ABSTRACT
Parents influence children’s moral development, here defined as changes in cognitions, emotions, and behaviors regarding the welfare or rights of others, in many ways. However, children’s interpretations and evaluations of parenting practices further shape this process. In particular, they alter the extent to which children internalize moral values, experience moral emotions, and engage in moral behaviors in response to parenting. This chapter examines the role of children’s perceptions of parenting on their moral development, highlighting factors that alter children’s beliefs about the acceptability, appropriateness, and meaning of parenting practices and how these variations shape the relations between parenting practices and children’s moral values, judgments, emotions, and behaviors. After broadly reviewing the importance of children’s perceptions of parenting on their moral development, we discuss variations in children’s perceptions due to (1) the type of parenting practice and how it is communicated; (2) the context of the parenting behavior, including domain, relational, and cultural variation; and (3) individual child differences, including demographic features, temperament, and adjustment. Throughout the chapter, we also highlight gaps in the literature on perceptions of parenting and moral development and directions for potential future research.
