What is morality? Discovering the development of ethics in childhood.

What is morality? We review the main theories on the development of the moral and ethical self.

Our day-to-day lives are marked by different choices or attitudes that have an ethical aspect. Doing "right" or "wrong" is a dilemma that is presented to us habitually from a very young age.

But... But what exactly is morality and how do we develop it in the first years of life? In today's article we will learn everything we need to understand the development of ethics in childhood and adolescence.

What is morality?

The morality is the set of principles or ideals that help the individual to distinguish right from wrong, to act in accordance with this distinction and to feel proud of virtuous conduct and guilty of conduct that violates its standards.

The internalization is the process of adopting the attributes or norms of other people; taking these norms as one's own.

How Developmental Scholars View Morality

Each of the three major theories of moral development focuses on a different component of morality: Moral affects (Psychoanalysis), moral reasoning (Cognitive Developmental Theory), and moral behavior (Social Learning and Information Processing Theory).

Psychoanalytic explanations of moral development

Sigmund Freud asserts that infants and toddlers lack an superego and act according to their egoistic impulses unless parents control their behavior. However, once the superego emerges, it acts as an internal sensor that makes the child feel proud or ashamed of his or her behavior.

Freud's Theory of Oedipal Morality

The superego develops in the phallic stage after the Oedipus or Electra Complex. It is then, when the child internalizes the moral values of his parent of the same sex. For Freud, the internalization of the superego in a girl is weaker than in the case of boys.

Evaluation of Psychoanalysis

Theory of cognitive development

For cognitive development theorists both cognitive growth and social experience are determinants of moral development.

Piaget's theory of moral development

Piaget's early work Piaget on morality focused on respect for rules and conceptions of justice.

• The premoral period: The first 5 years of life, when children show little respect or interest in socially defined rules.

• Heteronomous morality (5 to 10 years): Piaget's first stage of moral development, in which children consider the rules of authority figures to be sacred and unalterable. They tend to focus on consequences. Immanent conduct: unacceptable conduct will invariably be punished and justice is always present in the world.

• Autonomous morality (10-11 years): children realize that rules are arbitrary agreements that can be challenged and changed with the consent of the people who govern them. They tend to focus on intent. Reciprocal punishment: to make him understand what he has done.

The movement from heteronomous morality to autonomous morality occurs when children learn to place themselves in the point of view of others.

• Children who take part in group activities as leaders tend to make more mature moral judgments.

• Children assign more weight to consequences, but that does not mean that they overlook intentions.

• Parents can impede children's moral development when they adopt an authoritarian approach, although they rarely use this type of discourse on moral values. By the age of 6 or 7, children already make moral judgments, as long as parents inculcate them without challenge.

Kohlberg's theory of moral development

For Kohlbergmoral development is not yet complete at 10-11 years of age. For him, development occurs in an invariable sequence (cognitive development is required) of 3 levels that is divided into 2 stages each. Each stage represents a type of moral thinking and not a moral decision.

Bibliographical references:

• Piaget, J., Inhelder, B. (2008). "Psychology of the child". Morata.

• Shaffer, D. (2000). "Psicología del desarrollo, infancia y adolescencia", 5ªed., Ed. Thomson, México, pp.