Infant Moral Development

The question of how a person develops his own particular morality is one that no one, scientists, psychologists or clergymen has been able to fully answer. The time of childhood though is formative, and it stands to reason that the roots of a person's moral development would take place when he's still very young.

Infants

• The officially recognized age of an infant is 1 year and below. Since there is practically no way to effectively communicate with children so young, the age of moral development in the following sections will be to the age of 4. During this period, children begin to understand the world they live in, learn to speak and communicate effectively and start to define their sense of self.

Egocentric Reasoning

• The first stage of moral development in children, according to Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg, is referred to as egocentric reasoning. From birth to the age of 4, children see the entire world in terms of self. The justification for why something is right is because the child is getting his way. The only things that enforce a child's way of thinking at this stage is that acting one way will earn him rewards, and acting another way will earn him punishments.

Empathy

• According to William Damon however, there may be more to a child's development than that. The idea of empathy--or of experiencing another person's pain and emotions as their own--is something that manifests in children of this age group. Young children who can barely vocalize, have been observed trying to comfort other people, such as a young boy offering his security blanket to an upset mother. If a child were operating on a strict punishment versus pleasure world view, then this offering of comfort would be an anomaly.

Maslow

• According to Abraham Maslow, a psychologist who theorized on human development, people have a certain, ascending order of needs that have to be met. The bottom of the pyramid is a person's physical needs such as hunger and thirst. The second level is physical safety and security. Only after these two needs have been met, does the third tier of love and belonging come in. It could be argued that it is a person's need to be loved and to belong that begins the development of a moral code that fits in with the demonstrated morals of those who he wishes to fit in with.

Learned Behavior

• Infant morality, like most other forms of behavior that young children show, is a learned behavior. While young children are learning speech and grammar from their parents, they're also learning about body language. Once a child begins to comprehend behavior, he begins to learn what's right and wrong by example. If a child is punished for an act, then he learns that it must be wrong in the eyes of his parents. It's only later, once children begin to interact with people other than their parents, and in situations outside their own home, do they begin to develop a higher and more complicated sense of morality than what they've been taught by example.