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| Moral Judgment Among Children As Related To The Perceived Maternal Acceptance-Rejection: A Comparative Study of Boys and Girls | |||||||
| Paper Id :
15716 Submission Date :
18/02/2022 Acceptance Date :
18/02/2022 Publication Date :
24/02/2022
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| Abstract | The present study was conducted on a sample of 200 children of both sexes, in the age range of 9 to 12 years, out of the total, 100 children perceived their mothers as accepting and 100 perceived their mothers as rejecting. The design used the two extreme groups that were located by using the Q1 and Q3 techniques. The results indicate that the children who perceived their mothers as accepting were higher on moral judgment than those who perceived maternal rejection of them. Extending this point of view to find out the sex-wise differences in moral judgement scores of the parentally accepted and rejected children. The girls scored significantly higher than the boys. | ||||||
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| Keywords | Moral Judgment, Children. | ||||||
| Introduction |
The review of literature in the area of personality suggests that the early years of life play a crucial role in the development of personality. Mothers are the most important socializing agents for the cognitive, conative and affective development of the child. The primary responsibility for the positive development of mental and emotional health of the children is attributed to the mothers, they are chief architects of the child's personality. It is through the mother that the child acquires the dominant beliefs, values, motives and behaviour of the culture. The mother plays the role of teacher at the very early stage of child development. She teaches the child, what is right and what is wrong, which is related to moral standards. |
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| Aim of study | The aim of socialization is to induce the individual to conform willingly to the ways of society and the groups to which he belongs. Studies of socialization are generally limited to demonstrations that child-rearing practices and play have an impact on personality development. In the present study, it is assumed that maternal acceptance is related to moral judgement behaviour also. The main hypothesis of the present study is that the moral judgement behaviour is related to perceived maternal acceptance. In other words, boys tend to perceive greater maternal rejection than their girl counterparts. | ||||||
| Review of Literature | Saxena V. (1992) found that the children who perceive maternal rejection tend to indulge in negative attention-seeking classroom behaviour. If such behaviour persists over a period of time, a person is likely to indulge in antisocial acts. It is well-established fact that the mother is the chief architect of a child’s personality. She acts as an ‘expressive leader’ in the family and preserves the culture, values, traditions etc. She is the source of development of competence in early childhood (white & watts,1973).
ohn R. Buri et al. (1988) studied the effects of parental authoritarianism and authoritativeness on self-esteem of 230 college students. Authoritarianism and authoritativeness of both mother and the father were found to be significantly correlated with self-esteem. Authoritarianism was inversely related to self-esteem while authoritativeness was directly related to self-esteem. A person with an injured low self-esteem is likely to resort to revolting behaviour often of abnormal or anti-social type. |
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| Sampling | 200 children in the age range of 9-12 years consisting of 100 boys & 100 girls, control group carefully matched on variables such as age and SES, served as subjects in the present study. |
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| Tools Used | 1. Moral judgement test - This test was used to study the moral judgement of the children. 2. PARQ - This test was used to assess the maternal acceptance-rejection. |
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| Result and Discussion |
Results
The table given below shows the relationship between girls, boys and moral judgment. The perusal of the table given above, shows that moral judgement scores of the girls were significantly higher than the those of the boys (Means = 43.48 and 37.67; SD’s = 6.16 and 7.77; t = 5.92 significant at 0.01 level). The results appear to be contrary to the common-sense observation that under the Indian context, girls are likely to be higher on moral judgement than boys, because parents in general, and mothers, in particular, pay greater attention in building the values and moral norms of the girls, than the boys. Greater restrictions are observed in the case of girls in comparison to the boys. Girls are also more frequently subjected to parental sermons pertaining to what is right or wrong, what is good or bad. The hypothesis of the present study that the girls who perceive their mothers are likely to be having higher scores on moral judgment than the boys is therefore retained. Discussion Parental acceptance facilitates proper personality development of the child. It is important that the child feels loved, wanted and accepted by his parents who acts as the main agents of his security, bot physical and emotional. On the other hand, parental rejection may foster a distorted and devaluated self-esteem and self-appraisal. Rejecting mothers are likely to be cold, disapproving and punitiveas compared to non rejecting (or accepting) mothers. Parental rejection in general and maternal rejection in particular is likey to jeopardise the children’s feelings of security, may undermine their self-esteem and may also develop feelings of being unloved, unwanted and unaccepted. Because of these negative psychological consequences children may feel helpless, in their behaviour. These feelings may further motivate them to indulge in abnormal behaviour often of undesirable or anit-social nature. Parental rejection according to Rohner(1980) refers to the absence of significant withdrawal of warmth and affection either as perceived by the child or as objectively determined. Children may perceive their parents as not liking them, resenting them or viewing them as burden rather than a pleasure. Parental acceptance, on the other hand, refers to the perceived or ‘objectively’ determined warmth and affection parents can give to their children. |
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| Conclusion | In the present paper, the examination of parental acceptance-rejection was limited to parenting as it is perceived by the children and their mothers. By incorporating information from other sources we may have a more comprehensive picture. | ||||||
| References | 1. Anderson J. - The relationship between parental affection and dominance and the behaviour of children p, 505 - 506.
2. Agrawal, Geeta, Saxena, NK, Singh, S.D (1978). Child-rearing attitudes of mothers of emotionally adjusted and mal-adjusted children. Indian journal of clinical psychology. 5(2), 111 - 116.
3. Burchinal, LG (1958). Parent’s Attitudes and adjustment of children. The journal of genetic psychology 92: 69 - 79.
4. Burchinal, LG - Mothers and fathers differences in parental acceptance of children for controlled comparisons based on parental and family characteristics. The Journal of Genetic psychology. 92:103 - 110.
5. Piaget, J. - The moral judgment of the child, new york, Harcourt, 1932.
6. Saxena, Varija - Indian Journal of Psychology, 1993, 68 (3 & 4), 99-103. |
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