Parenting and Moral Development

This chapter provides an overview of the volume and lays out the ways in which both parenting and moral development are multidimensional constructs. Parenting, for example, includes both broad indices of dyadic relational quality (such as security and warmth) and more specific practices (including discipline/control, rewards, and parent-child conversations). Moral development is equally complex and involves a wide range of moral affects (e.g., empathy, guilt, forgiveness), moral cognition (e.g., moral reasoning, perspective-taking), and values/identity-related processes. Thus, we highlight the complex nature of both constructs and argue that researchers need to take a nuanced approach to understanding the interplay between parenting and moral development. Finally, we also explain how the interplay between parenting and moral development is further complicated by the transactional processes between the two constructs and by cultural influences. We then provide an overview of each of the sections of the volume.