Predicting Adolescent Moral Reasoning from Family Climate:

Abstract

The climate of parental interactions with adolescents at 14 years of age, and its longitudinal prediction to adolescent moral reasoning at 16 years of age, was studied in 40 Canadian families. Three measures of family climate were obtained, including the authoritative parenting style construct of Baumrind, the transactive dialogue measure of Berkowitz and Gibbs, and a novel index of responsiveness to the “child’s voice” in the stories told by parents about moral socialization, based on the sociocultural theory of Vygotsky and Bakhtin. Greater operational transact use in Time 1 discussions by fathers was predictive of gains in moral reasoning for children older than the 2 years. For mothers, stronger indications of responsiveness to the child’s voice in stories told when children were 14 years of age also predicted gains over time in moral reasoning for adolescents. Most generally, results indicated the need to delineate more fully the role of each parent in the moral socialization process.