Stability and cross-lagged associations between parenting and children's moral self

Although prior research has highlighted the importance of parenting for children's moral self-development, longitudinal studies examining the bidirectional relationships between parental warmth, parental harshness, and children's moral self remain scarce. This study addresses this gap by investigating the reciprocal associations between parental warmth, parental harshness, and children's moral self during middle childhood. We conducted a questionnaire study (T1: November 2022 to June 2023, T2: 6 months later) with N = 189 children (mean age M_ageT1 = 8.21 years, SD_T1 = 1.30, 55.2 % girls) and their caregivers. Children rated the personal importance of moral traits, while parents assessed their parental warmth and harshness. Results of cross-lagged panel modeling revealed high autoregressive effects and reciprocal effects between parental warmth and children's moral self, suggesting that parental warmth fosters children's moral self, which in turn reinforces parental warmth over time. No significant longitudinal effects were found between parental harshness and children's moral self.