Comunicação moral materna, comportamento agressivo e pró-social na primeira infância: estudo de uma coorte de nascimentos

Abstract

Moral communication involves transmission of moral values regarding respect and concern for the well-being of others, care, cooperation, rights, and notions of justice. Different parenting styles and behaviours have been linked with children’s moral development and their own aggressive and prosocial behaviors. However, there is a scarcity of studies about the influence of parental moral communication on these outcomes, considering narratives and the content of other verbal communications. The first aim of this thesis was to develop a coding system for measuring moral communication between mothers and their children during a book sharing task, using filmed interactions among of mothers with 4-year-old children in the 2015 Pelotas Birth Cohort, which is a prospective population-based study of 4,275 children born in 2015 in the city of Pelotas, southern Brazil. Two latent factors of moral communication were identified, labelled material and interpersonal moral concern. The second aim of the thesis was to evaluate associations between maternal moral communication at age 4 and children's moral judgement at age 6-7. A positive association was found, although it was not clear which specific type of communication (about material vs. interpersonal moral concerns) was more important for child moral cognitions. Other predictors included higher family income, higher maternal parity, higher maternal education, child language ability, and child sex (being female). The third aim of the thesis was to evaluate associations between maternal moral communication at 4 years of age and children's aggressive and prosocial behaviors at age 6-7 years. No significant associations were found between maternal moral communication and children's aggressive or prosocial behaviors. These studies represent the first investigation of maternal moral communication in the Brazilian context, highlighting the need for more research in this area on other potential influences on young children’s moral development (such as exposure to violence, and cultural norms), and further investigation of the role of parental communication about morality in later periods of development, through mid childhood and adolescence.