Moral Development in Early Childhood

Accepted Practices

• Sigmund Freud proposed that during early childhood, children adopt the same moral practices as their same-sex parent. Then, he argued, children attempt to observe these practices and experience feelings of guilt--or hostility turned inward--when they do not.

Fixed Standards

• Jean Piaget concluded that during the earliest years of childhood, children see rules and justice as fixed or permanent properties of the world. Children, therefore, expect punishment to inevitably follow when they break a rule.

External Rewards

• Similarly, Lawrence Kohlberg theorized that children do not have internalized moral values, but instead that they reason morally on the basis of understood punishments and rewards for behavior. Kohlberg concluded that, at this stage, children obey because they are told to do so.

Prosocial Behavior

• Morality develops in early childhood, William Damon proposed, through the encouragement of prosocial behavior by both peers and parents. Feelings of empathy and encouragement from others, concluded Damon, shape the moral development of early childhood.

Global Empathy

• Martin Hoffman likewise theorized that children have an inborn "global empathy" that supports their moral development. Through this innate empathy, Hoffman contended, children learn to consider what the feelings of others might be and how their actions may affect those feelings.