive role by repeating the words of the child as she plays along with feeling sorry for the pig. The child has an active role which seems to be strengthened and sustained by the repeating of the child’s words by the mother.
In the following excerpt the mother is trying to make it clear to her child that pulling someone’s hair is hurtful and that the one in pain has to be comforted. In order to make care-based moral judgments it seems to be necessary to develop empathy and imagination by showing children other ways to be and that way develop a better appreciation of what others may feel in different circumstances (Waite & Rees, 2014). She uses exaggeration and takes all the time needed to get through to her son:
Excerpt 2: Aran - 020002b
MOTHER: Oh no the dolly's going to cry. Oh she's crying now. She wants teddy to comfort her. Where's teddy?
CHILD: He [* 0has] gone.
MOTHER: Oh has he gone? Has teddy gone? CHILD: Car.
MOTHER: Has he gone home? Oh oh well bunny will comfort her then. Bunny will. Bunny'll put his arm round her. Sorry you're crying , dolly. Because that naughty Aran's pulled your hair. &a:h.
CHILD: Bow. A bow.
MOTHER: Yes she's got a lovely bow in her hair. Shall we tie it nicely like that? Oh no don't do that. Oh dear.
CHILD: Fly.
MOTHER: Yes. Go on . Give dolly a big kiss because you've made her cry. Tell her you're sorry and give her a kiss. That's nice „ isn't it? That is nice. Oh no we don't do that.
CHILD: Crying.
MOTHER: &a:h she is crying yes. Oh Mummy'll have_to love her better „ won't [: willn't] she? &a:h poor dolly.
CHILD: I kiss. Kiss.
MOTHER: You want to give dolly a kiss „ do you? CHILD: Hair. Pull hair.
MOTHER: Pulled hair. Yes we know. We know all about pulling hair „ don't we? That's very nice of you.
Apparently communication towards the child about comforting after hurting someone is important for this mother as she keeps on insisting her child to comfort the doll (Dahl, 2016). In the beginning the child is trying to change the subject, but his mother is persistent in getting her child to comfort the doll and apologize to it which he ultimately does. Although the mother in the next excerpt does not put the emphasis on the feeling of the one being hurt, she does tell her child that her action was mean and wants her to say sorry:
Excerpt 3: Gail - 020303a
MOTHER: Don't go too near. It'll bang his head, willn't it? Hey. Oh. What do you say? What do you say? Miss. You mustn't do that, must you? What do you say? What do you say? Can you say sorry please? xxx. Don't show off.
That was mean.
Apparently the mother already expects her child to know that her action was wrong and that she knows what she has to say in a case like that. The mother is very authoritarian in the way she is trying to teach her child not to hurt anyone. She just tells her daughter what and what not to do and does not give her any opportunity to react. After asking her child what to say four times but not giving the child the opportunity to respond, she asks her child to say sorry. Indeed, in the next excerpt the child already knows he has to apologize after his mother told him that it was not nice when he hit the panda with the car:
Excerpt 4: Dominic - 020613b
MOTHER: Whoops . She fall [*] over. That's it. Oh dear. Fall over again. Oh. And again. Oh. I had a feeling you were gonna [: going to] do that. That's not very nice , is it?
CHILD: No. That [/] that car hit [/] hit panda. MOTHER: Yes. I know. That wasn't very nice , was it? CHILD: xxx .
MOTHER: Hey! Poor panda. CHILD: Sorry, panda. MOTHER: Mhm.
When his mother says that it is not very nice what he did, the child knows what his mother is referring to. He understands that hitting the panda with the car was the action that was not very nice of him, but does not apologize immediately. Only when the mother puts her focus on the panda, who is harmed by the child, he knows what is expected of him and says “sorry”. Even though the child seems to understand that it was his action that was not nice, neither mother nor child say exactly why hitting the panda with the car was not nice. It could be that the already understands that hitting someone with a car could be hurtful, but it could also be the case that the child does not understand the reason for apologizing but is
Authority
Not understanding the true reason for saying what is expected of the child is also what happens in the next excerpt where the child gets an early Christmas present from the
investigator:
Excerpt 5: Gail - 020518a CAROLINE: That's yours.
MOTHER: Well. What do you say? Say +... CHILD: Thank you.
MOTHER: Yeah. But are you going to ask Mummy nicely if you can open it xxx. CHILD: Open it.
MOTHER: That wasn't asking nicely. What do you say? CHILD: Thank you.
MOTHER: No. You've got to ask nicely. Please may I open it, Caroline. CHILD: Please open, Caroline.
CAROLINE: If Mummy thinks that's okay. MOTHER: Okay. You sit down then.
The first time the child knows what she is expected to say after the mother says “what do you say?”, but the second time she is wrong when she replies with “thank you”. Only after literally telling her child what she wants her to say, the child repeats her mother and is polite in a passive manner at that point. The child appears to be unfamiliar with adding the word ‘please’ for the question to be nice, but only says it because she is expected to do so. It is obvious that the mother is trying to condition her child to say ‘thank you’ after receiving a present. This becomes clear later on in the conversation when the mother again asks her child what to say for getting the present:
Excerpt 6: Gail - 020518a MOTHER: What do you say?
For your present? CHILD: Thank_you. CAROLINE: You're welcome. MOTHER: Good girl.
Although seemingly the child does not know the meaning of the words ‘thank you’, she is rewarded by her mother after saying them. In the next excerpt it is already clear to the child that he has to say ‘please’ in order to get things done:
Excerpt 7: John - 020124a CHILD: Box.
ANNA: Mhm.
You know I get that later, don't you? CHILD: Box.
ANNA: Mhm.
CHILD: Box .
MOTHER: Come on, John. CHILD: Box.
ANNA: Yeah.
You know I go and get it later, don't you? CHILD: Box.
Please bring the box . MOTHER: John.
CHILD: Please bring the box. ANNA: &a:h .
I'll get it later for you.
The child is nagging for the other box which the investigator does not want to get yet. After two rejections he tries to get it his way with the word ‘please’ and although he thinks this could work because using the word ‘please’ he must be polite, it is counterproductive and so his mother uses her authority to make him stop nagging by just naming him.
In the following excerpt the mother uses a more authoritative form of parental control: Excerpt 8: Gail - 020518a
MOTHER: Can you say thank_you for Andy? CHILD: Thank_you, Andy.
MOTHER: xxx.
CHILD: Thank_you, Caroline. CAROLINE: That's alright.
MOTHER: Because Andy didn't buy it, did he? CHILD: No.
This child is not the one who is getting a present, but the mother seizes the opportunity to teach her child a moral lesson and asks her to say ‘thank you’ for her little brother. The child does what her mother asks her to do but clearly does not understand why she is saying thanks because she thanks her little brother. After correcting the name of the person to whom she has to say ‘thank you’ to, her mother explains indirectly that the one who bought the present is the one who should be thanked.
Fairness
Playing is a great opportunity to share toys and imaginative foods and drinks. In the next small excerpt the child offers the mother a “currant” without being asked for:
Excerpt 9: Anne - 011007a MOTHER: Is that one for me?
%act: CHILD offers her a currant. MOTHER: Whoops.
Thank_you.
While the child offered the mother a “currant”, the mother was talking about
something unrelated. So this child showed sharing in an active way. Apparently the mother accepted the “currant” because she says “thank you”. This is a good way to teach toddlers to thank someone who has given something to the them since children will use the parent as a model.
Sometimes a parent will ask their child to share in an indirect way, such is shown in the following:
Excerpt 10: Anne - 011007a CHILD: Strawberry.
MOTHER: Are there some strawberries in there? &mm .
I like strawberries? CHILD: Here you are.
%act: Offers MOTHER a toy strawberry.
Although you cannot see how much time there is between “&mm” and “I like strawberries?”, I can imagine that the mother first tries to elicit an offer by the child by showing she likes strawberries by making the sound “&mm”. Since that gives her not the reaction she was hoping for, she tells her child she likes strawberries. The question mark after that sentence makes clear she is almost asking for it. By not directly asking her child for the strawberry, she gives her child the chance to put herself in her mother’s position and to respond in such a way she would like the other person to act if she would be in her mother’s
position. Loyalty
I did not identify excerpts in these transcripts that show Loyalty. This might be the case because parent and child are the only ones involved in the play most of the time. Also, the play is the only context in which these interactions take place.
Sanctity
Also, no conversations on Sanctity. The only comments that come close to the Sanctity foundation are the ones where the mother tells their child to clean up the mess after playing, like in the following:
Excerpt 11: John - 011115a MOTHER: Put an apron on. CHILD: All colors. MOTHER: Mhm.
ANNA: Oh what've you got there? CHILD: Colors draw Daddy.
MOTHER: You draw it on your Daddy’s. CHILD: No.
MOTHER: Come on.
Just put this on John because you got all messy last time , didn't you? Discussion
With this study I explored the ways parent and child interact with each other about morally-laden issues and how they affect each other during these interactions. Specifically, I studied if parent or child initiated the interactions on morally-laden issues. Also, I was interested if whether child had a passive or active role during these interactions. To study these interactions I used transcripts from audio that was recorded during home visits.
To code and interpret the transcripts I used the five foundations from the Moral
Foundations Theory (Haidt et al., 2014). The study of moral development in children based on the Moral Foundations Theory has not done before. This theory makes it possible to describe multiple moral domains and not only the domain Care and/or Justice (Graham et al., 2011).
The results show that the parent is the one initiating the interactions on morally-laden issues most of the times. Occasions for these parents to start a morally-laden conversation were when someone or something was hurt or was going to get hurt or when one of the
participants had to thank someone. Nonetheless, the children already seem to be familiar with words that accompany moral behavior and they already show moral behavior. In some
conversations children were already actively participating in the morally-laden interactions by showing morally-laden behavior and using morally-laden words spontaneously, others were more passively participating by repeating the morally-laden words used by the parent. Some mothers really tried to explain to their child why they stressed certain moral behavior, some mothers did not explain their expectations for certain moral behavior but just told their child to behave in a certain way. However, the expectation for certain moral behavior cannot always be explained since often moral behavior is not more than social rules. Hitting a play panda with a play car does not really hurt anyone, but by imagining the play panda as a person, morals are enhanced (Rottman, Kelemen, & Young, 2015). The mothers’ stressing of certain moral behavior gives toddlers the opportunity to construct views on right and wrong behavior which ultimately result in moral behavior (Dahl, 2019).
Because the interactions that were studied took place in the natural environment of the children, they can be expected to closely resemble interactions in daily family life.
Consequently, the results provide a unique, ecologically valid perspective on exchanges related to moral issues. Although this is the case, both children and mothers were aware of the presence of the investigators. During most of the visits the investigators were even involved in the play and interacted with the children themselves as well. Obviously, in daily life other people are involved with these children too, but the reasons for involvement of those people are probably different than that of the investigators. Originally these conversations were transcribed to study the speech of young children and therefore it is possible that the main
purpose of the parents during these home visits was to let their children use as much speech as possible in order to help the investigators conducting their research. The content of the
conversations could have been of lesser interest.
Aside from this, an explanation for parent and child to discuss more issues on Care and Authority than Fairness, and not to discuss about Loyalty and Sanctity completely, could be that the development of these moral foundations are reserved for this stage of age. Other foundations could be stressed more in other stages, as moral development happens in stages according to Kohlberg and Piaget (Carpendale, 2000).
Another explanation could be that certain moral foundations are reflected to a lesser degree than usual due to the specific context; of parent-child play. Moral conflicts between siblings are shown relatively frequent compared with moral conflicts between parent and child (Smetana, 1999). Fairness could be emphasized more when other children such as siblings are involved, as is the case for Loyalty. Sanctity could be more expressed in contexts where food or animals are involved.
Limitations
Because of the goal of this study, to describe the morally-laden interactions between children and their parents, I selected certain excerpts which showed how parent and child interacted with each other and how they affected each other during these interactions.
Although I was aware of selecting the excerpts that in my opinion added value to the study, I tried to be as objective and non-judgmental as possible.
Future directions
Studying children while conversating with their parents in their home environment can give great insights in the way they develop morals. Since I used transcripts of conversations between 12 parent-child dyads in this study, there are many different excerpts selected. Therefore, the exploration of moral development in this study is conducted broadly. To study
the moral development in depth, it would be interesting to study the conversations between an authoritative parent with the child and an authoritarian parent and child to compare the
development of both children. To even broaden the view on the way toddlers develop morals, it would be valuable to study the toddlers in the home environment where they interact with all the family members but also with people visiting the families as moral development also happens through observing interactions between others (Dahl, 2019). Contexts in which children are asked about what to eat, to help cleaning the house or to take a step back in a situation where the sibling gets the attention. This way it is possible to find out if toddlers are already being taught or know about loyalty and sanctity.
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