parental morality and family processes as predictors of adolescent morality

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Journal of Child and Family Studies [jcfs] ph258-jcfs-482383 February 4, 2004 23:18 Style file version Nov 28th, 2002

Journal of Child and Family Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, June 2004 (C© 2004), pp. 219–233

Parental Morality and Family Processesas Predictors of Adolescent Morality

Fiona A. White, Ph.D.1,3 and Kenan M. Matawie, Ph.D.2

This study investigated the extent to which parents’ moral thought and familyprocesses are involved in the socialization of adolescent moral thought. Olsonet al’s (1992) Circumplex Model and White’s (2000) Family Socialization Modelprovided the conceptual framework for predicting that families high in cohesion,adaptability and communication would facilitate the transmission of moral val-ues between parents and adolescents more effectively than families low in thesefamily processes. Results involving 218 adolescent-parent dyads revealed that per-ceived family cohesion and communication moderated the father-adolescent moralthought relationship; that several facets of both parents’ morality significantlypredicted adolescents’ morality; and that all three family processes significantlypredicted certain aspects of adolescent morality. Therefore the extent to whichparents’ socialize adolescent moral values will vary according to each parent’smoral view, the strength of family processes and the content of moral thought beingtransmitted.

KEY WORDS: family socialization; moral judgment; adolescence; parental influence; socialdevelopment.

The family is the first important context for the socialization of moralityand remains one of the most important sources of influence in adolescent moraldevelopment (Lollis, Ross & Leroux 1996; Zern, 1996). Moreover, the family, andits associated processes, makes an unique contribution to the development of moraljudgement by providing an affective and supportive climate allowing members tofeel safe enough to challenge one another’s ideas on moral issues (Powers, 1988).The family is also an important source of access to the outside world by allowing an

1Lecturer, School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, Australia.2Lecturer, School of Quantitative Methods and Mathematical Sciences, University of Western Sydney,Australia.

3Correspondence should be directed to Fiona White, School of Psychology (A17), The University ofSydney, NSW 2006, Australia; e-mail: [email protected].

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220 White and Matawie

individual’s moral judgement to develop through generalisation and transference ofmoral issues to other social environments such as school and work (Powers, 1988).

Moral judgement research has been driven by Kohlberg’s stage theory whichfocuses on the level of cognitive sophistication, orform, of one’s moral reasoning.An alternative is to focus on thecontentof moral thought, which refers to what/whoit is one reasons about when making a moral judgement. Henry (1983) has pro-vided an important content-reformulation of Kohlberg’s stage theory, and arguesthat it is the “ascribed sources of moral authority” that differentiates Kohlberg’sstages 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (White, 1996b; 1997). The five sources of moral authorityidentified by Henry (1983) are Satisfying Self-Interest (internal source), Familyexpectations (external source), Educator expectations (external source), Worth ofSociety (principles as the source) and Equality for Individuals (principles as thesource). The advantages of Henry’s content-reformulation are that one source isnot more morally adequate than another, but different, and several sources maybe held concurrently depending on one’s family socialization experiences (White,1996b; 1997). Because of these advantages, sources of moral authority will be theconstruct used to measure parents’ and adolescents’ content of moral thought inthis study.

Research has examined the role of family processes and the socialization ofmorality. Powers (1988), Walker and Taylor (1991) and Speicher (1992, 1994)have highlighted the importance of parental and familial contexts in promoting thestage of moral judgement development by examining processes such as parentalwarmth and affection, attitudes, interactions, discussion styles and disciplinarystyles. Family processes such as family adaptability, cohesion and communica-tion, have also been found to predict differences in the content of adolescent moralthought (White,1996, 2000). These processes are derived from Olson, McCubbin,Barnes, Larsen, Muxen, and Wilson’s (1992) Circumplex Model and are mea-sured via Olson et al’s., (1992) Family Adaptability and Cohesion EvaluationScale (FACES II) and Barnes and Olson’s (1985) Parent-Adolescent Communi-cation Scale (PACS). Olson et al., (1992) define family cohesion as the emotionalbond among family members. Specific processes associated with cohesion arewarmth, boundaries, coalition, time, space, friends, decision making, interests andrecreation. Olson et al., (1992) define family adaptability as the ability of a familysystem to change its power structure (assertiveness, control, discipline), negotia-tion style, role relationships, and relationship rules in response to situational anddevelopmental stress. Finally, Olson (1992) defines positive communication interms of empathy, reflective listening and supportive comments that enable fami-lies to be aware of each others needs and preferences. Olson et al., (1992) found thathigh levels of cohesion, adaptability and positive communication are associatedwith better family functioning in non-clinical families.

White (1996, 2000) extended Olson’s model to the socialization of valuesfinding that adolescents who perceived their families as very cohesive or high

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Parental Morality and Family Processes as Predictors of Adolescent Morality 221

on emotional closeness, reported being more influenced by Family and Equalitysources of moral authority in their moral decision making than adolescents whoperceived their family as low on family cohesion or disengaged. Also, adolescentswho perceived their family system to be high on adaptability, that is very flex-ible with regard to changing the family power structure, negotiation style, rolerelationships, and relationship rules, reported being influenced by all sources ofmoral authority in their decision-making than adolescents who perceived theirfamily to have low adaptability, that is rigid with regard to changes in role rela-tionships and rules (White, 2000). Finally, White (2000) found that adolescentswho perceived high positive communication with their parents, showed signifi-cantly greater levels of agreement with their parents on moral issues than ado-lescents who perceived low positive communication with their parents. Thesefindings have been replicated amongst families living in regional areas of NewSouth Wales, Australia (White, Howie, Perz, 2000), and suggest a strong empir-ical relationship between family processes and the content of adolescent moralthought.

Bandura (1991) has theorized that the moral standards to which adults sub-scribe guide the type of morality they teach to their children. Recent research hasdemonstrated the importance of investigating multiple family perspectives to morefully understand how moral thought is socialized. Positive relationships betweenparents’ and childrens’ moral thought have been predicted on the assumptionthat parents stimulate the adolescent’s cognitive resources by encouraging greaterparticipation in decision-making and spending more time exploring moral prob-lems. For example, Powers (1982, 1988) found that parents with advanced levelsof moral judgement were better able to clarify contradictions and confusions inmoral reasoning for their child because they can understand more aspects of amoral situation. The strength of the parent-adolescent moral thought relationshipin previous research has varied according to the age of the child. For example,Haan, Langer and Kohlberg (1976) found no significant relationship between thelevel of moral development of daughters and their parents, and only a modestcorrelation between sons and their parents. Walker and Taylor (1991) recruited63 family triads with children drawn from grades 1, 4, 7 and 10, finding consis-tently positive but nonsignificant relations between parents’ and their childrens’levels of moral reasoning on Kohlberg’s Moral Judgement Interview (MJI). How-ever, Speicher (1994) found that parent-child correlations of moral judgementson the MJI increased during late adolescence and adulthood. Thus it would ap-pear from the literature that intrafamilial patterns in moral reasoning become moreconsistent with the child’s increasing age. In order to investigate this finding fur-ther, the present study will examine the nature of the relationship between lateadolescents’ and their parents’ moral thought.

Research findings indicate that simple exposure to parents’ advanced moralreasoning is not sufficient to stimulate moral reasoning in children (Walker &

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Taylor, 1991). Speicher (1992) found that adolescents’ mature moral judgementwas related to their perceptions of qualities in the parent-adolescent relationship.More recently, Grusec, Goodnow, and Kuczynski (2000) argued that warmth in theparent-child relationships may lead to strong identification with parental actionsand values, as warmth may make children eager to be similar to, or please the agentof socialization. Thus it may be the nature of adolescents’ perception of the levelof emotional closeness with their parents (and not their parents’ moral thoughtalone) that determines whether adolescents choose to model or internalise theirparents’ moral thought. Moreover, supportive family interactions (humour, listen-ing responses, praise, and encouragement to participate) set a positive atmospherefor discussions, whereas hostility, sarcasm, and threats, inhibited the meaningfulexchange of ideas (Walker & Taylor, 1991). These findings would suggest thatfamily process variables (emotional closeness, warmth, encouragement etc) act asmoderators in the parent-adolescent value relationship, that is, family processesaffect the strength of the relationship between parents’ values (predictor variable)and adolescents’ values (criterion variable).

Other family processes have also been found to moderate the parent-adolescent moral thought relationship. Walker and Taylor (1991) investigatedparents’ perceived child-rearing style, Hart (1988) examined fathers’ self-ratedinvolvement and affection, Dunton (1989) studied parents’ responsiveness and de-mandingness and Holstein (1972) found that parental encouragement was relatedto higher moral reasoning, and maternal dominance and hostility were related tolow moral reasoning. Speicher (1992, p. 129) acknowledges that the combined re-sults from relevant studies (Fodor, 1973; Hart, 1988; Hoffman & Saltzstein, 1967;Holstein, 1969; Parikh, 1980; Shoffeitt, 1971) consistently indicate positive rela-tionships between parental warmth or affectional involvement and advanced moraldevelopment in children. These findings consistently show that family processesplay a significant role in the socialization of moral reasoning from parents to ado-lescents. However, all of this research has examined the socialization of the “stage”of moral judgement rather than the “content” of moral thought, a limitation thatwill be addressed in this present investigation. Moreover, previous research is yetto clarify which family processes are better moderators of the parent-adolescentmoral thought relationship.

Therefore, one aim of this research project is to investigate the extent to whichfamily process variables such as family cohesion, adaptability and communica-tion moderate the parent-adolescent moral thought relationship. The moderationhypothesis predicts that the relationship between parents’ moral thought and ado-lescents’ moral thought will differ depending on whether or not there are highor low levels of family cohesion, adaptability or communication. In the modelunder investigation parents’ moral thought is the focal predictor (X), cohesion,adaptability and communication are the moderator variables (Z) and adolescents’moral thought is the criterion variable (Y). Based on the literature reviewed, it is

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hypothesized that families “high” on family cohesion, adaptability and positivecommunication will provide a better family context for adolescents to learn and/oradopt their parents’ moral views than families “low” on family cohesion, adapt-ability and communication.

METHOD

Participants

Participants comprised 218 families from city and rural areas of New SouthWales, Australia. Recruitment involved contacting adolescents attending localschools and universities, and inquiring about their willingness to participate ina study in which they and their parents would complete a battery of questionnairesabout family characteristics and social issues. After being informed about the gen-eral nature of the study, 155 adolescent-mother-father triads and 63 adolescent-mother dyads consented to participate. Of the families initially contacted, 67%participated. The 158 female and 60 male adolescent participants were aged 14to 19 years (M = 16.9; SD= 1.2), 82% were born in Australia, 11% in Asia and7% in Europe. The mothers were aged 33 to 59 years (M = 44.8; SD= 4.9), and83% were married and 17% were either divorced or separated. The fathers wereaged 35 to 76 years (M = 47.9; SD= 5.9), and all were married at the time ofthe study. Approximately 80% of the participating families were from middle-class backgrounds as indicated by job status, household income and residentialsuburb.

Measures

The constructs measured in this study included family demographics, familyprocesses (cohesion adaptability and communication) and moral thought (InternalMorality, External Morality and Principle Morality). Data from all measures wasobtained from multiple family informants including one adolescent child, theirmother, and their father.

i) Family demographicssuch as sex, age, country of birth and parents’marital status, were measured by White’s (1996a) Family InformationQuestionnaire (FIQ)

ii) Family processessuch as cohesion and adaptability were measured byOlson et al’s, (1992) Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scale(FACES II). The family adaptability dimension includes sixteen itemssuch as “We shift household responsibilities from person to person”and had an internal consistency rating of .74 for the present study. The

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means (M) and standard deviations (SD) for family adaptability in thisstudy were as follows: adolescents (M = 44.49, SD= 8.1), mothers(M = 46.72, SD= 6.6), and fathers (M = 47.73, SD= 5.8). The fam-ily cohesion dimension consists of fourteen items such as “Our familydoes things together” and had an internal consistency rating of .75 forthe present study. The means and standard deviations for family cohe-sion in this study were as follows: adolescents (M= 55.44,SD= 10.3),mothers (M = 60.54, SD= 9.1), and fathers (M = 61.23, SD= 8.7).The family communication variable was measured by Barnes and Olson’s(1985) Parent and Adolescent Communication Scale (PACS) and includesitems such as “My mother/father tries to understand my point of view.”The internal consistency rating of the PACS for the present study was.72. The means and standard deviations for family communication inthis study were as follows: adolescent-mother (M = 67.54,SD= 14.5),adolescent-father (M = 63.13,SD= 15.1), mothers (M = 76.62,SD=11.8), and fathers (M = 73.90,SD= 11.5).

iii) Moral thoughtwhich includes Internal Morality, External Morality andPrinciple Morality, was measured by White’s (1997) revised MoralAuthority Scale (MAS-R) which provides five subscale scores for theFamily and Educator sources (External morality); Society and Equal-ity sources (Principle morality) and the Self-interest source (Internalmorality); The means and standard deviations for External morality inthis study were as follows: adolescents (M = 64.32,SD= 21.6), moth-ers (M = 60.42,SD= 25.5), and fathers (M = 61.99,SD= 25.17); forPrinciple morality: adolescents (M = 95.75,SD= 14.2), mothers (M =95.05,SD= 15.5), and fathers (M = 94.56,SD= 16.3); and for Inter-nal morality: adolescents (M= 41.54,SD= 10.2), mothers (M = 37.72,SD= 11.9), and fathers (M = 37.01,SD= 12.4). These means are de-rived from respondents’ ratings of the level of influence that each sourcehas on their moral decision. The internal consistency for the five subscalesof the MAS-R for the present study range from .71 to .76.

Procedure

Adolescents who volunteered to participate were tested in groups of 10 to12 in a school or university classroom. Testing sessions lasted approximately40 minutes. After submitting their completed questionnaires to the researcher,adolescents were given a set of parent-questionnaires to take home in stamped-self-addressed envelopes. Parents were instructed to complete their questionnairesseparately in a quiet room at home and mail their completed questionnaires to theresearcher. The completion order of the four scales was counterbalanced acrossparticipants.

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RESULTS

Data Reduction

Prior to testing the main hypothesis, a preliminary correlational analysiswas conducted on adolescent, mother and father responses for the five sourcesof moral authority as measured by the MAS-R. The findings reveal that therewere highly significant (atp < .001) and consistent correlations between Soci-ety and Equality sources for adolescents, mothers and fathers (r = 0.64, 0.72,0.66, respectively) and Family and Educator sources for adolescents, mothers andfathers (r = 0.62, 0.74, 0.64, respectively). Therefore, subsequent analyses wereperformed on three independent sources:Internal morality (as measured by theSelf Interest source),External morality(combined subscale scores for Family andEducator sources) andPrinciples of morality(combined subscale scores for Soci-ety’s Welfare and Equality sources). These statistical groupings are supported byconceptual groupings identified in the literature.

Preliminary Analyses

Twelve bi-variate correlational analyses were conducted to test whether sexand age were associated with adolescent, mother and father perceptions of Internalmorality, External morality, and Principles of morality. All these tests revealed non-significant finding. Thus it appears that amongst the present sample, age and sexdoes not have any linear relationship with the sources of moral thought held byparticipants.

An Analytic Framework for Testing Moderator Effects of Family Processes

Moderated Multiple Regression (MMR) analyses were performed to test themoderating effect of family processes on the relationship between parent and ado-lescent moral thought relationship (Aiken & West, 1991; Jaccard, Turrisi, & Wan,1990). The moderator model was tested using three simple main effect analysesthat tested parental moral thought (X) as a predictor of adolescent moral thought(Y = b1X); three additive main effect analyses that tested parental moral thoughtand a family process variable as additive predictors of adolescent moral thought(Y = b1X + b2Z); and three moderated multiple regression analyses that testedparental moral thought (X) and a family process variable (Z) as additive predictorsand a multiplicative term of these predictors (XZ) on adolescent moral thought(Y = b1X + b2Z + b3X Z). The multiplicative term is said to encompass the in-teraction (or moderation) effect. This series of analyses was conducted foreachparent andeachof the three sources of moral authority. It should be noted thatalthough there may be significant main effects for the predictor (X) and moderator

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variables (Z) as measured by a significantb1 andb2, the interaction between thepredictor and moderator variable (XZ) as measured byb3 must be statisticallysignificant in order to test the moderation hypothesis (Baron and Kenny, 1986;Aiken and West, 1991; Jaccard et al., 1990).

Before any of the regression analyses were conducted, single predictor vari-ables (hereX and Z) were centered (i.e., put in deviation score form so thattheir means are zero) and theXZ term was formed by multiplying together thetwo centered predictors. According to Aiken and West (1991) centering variables(individual predictor variables and the product term) yields desirable statisticalproperties when testing interactions in multiple regression. After centering thesevariables Friedrich’s (1982) strategy for appropriate standardized regression co-efficients with interaction terms was applied to this analysis (cited in Aitken andWest, 1991, pp. 42–44).

The findings reported in Table I reveal the main effects and interaction (ormoderator) effects of each parents’ External morality and family process variableson adolescent External morality. As for the main effects, it is clearly the case thatfor each parent, their External morality significantly predicts adolescent External

Table I. Standardised Beta Coefficients (β), R2 andF values for Main Effects and Interaction Effectsof Each Parents’ External Morality and Family Process Variables on Adolescent External Morality

Adolescent external morality (Y2)

Mother (n = 200) Father (n = 152)

M1 M2 M3 M1 M2 M3

Parent externalMorality (X1) .28∗∗∗ .25∗∗∗ .25∗∗∗ .25∗∗ .26∗∗ .27∗∗∗Cohesion (Z1) .24∗∗∗ .25∗∗∗ .30∗∗∗ .32∗∗∗Interaction (X1Z1) .04 .30∗∗∗R2 .08 .14 .14 .06 .14 .20F 17.04∗∗∗ 16.25∗∗∗ 10.93∗∗∗ 9.3∗∗ 11.9∗∗∗ 12.02∗∗∗

Parent externalMorality (X1) .28∗∗∗ .25∗∗∗ .24∗∗∗ .25∗∗ .24∗∗ .24∗∗Adaptability (Z2) .22∗∗∗ .22∗∗∗ .26∗∗ .26∗∗Interaction (X1Z2) −.10 .02R2 .08 .13 .14 .06 .11 .12F 17.04∗∗∗ 14.86∗∗∗ 10.84∗∗∗ 9.3∗∗ 9.1∗∗∗ 6.47∗∗∗

Parent externalMorality (X1) .28∗∗∗ .25∗∗∗ .25∗∗∗ .25∗∗ .24∗∗ .23∗∗Communication (Z3) .14∗ .15∗∗ .05 .05Interaction (X1Z3) −.02 .18∗R2 .08 .09 .10 .06 .06 .09F 17.04∗∗∗ 10.08∗∗∗ 6.71∗∗∗ 9.3∗∗ 4.17∗ 4.64∗∗

NoteM1 = main effect simple regression model for parental moral thought; M2= the main effectadditive regression model for parental moral thought and the family process variable; M3= themoderated multiple regression model for parental moral thought and the family process variable.Where∗ p < .05.∗∗ p < .01.∗∗∗ p < .001.

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morality (see columns M1). Moreover, family process variables of cohesion, adapt-ability and communication also significantly predict adolescent External morality(see columns M2). With regard to the interaction effects, cohesion and fathers’External morality significantly interact (b3 = .30, p < .001) to predict adolescentExternal morality. The change inR2 from .14 (M2) to .20 (M3) is significant(p < .001) and indicates that cohesion moderates the father-adolescent Externalmorality relationship. Moreover, communication and fathers’ External moralitysignificantly interact (b3 = .18, p < .05) to effect adolescent External morality.The change inR2 from .06 (M2) to .09 (M3) is significant (p < .05) and indi-cates that communication also moderates the father-adolescent External moralityrelationship. In order to test direction of this moderation effect, and thus the hypoth-esis, the cohesion and communication dimensions were split into three levels, low,moderate and high, and correlations were calculated between fathers’ and adoles-cents’ External morality scores for each level. The results revealed thatr = −.13,p > .05 for the low cohesion group ,r = −.004, p > .05 for the moderate co-hesion group andr = .50, p < .001 for the high cohesion group. Similarly, theresults revealed thatr = .06, p > .05 for the low communication group ,r = .20,p < .05 for the moderate communication group andr = .46, p < .001, for thehigh communication group. Whereas these results support the hypotheses for thefather-adolescent External morality relationship, Table I shows that there was nosupport for the moderation hypothesis concerning the mother-adolescent Externalmorality relationship.

The findings reported in Table II reveal the main effects and interaction (ormoderator) effects of each parent’s Principles of morality and family processvariables on adolescent Principles of morality. As for the main effects, it is clearlythe case that for each parent, their Principles of morality significantly predict ado-lescent Principles of morality (see columns M1). However, the family processvariables of cohesion, adaptability and communication do not significantly predictadolescent Principles of morality (see columns M2). With regards to the interac-tion effects (See column M3), there are no significant findings. Except for fathers’Principles of morality and communication (see column M2 and M3), the addi-tive (main) effects of each parents’ Principles of morality and each of the familyprocess variables, mainly due to the statistical strength of parents’ moral thought,predict a significant proportion of the variance of adolescent Principles of morality(SeeR2 and correspondingF values for columns M1, M2 and M3 in Table II).

Finally, with regard to adolescent Internal morality, there were no signif-icant main effects for parental morality or the additive main effect of parentalmorality and family processes variables. There were also no interaction effects formothers’ Internal morality and cohesion (R2 = .04; F = 2.35, p > .05), mothers’Internal morality and adaptability (R2 = .02; F = 1.52, p > .05), mothers’ Inter-nal morality and communication (R2 = .02; F = 1.00, p > .05), fathers’ Internalmorality and cohesion (R2 = .05; F = 2.47, p > .05); fathers’ Internal morality

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Table II. Standardised Beta Coefficients (β), R2 and F values for Main Effects and InteractionEffects of Each Parents’ Principles of Morality and Family Process Variables on Adolescent Principles

of Morality

Adolescent external morality (Y3)

Mother (n = 200) Father (n = 152)

M1 M2 M3 M1 M2 M3

Parent principles ofMorality (X2) .21∗∗ .22∗∗ .23∗∗ .22∗∗ .22∗∗ .22∗∗Cohesion (Z1) .06 .06 .06 .07Interaction (X2Z1) .09 .07R2 .05 .06 .06 .05 .05 .06F 10.2∗∗ 5.77∗∗ 4.35∗∗ 7.56∗∗ 4.22∗ 3.03∗

Parent principles ofMorality (X2) .21∗∗ .22∗∗ .22∗∗ .22∗∗ .22∗∗ .24∗∗Adaptability (Z2) .09 .08 .05 .05Interaction (X2Z2) .07 .13R2 .05 .06 .07 .05 .05 .07F 10.2∗∗ 6.29∗∗ 4.48∗∗ 7.56∗∗ 4.04∗ 3.45∗

Parent principles ofMorality (X2) .21∗∗ .18 .19∗∗ .22∗∗ .15∗ .15∗Communication (Z3) −.01 −.01 −.08 −.08Interaction (X2Z3) .04 −.07R2 .05 .04 .04 .05 .04 .04F 10.2∗∗ 3.59∗ 2.54∗ 7.56∗∗ 2.52 1.99

Note.M1 = main effect simple regression model for parental moral thought; M2= the main effectadditive regression model for parental moral thought and the family process variable; M3= themoderated multiple regression model for parental moral thought and the family process variable.Where∗ p < .05.∗∗ p < .01.∗∗∗ p < .001.

and adaptability (R2 = .03;F = 1.65,p > .05); and fathers’ Internal morality andcommunication (R2 = .03; F = 1.67, p > .05). These results suggest that ado-lescent Internal morality is very much independent of parental Internal moralityand family socialization processes. Refer to Fig. 1 for a summary of the significantfindings of the Family Socialization Model.

DISCUSSION

Our findings support the view that parents play an influential role in theirchildren’s moral thinking (Grusec, Goodnow & Kuczynski, 2000; Taris, 2000;Walker, Hennig & Krettenauer, 2000; White, 2000). They reveal that both par-ents’ External and Principle morality significantly predict their adolescent chil-drens’ External and Principle morality. It was also found that family socializationprocesses of cohesion, adaptability and positive communication significantly pre-dict adolescent External morality. Fathers’ External morality significantly inter-acted with father-adolescent cohesion and communication in predicting adolescentExternal morality.

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(F)

M

(F)

(F)

(F)

(F)

(F)

Adolescents’ External Morality

M

M

M

Cohesion

Adaptability

Communication

Parents' External Morality

Parents' Principles of

Morality Adolescents’ Principles of

Morality

M

Fig. 1. The Family Socialisation Model of Moral Thought. A graphical depiction of thesignifcant findings. Main affects are shown via a full line and the moderator effects areshown via a dotted line. The analyses invloving mothers (M ) are shown in bold and thefathers’ (F) analyses are shown in parentheses.

The main effect regression analyses revealed that family cohesion, adapt-ability and positive communication significantly predicted adolescent Externalmorality, but did not predict adolescent Principle morality or Internal morality. Inparticular, family cohesion, or emotional closeness, was the most significant pre-dictor of adolescent External morality. This finding is consistent with White’s(2000) findings that adolescents from cohesive families ascribed significantlygreater influence to External morality (ie., the Family source of moral author-ity) than adolescents from less cohesive families. Grusec et al (2000) would arguethat the warmth present in these cohesive families may lead to strong identificationwith parental actions and family values as warmth may make adolescents eager toplease the agent of socialization. Moreover, these significant findings are consis-tent with Speicher’s (1992) review of relevant research (Fodor, 1973; Hart, 1988;Hoffman & Saltzstein, 1967; Holstein, 1969; Parikh, 1980; Shoffeitt, 1971), whichfound that a positive relationship exists between parental warmth or affectionalinvolvement and moral development in children.

Furthermore, the family process of adaptability, or the ability of a familyto change its role relationships and rules, was found to be a significant predictorof adolescent External morality. One possible explanation for these significantfindings may be that adolescents who perceive their family rules and roles tobe flexible and changing are appreciative of this opportunity provided by theirparents, and are therefore more likely to regard the External sources, in general,as important in their moral decision making.

Positive family communication, or the degree of understanding and satisfac-tion experienced in family interactions, was found to be a significant predictor

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of adolescent External morality. It may be the case that just the right amount ofparental encouragement of the adolescent’s participation in family discussions(Parikh, 1980) facilitates discussions and a meaningful exchange of ideas (orthoughts about moral issues) from parent to child (Walker & Taylor, 1991), whichin turn makes them value the importance of the family (ie., External morality) inmoral decision making.

In general, the findings presented in this study reveal that families that arecohesive, adaptable and communicative provide the appropriate family conditionsto promote the importance of External morality in adolescent moral decision mak-ing. Future research will need to investigate the role of other important socialisingagents, such as the peer group or the media, on influencing Principle morality.

Investigating each parent’s morality separately in influencing adolescentmorality provided some interesting results. Mothers’ External morality andPrinciple morality significantly predicted their children’s External morality andPrinciple morality. This finding is consistent with Powers (1982) and Speicher’s(1992) research which showed that mothers’ lovingness and responsiveness to theadolescents’ needs, as well as high emotional cohesiveness and concern amongfamily members is associated with advanced adolescent moral judgement.

Furthermore, fathers’ External morality and Principle morality significantlypredicted their adolescents’ External morality and Principle morality. This findingis consistent with previous research. Hart (1988) noted that paternal identificationand involvement were found to be related to children’s moral judgement develop-ment, here subjects whose fathers reported more involvement and affection wereat higher levels of moral judgement from childhood through to early adulthood.

The finding that adolescents’ Internal morality was statistically independentof each parents’ Internal morality may be explained by the fact that while adoles-cents consider parental authority legitimate in specific domains, they question thelegitimacy of parental authority in others (Smetana, 1988). Moreover, it may be thecase that adolescents’ Internal morality is not related to parents’ Internal moralitybecause it is the most personal source of moral thought. Overall, the findings areconsistent with Speicher’s (1994) findings that parent-child correlations of moraljudgment remain strong during late adolescence and adulthood as the child’s moralreasoning becomes more consistent with the child’s increasing age.

One important advantage in analysing the Internal, External and Principlemorality separately was the finding that each source was predicted by a differentcombination of parents’ morality and moderating family processes. For example,Table I shows that 20% (M3) of the variance of adolescents’ External morality waspredicted by the interaction between fathers’ External morality and adolescents’perceived level of family cohesion. In addition, the significant (p < .001) changein R2 (between M2 and M3) further supported this moderation effect. One possibleway of interpreting this finding is that adolescents who perceive their family in apositive light were more likely to attribute influence to the Family source in their

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moral decision making, which is a subscale of External morality. Similarly, 9%of the variance of adolescents External morality was predicted by the interactionbetween fathers’ External morality and adolescents’ perceived level of positivecommunication with their father. In addition, the significant (p < .05) change inR2 (between M2 and M3) further supported this moderation effect Here adolescentsperception of positive family communication and their father’s External moralitysignificantly contribute to their External morality.

Further analysis of three different levels (high, moderate and low) of thesesignificant moderator effects revealed that it was the high cohesion and high com-munication groups that reported the strongest father-adolescent External moralityrelationship. This finding is consistent with Grusec et al’s. (2000) contention thatparents who display different forms of responsiveness, raise children who displaydifferent forms of value acquisition. In further support of this study’s finding, Taris(2000) argues that parents’ and children’s standards correspond more closely iftheir relationship is characterised by openness and warmth, because having goodrelationships with parents makes it easier for adolescents to see the reasons for theirparents’ standards and, consequently, to accept and internalise those standards.

In contrast, the parent-adolescent Internal morality relationship was not mod-erated by any family processes variables. This result is possibly due the previousfinding of a non-significant relationship between parents’ Internal morality andadolescents’ Internal morality. As previously discussed, as long as adolescentsquestion the legitimacy of parental authority in their “personal” moral domain, nodegree of cohesive, adaptability or communicativeness will increase the strength ofthe relationship between adolescents and parents “personal” or Internal morality.

There are some important limitations of the present study that require dis-cussion. Firstly, 67% of families in the present study volunteered to participate;this self-selection may have biased the findings towards well-functioning families.Future research will need to explore less well-functioning families in order to gaina more balanced understanding of the transmission of values. The present studyfocussed on the “process” level of families; that is, the extent to which familiesare cohesive, adaptable and communicative. Future research should also examinefamily “structure” and investigate whether the transmission of values occurs dif-ferently in singled-parent and dual-parent families. Finally, demographic variablesother than sex and age needs to be investigated in relation to morality, one suchvariable is culture or ethnic identity. It may be the case that one’s culture and itsassociated beliefs and rituals also relate to one’s responses to moral issues.

Overall, this research clearly shows that parents’ External and Principlemorality continues to play a significant role in shaping their children’s Exter-nal and Principle morality even into late adolescence. The family socializationmodel (FSM) of the content of moral thought, investigated here, reveals that par-ents’ External morality and Principles of morality significantly predicts adolescentExternal morality and Principles of morality. Also, family socialization variables

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such as cohesion, adaptability and communication significantly predict adolescentExternal morality. Importantly, family cohesion and communication are found tosignificantly moderate the father-adolescent External morality (ie., Family andEducators) relationship. Overall, it is concluded that an analysis that takes intoaccount each parent’s moral view, the strength of family processes and the contentof moral thought being transmitted, provides researchers and educators with animproved understanding of the complex processes involved in the socialization ofadolescent moral thought.

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parental morality and family processes as predictors of adolescent morality

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