December 02, 2007

Are Babies Born with Morals?

If not, what can parents do to teach their children right from wrong?

Image courtesy Flickr.com

The UK's online Telegraph last week cited a new Yale study suggesting that babies as young as six months old can tell the difference between people who are likely to help them and people who are not. This prompted the author to ask, "Are babies born with morals?"

If it seems a huge leap from "babies can tell who is likely to help them" to "babies are born with morals," it's only because it is rather. One has only to take a cursory look inside oneself to understand that our standards of right and wrong when it comes to how others treat us are much more intuitive than our standards of right and wrong when it comes to our treatment of others.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear likely that this study means we can wind up our kids and let them loose into the world without any kind of guidance, and to be fair, I don't think that's what Roger Highfield meant to imply in the least. He merely intended it to spark conversation, and I am happy to take the bait. It offers the opportunity to ask another question while we're on the subject. "What can parents do to instill a sense of right and wrong in their children?"

Topic Tags: babies, family and relationships, morals, parenting, right and wrong

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by Gina Stepp

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