ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the approach of socialization theorists to the study of moral development. The chapter is historical in its orientation, noting how the ideas of socialization theorists about children’s acquisition of the values and standards of society, including moral values and standards, have evolved over time. It begins with Freud and ends with examples of current thinking about the socialization process that include, but are not limited to, the socialization of morality. It describes a tradition in which researchers and theorists have been concerned with how children learn rules and standards of behavior and how this learning is manifested in conscience. Conscience includes adherence to societal requirements; feelings of guilt, confession, and attempts at reparation after deviation from those requirements; and compliance with rules in the absence of surveillance by agents of socialization. The rules encompass a wide range of actions that include what Turiel and his colleagues (Turiel, 1998) have labeled as moral (involving prescriptive understanding of how individuals should behave toward one another) but extend beyond them to include any deviations from societal demands, including arbitrary rules of social behavior or social conventions. Indeed, little attention has been paid until recently (e.g., Bugental & Goodnow, 1998) to the possibility that different domains of rules might call for different socialization practices.
