Maternal Communication with Preschool Children about Morality: A Coding Scheme for a Book-Sharing Task.

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Moral Psychology
• Child Development

Background:

• Understanding child aggression and moral development is key to preventing interpersonal violence.
• Parental communication of moral values is theoretically important for children's moral development.
• A validated method is needed to assess maternal communication about morality with young children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and psychometrically test a coding system for measuring maternal communication of morality to young children.
• To analyze the content and factors of maternal moral discourse during parent-child interactions.
• To explore the relationship between moral communication and child aggression prevention.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional study of 200 mothers and their four-year-old children in a Brazilian birth cohort.
• Filmed parent-child interactions using a picture book depicting moral scenarios (aggression, prosocial behavior).
• Development of a 17-item coding system for maternal moral judgments and explanations, with inter-rater reliability and factor analysis.

Main Results:

• Mothers more frequently condemned physical aggression than property violations.
• Most mothers discussed the emotional impact of wrongdoing on others.
• Two factors emerged: interpersonal moral concern and material moral concern, with excellent inter-rater reliability.

Conclusions:

• Parent-child book sharing is a viable context for assessing maternal moral communication.
• The developed coding system effectively measures both interpersonal and material moral concerns.
• Further research with larger samples is recommended to link caregiver moral communication dimensions to child moral development.