Child Rearing, Prosocial Moral Reasoning, and Prosocial ... - CiteSeerX

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 1997, 20 (3), 509–527

Child Rearing, Prosocial Moral Reasoning, and Prosocial Behaviour Jan M.A.M. Janssens and Maja Dekovic´ University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands This study examined the relations between child rearing, prosocial moral reasoning, and prosocial behaviour. The sample consisted of 125 children (6–11 years of age) and both their parents. Child-rearing behaviour was assessed by both observations at home and interviews with the parents; prosocial moral reasoning by interviews with the children, and prosocial behaviour by questionnaires lled in by their teachers and classmates. Positive relations were found between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour, but only for the youngest children. Children growing up in a supportive, authoritative, and less restrictive environment behaved more prosocially and reasoned at a higher level about prosocial moral issues.

During the last decades many studies have examined the inuences of child rearing on child development . In this study, we focus on a child’s prosocial development. Two aspects of prosocial development were examined: prosocial behaviour and prosocial moral reasoning. Prosocial behaviour refers to action on behalf of someone else that involves a net cost to the actor. Such actions include sharing, comforting or helping another in distress, and making a donation to someone in need. Prosocial moral reasoning concerns reasoning about conicts in which the individual must choose between satisfying his or her wants and needs and those of others in a context in which laws, punishments, authorities, formal obligations, and other external criteria are irrelevant or de-emphasised (Eisenberg-Berg & Hand, 1979). According to Eisenberg’s theory about prosocial development (Eisenberg 1982b; Eisenberg & Miller, 1992), children’s reasoning about prosocial moral conicts is ordered into ve developmental stages or orientations, with each stage involving a more advanced cognitive structure of social concepts than the prior stages. At a lower level, a child is concerned with self-oriented consequences of Requests for reprints should be sent to Jan Janssens, Institute of Family Studies, University of Nijmegen, Postbox 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands. This research was supported by a grant of the Dutch Organization for Scientic Research. q 1997 The International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016

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behaviour. At higher levels, a child takes the other’s perspective or includes internalised values in his/her reasoning. The rst question addressed in this study concerns the relation between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour. Although relationships have been found between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour (Bar-Tal, Raviv, & Leiser, 1980; Eisenberg & Shell, 1986; Levin & Bekerman-Greenberg, 1980; Rubin & Schneider, 1973; for a review see Eisenberg, 1982b), the correlations found were moderate. Eisenberg (1982a) suggested a variety of factors that may explain the magnitude of these relations. First, the relation between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour might change as a function of age. Eisenberg (1987) suggested that moral action and moral reasoning should become more consistent with age. On the basis of studies in which it was found that persons reasoning at higher levels demonstrate higher consistency between reasoning and behaviour than persons reasoning at lower levels, she suggested that people reasoning at higher levels may assign more responsibility to the self for acting in a manner consistent with their choice of behaviour. On the other hand, Blasi (1980) argued that the decision whether or not to help depends on a variety of situational factors (e.g. the urgency of the other’s need, the possible conict of altruism with other moral considerations, personal characteristics of the person in need). For older children, these other situational cues may play a stronger role than merely the prosocial motive to help. Because of their higher level of sociocognitive development, older children not only reason at a higher level, but they are also more capable of considering other situational cues that may impede them from acting prosocially in a given situation, despite their motivation to help. Younger children are less capable of considering all situational cues and, therefore, may be more inclined to react impulsively from their own directly experienced feelings. Thus, there are competing hypotheses about the relation between age and the consistency between prosocial reasoning and behaviour. To test these competing hypotheses, we studied children from the rst, third, and fth grades. Another factor that may explain the magnitude of the relation between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour concerns the domains in which these two aspects of prosocial development have been assessed. Eisenberg (1982a) discussed studies in which the situations used to assess prosocial behaviour were different from those used to assess prosocial moral reasoning. According to Eisenberg (1982a), cognitions and behaviour are more closely related when examined in specic situations. In our study, prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour were examined in the same domain helping peers. The second aim of our study was to examine relations between child rearing and the two aspects of prosocial development , prosocial moral Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016

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reasoning, and prosocial behaviour. Child rearing appears to play an important role in the development of prosocial development (Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989; Hoffman, 1975; Radke-Yarro w, Zahn-Waxler, & Chapman, 1983; Staub, 1979). Specically, we examined the relation between prosocial development and two dimensions of child rearing that have traditionally been identied as basic in parental behaviour, support, and control (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Support may be dened as (Rollins & Thomas, 1979, p. 320): “behaviour manifest by a parent toward a child that makes the child feel comfortable in the presence of the parent and conrms in the child’s mind that he is basically accepted and approved as a person by the parent.” Although it is possible to distinguish theoretically different aspects of the support dimension, for example, warmth, nurturance, and responsiveness (Staub, 1979), empirical data indicate that all these aspects are closely related (Clarke-Stewart, 1973) and that they have a similarly positive effect on child development (Grusec & Lytton, 1988). Therefore, in this study parental support was dened as encompassing warmth, nurturance, and responsivene ss. The second dimension of child-rearing behaviour is parental control. Different relations have been found between parental control and child outcome, depending on the de nition of control used. In some studies, negative aspects of control were emphasised. This kind of control, which Hoffman (1970) labelled “power assertion”, includes behaviour such as physical punishment, deprivation of privileges and material resources, and verbal threats. Becker (1964), using the term “restrictiveness”, dened this kind of control as strictness in enforcing rules, setting narrow limits on the child’s behaviour, and frequent use of prohibitions. Baumrind (1971) has labelled this kind of control “authoritarian child-rearing style”. Parental control can also be exercised more democratically by using less coercive methods, for example, by giving explanations of rules, offering reasons for desired behaviour, pointing out the hurtful implications a child’s actions hold for others, asking children to perform up to their ability, giving children the opportunity to make their own decisions, and expecting mature behaviour and a high level of responsibility. Both forms of control were investigated in this study. We dened “restrictive control” as consisting of punitive control techniques, directiveness, strictness in enforcing rules, and inhibition of undesirable behaviour through negative feedback and reprimands. We dened “authoritative control” as consisting of encouragem ent towards the development of independenc e and the use of reasoning and explanations . It should be noted that, although support and control are theoretically distinct dimensions of child rearing, empirical ndings indicate that they are not independent (Dishion, 1990, Patterson & Bank, 1986; Patterson & Dishion, 1985). Positive relations have been found between parental support Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016

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and authoritative control, and negative relations between these two child-rearing behaviours and restrictive control (Dekovic´ , 1992; Dekovic´ & Janssens, 1992; Janssens & Gerris, 1992). Therefore, it may be more appropriate to consider child-rearing styles, than to speak about independent child-rearing dimensions. Based on the relations found between the three dimensions, child-rearing styles may be situated on a continuum. At one pole of this continuum is a style characterised by parental support and authoritative control and little use of restrictive control. At the other pole is a style characterised by use of restrictive control and less supportive and authoritative parenting. With regard to the relation between child rearing and prosocial behaviour, previous research indicates that there are positive relations between parental support and prosocial behaviour (Feshbach, 1975; Hoffman, 1975; Mussen, Rutherford, Harris, & Keasey, 1970; Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, & King, 1979), positive relations between authoritative control and prosocial behaviour (Feshbach, 1975; Grusec, 1982; Hoffman, 1975; Hoffman & Saltzstein, 1967; Zahn-Waxler et al., 1979), and negative relations between restrictive control and prosocial behaviour (Hoffman, 1975). We hypothesised that these relations become stronger with age. Although no study known to us has addressed this issue, studies which examined age-related changes in parent-child interaction provide evidence that parental interaction style changes with the child’s age (Maccoby, 1984). For example, Kuczynski, Kochanska, Radke-Yarrow, and Girnius-Brown (1987) found that maternal control strategies are especially likely to change with the age of the child, with an increase in authoritative strategies, and a decline in restrictive control. An increase in authoritative control may imply that older children behave more prosocially. But consistent with this approach we may hypothesise that the relation between child rearing and prosocial behaviour is stronger for younger children. When parents are more restrictive in controlling their younger children, these children would be more hedonistically oriented and would behave less prosocially. The evidence with regard to the relation between child rearing and prosocial moral reasoning is sparse. Eisenberg and Miller (1992) draw some tentative conclusions about socialisation correlates of prosocial moral reasoning from the existing literature. Between the ages of 5 and 6 years, children’s level of prosocial moral reasoning has been associated with supportive, nonpunitive, nonauthoritarian child-rearing practices. Between the ages of 7 and 8, relations between children’s level of moral reasoning and maternal reports of nonrestrictive, nonpunitive child-rearing practices were relatively weak (Eisenberg, Lennon & Roth, 1983). Between the ages of 9 and 10, these relations were even weaker. On the basis of these ndings, Eisenberg and Miller (1992) suggested that the strength of the relation between child rearing and prosocial moral reasoning changes with age. Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016


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Because we selected children from the rst, third, and fth grade, we were able to analyse further age-dependen t relations between child rearing and prosocial moral reasoning. Most of the studies examining relationships between child rearing and prosocial development have relied on parental self-reports as a major source of data about parental behaviour. In order to obtain also more objective estimates of child rearing in this study, we used two types of measures: self-reports obtained through interviews; and observations of parental behaviour. Finally, another purpose of the present study was to examine the behaviour of both parents in a family. Previous research has focused mainly on the mother’s role in children’s prosocial development. A study by Dekovic´ and Janssens (1992) yielded evidence indicating that fathers play an important role in the child’s development of social competence. Other studies that involved fathers yielded similar ndings (MacDonald, 1987; MacDonald & Parke, 1984; Parke et al., 1989; Roopnarine, 1987). On the other hand, Hart, Wolf, Wozniak, and Burts (1992) found that maternal, but not paternal, discipline style was related to a child’s prosocial behaviour . Since there have been few studies to date, it remains unclear how strong the father’s role is in relation to that of the mother. To address this issue, we assessed the relations between child rearing and prosocial development for fathers and mothers separately.

METHOD Subjects The sample consisted of 125 families, each with a child attending either the rst (20 boys and 20 girls), the third (19 boys and 19 girls), or the fth grade (24 boys and 23 girls) of an elementary school in the Netherlands. Families were recruited from 22 elementary schools. In a letter, parents were asked whether they, and their children, were willing to participate in the study; 125 families answered this letter afrmatively. From these families data were obtained from all 125 children, 124 mothers, and 113 fathers. The participating parents were predominantly highly educated; 43% of the fathers and 30% of the mothers nished vocational college or university, whereas 33% of the fathers and 42% of the mothers had a degree in secondary general education or senior vocational training.

Measures Prosocial Behaviour. We used two measures to assess prosocial behaviour. The child’s prosocial behaviour was assessed by teachers and by peers. Teachers may be more likely than peers to report on specic aspects of prosocial behaviour, but they may put more emphasis on a child’s Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016

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interactions with adults than with peers. Peers, on the other hand, have better access to relevant peer situations but they are, especially in the case of younger children, only capable of describing the general nature of their relationship in more global, relational terms, such as “being helpful” (Ladd & Oden, 1979). As teacher ratings and peer-nominations tend to assess different aspects of a child’s prosocial behaviour, we included both measures in this study, so that we were able to examine relations between child rearing and both types of prosocial behaviour . First, we asked the teachers of the children to ll in Weir and Duveen’s Prosocial Behaviour Questionnaire (PBQ) (Weir & Duveen, 1981). This questionnaire consists of 20 items to be rated on a 6-point scale, according to how descriptive each item is of a given child. The items included several examples of interpersonal behaviours (helping, sharing, giving, cooperating, responding to distress), whose common theme is a concern for others (e.g. “Will try to help someone who has been hurt”, “Shows sympathy to someone who has made a mistake”, “Offers to help other children who are having dif culty with a task in the classroom”). Weir and Duveen reported several ndings that support the concurrent validity of the PBQ. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) of the PBQ was 0.94. For each child a mean score was computed. The higher the score, the more prosocial the child was in the classroom, according to the teacher. Secondly, we asked all classmates (25–30 children in each classroom) the following question: “Name three children in your class who helped the most other children.” For each child, the number of nominations received by classmates was computed, and then divided by the total number of children in the class to adjust for variation in the number of classmates. The higher the score, the more the child was seen as helpful by classmates. Because the correlation between the two indices of prosocial behaviou r was modest ( r = .29; P , .05), we did not combine the two measures in a composite score, thus enabling us to analyse differential effects of childrearing patterns on each prosocial behaviour measure.

Prosocial Moral Reasoning. Prosocial moral reasoning was assessed using three stories developed by Eisenberg-Berg and Hand (1979) (the birthday party, the swimming contest, the bully). Each of these stories contained a conict between the wants, needs, and desires of the story’s protagonist and those of a needy other. The subjects were interviewed individually at school, with the order of stories randomised across subjects. The interviewer read each story to the child using illustrations to clarify the story content. All stories were about a hypothetical third person of the same age and sex as the subject. For all stories, the subjects were asked what the story character should do and why he/she should act in that manner. The children’s responses were tape-recorded and transcribed. Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016


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First, each child was scored for the number of stories in which he or she decided to help. Secondly, the level of prosocial moral reasoning was assessed for each reason given by a subject to help or not to help. Following Eisenberg’s (1982b) coding scheme, we distinguished between ve levels of reasoning: the least development ally mature level (level I) is a hedonistic orientation. At that level, the child is concerned with self-oriented consequences of behaviour. A higher level (level II) is a “need of others” orientation, characterised by concern for the physical, material, and psychological needs of others. At level III (approval and stereotyped orientation), stereotyped reasons to help or not to help are given, or helping is governed by considerations of others’ approval. At level IV (empathic orientation), the child takes the other’s perspective and sympathises with the other in need. At level V (internalised orientation), reasoning is based on internalised values. Children’s responses were coded by two independen t coders. The inter-rater agreement (Cohen’s kappa) was 0.80. For each level, the frequencies were computed (number of times the child used the type of reasoning belonging to a particular level across stories). Next, a composite measure representing the overall level of prosocial moral reasoning was computed (Eisenberg, 1987; Eisenberg et al., 1983), by multiplying the number of times the child reasoned at level I by 1 and by multiplying the number of times a child referred to level II, III, IV, and V by 2, 3, 4, or 5, respectively. These scores were then summed and divided by the total number of reasons given by the subject. Thus, for each child a score was computed representing his/her mean level of prosocial moral reasoning. Eisenberg (1987) suggested that stronger and more consistent relations between prosocial behaviour and prosocial moral reasoning may be obtained by computing correlations between particular behaviours and specic modes (e.g. hedonistic or empathic), rather than a summary index of reasoning. However, because there were no instances of high-leve l reasoning in children in the rst grade, and few instances of low-level reasoning in children in the third and fth grade, a summary index was used to assess prosocial moral reasoning in this study. Higher scores on this index reected higher levels of reasoning.

Child-rearing Behaviour. Child-rearing behaviour was assessed by observations and interviews. The interviews with the parents and the observations of parent-child interaction took place at the subjects’ homes during a single home visit. First, information regarding the family background was obtained. After that, the family was observed while working on social interaction tasks. Following this, each parent was individually interviewed. Mothers and fathers were observed while they worked together with the child on two puzzles: Wiggly-block and Tangram-puzzle. Both puzzles were Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016

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quite difcult for the child to complete alone. Parents were instructed to provide whatever help they felt their child needed, but they were asked not to touch the pieces of the puzzle, because the child should do this by himself or herself. Each of these two tasks lasted until the child completed the puzzle, or 10 minutes had elapsed. If the child completed both puzzles in less than 20 minutes, another Tangram-puzzle was presented to ensure that the observation time for each family was at least 20 minutes. A tape-recording was made of verbal interaction and later transcribed and coded. The unit of analysis for coding was a parental utterance directed at the child. Parental verbal behaviour was coded using the following three categories (Cohen’s kappa for each category is in parentheses): (1) support (0.91): offering help, active concern, sympathy, affection, and encouragement (e.g. “It is good” or “It is difcult, isn’t it?”); (2) authoritative control (0.88): giving explanations or suggestions, asking questions stimulating the child about a solution (e.g. “Maybe you should try to nd corners rst” or “How should the block at the corner look like?”; (3) restrictive control (0.81): negative commands, restrictions, explicit or implicit commands, or orders (e.g. “Don’t do that” or “Put it down”). The frequency of each of these categories of behaviour was computed. Because parents differed in their total amount of verbalisation during interaction, the frequencies were then transformed into proportions by dividing them by the number of utterances. Analysis of the parents’ verbal behaviour indicated no signicant differences in the frequencies of the three categories of behaviour between the two puzzles. Thus, the data from both tasks were combined in subsequent analyses. As hypothesised , the three types of child-rearing behaviour were not independent of each other. We conducted two factor analyses; one on the three observation measures (support, authoritative control, and restrictive control) used by mothers, and one on the three observation measures used by fathers. It was clear from these two factor analyses that in all analyses only one factor was suf cient to explain the variance of each of the three measures included in each analysis (57% for the mother measures and 67% of the father measures). The loadings of support, authoritative control, and restrictive control were, respectively, 0.65, 0.57, and 0.98 for mothers; and 0.69, 0.71, and 0.97 for fathers. Based on these results we decided to compute two factor scores using the regression method (SPSS Reference Guide, 1990): one for the three observation measures (support, authoritative control, and restrictive control) of mothers, and one for the three observation measures of fathers. Factor scores computed with the regression method have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 1. The higher a parental score on a factor, the more the parental child-rearing pattern was characterised by parental support, use of authoritative control, and a low level of restrictive control. Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016


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Following the observation session, individual interviews were conducted in order to present each parent with 10 hypothetical child-rearing situations involving failures to act prosocially (e.g. hurting a child, teasing a peer, being teased). Parents were asked to imagine that the main character of each story was their own child. Following each story, parents were asked: “What, if anything, would you do and/or say in such a situation, if your child behaves this way?” Parents could give more than one response to each situation. The anticipated strategies were coded using the following categories (Cohen’s kappa for each category is in parentheses): (1) support (0.93): physical affection; praising the child; comforting the child; accepting the child’s offers; and showing understanding for the child’s behaviour (e.g. “I know it must be difcult for you”); (2) authoritative control (0.79): asking and giving explanations ; pointing out the consequences of the child’s behaviour for others; explanations referring to others’ needs or motives; stimulating the child to take the other’s perspective; stimulating the child to solve the problem on his/her own, or to think about a solution, or to make a decision; reminding the child of his/her own or mutually agreed decisions; pointing out the child’s own responsibility for his/her behaviour; references to social or moral values and norms (e.g. “You must learn to share with others”); (3) restrictive control (0.88): isolating or ignoring the child, reprimands, disapprovals, reproaches, directives, imperatives, physical punishment, deprivation of privileges, threats of punishment (e.g. “If you do it again, I’ll hit you”). Individual scores represented the number of a given type of child-rearing behaviour expressed as a proportion of the total number of reactions given across the 10 situations. As with the observation data, the three indices of child-rearing behaviou r were not independent of each other. We conducted two factor analyses, one on the three interview measures (support, authoritative control, and restrictive control) of mothers, and one on the three interview measures of fathers. From these two factor analyses it was clear that in all analyses only one factor was suf cient to explain the variance of each of the three measures included in each analysis (69% for the mother measures and 72% of the father measures). The loadings of support, authoritative control and restrictive control were 0.71, 0.84, and 0.92 for mothers; and 0.72, 0.89, and 0.92 for fathers, respectively. Based on these results we decided to compute two factor scores using the regression method (SPSS Reference Guide, 1990): one for the three interview measures (support, authoritative control, and restrictive control) of mothers; and one for the three interview measures of fathers. The higher a parental score on a factor, the more the parental child-rearing pattern was characterised by parental support, use of authoritative control, and a low level of restrictive control. Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016

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Because the correlations between the observation factor scores and the interview factor scores were moderately strong (r = .48, P , .01 for mothers and r = .51, P , .01 for fathers), we decided not to aggregate scores across these two methods. Moreover, we wanted to analyse whether relations between child rearing and prosocial development were of the same magnitude, regardless of the method of data gathering. Another reason not to aggregate scores was that fathers’ and mothers’ observation data may be dependent on each other. Father and mother were observed while working together with the child; therefore one parent may have inuenced the other parent’s behaviour during the tasks. It is impossible to say how many and what kind of actual utterances might have been obtained while a parent was observed working with the child alone. Interview measures were obtained for each parent separately. Not aggregating the scores made it possible to analyse whether the relation between child rearing and prosocial development was consistent, regardless of whether the data about child rearing was obtained from each parent separately, or from a task situation in which both parents worked with their child. A nal reason not to aggregat e scores across methods is that the observations assessed different childrearing situations rather than the interviews. Whereas interviews focused on situations in which a child transgressed and parents were expected to discipline, the observation task presented parents with a situation in which the child required parental help. Zahn-Waxler et al. (1979) suggested that this kind of situation may be especially relevant for the development of prosocial behaviour.

RESULTS In Table 1, the mean values for each of the measures of children’s prosocial development are presented for each grade level, as a function of the sex of the child. In order to examine grade and sex differences in the measures of prosocial development (prosocial moral reasoning, prosocial behaviou r according to teachers and classmates, and the number of stories resolved prosocially), a 3 (grade) × 2 (sex of child) multivariate analysis (MANOVA) was conducted. This analysis yielded no signicant main or interaction effects. We found a signicant univariate effect of grade level on prosocial moral reasoning (F = 4.52, P , .05). The mean level of prosocial moral reasoning for children in the rst grade (M = 1.94) was signicantly lower than the mean level for children in the third grade (M = 2.24) (F = 9.11, P , .01) and lower than the mean level for children in the fth grade (M = 2.37) (F = 10.99, P , .01). The mean level of prosocial moral reasoning for children in the fth grade did not signicantly differ from the mean level for children in the third grade. We also found a signicant univariate effect of sex on the mean number of Eisenberg stories in which a child said he/she would help ( F = 6.74, P , .05); Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016


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TABLE 1 Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) for Indices of Children’s Prosocial Development

Indices of Prosocial Development

Prosocial Moral Reasoning

Prosocial Behaviour Teacher

Nominated as Most Helpful

No. of Stories Resolved Prosocially

Grade 1 Boys Girls

1.89(0.58 ) 2.02(0.30 )

3.92(0.99 ) 4.15(0.76 )

0.12(0.11 ) 0.15(0.11 )

2.26(0.99 ) 2.57(0.65 )

Grade 3 Boys Girls

2.09(0.61 ) 2.35(0.44 )

4.18(0.78 ) 4.57(0.49 )

0.21(0.20 ) 0.15(0.13 )

2.23(1.01 ) 2.74(0.56 )

Grade 5 Boys Girls

2.29(0.75 ) 2.46(0.71 )

4.27(0.77 ) 4.37(0.59 )

0.13(0.12 ) 0.18(0.15 )

2.59(0.73 ) 2.90(0.31 )

girls said that they would help more often than did the boys. t-Tests revealed that children in the rst grade were less inclined to say that they would help other children in the prosocial dilemma stories than children in the fth grade (t = 2.19, P , .05). No statistically signicant differences were found between children in the rst and third grade, or between children in the third and fth grade. In Table 2 the mean values of the four child-rearing measures (observation mothers, observation fathers, interview mothers, and interview fathers), are presented for each grade level, sex of the child, and sex of the parent. In order to examine the effects of grade level, sex of the child, and sex of the parent on child rearing, a 3 (grade level) × 2 (sex of child) × 2 (sex of parent) multivariate analysis (MANOVA) was conducted, with the last TABLE 2 Means and Standard Deviations (in parentheses) of Child-rearing Measures

Observation Father

Observation Mother

Interview Father

Interview Mother

Grade 1 Boys Girls

0.04(0.96 ) 0.08(1.01 )

0.07(0.91 ) 0.01(1.09 )

0.08(1.01 ) 0.24(0.76 )

0.09(1.03 ) 0.21(0.62 )

Grade 3 Boys Girls

0.23(0.99 ) 0.14(1.00 )

0.20(1.09 ) 0.01(1.10 )

0.23(0.88 ) 0.03(0.94 )

0.10(0.82 ) 0.13(1.05 )

Grade 5 Boys Girls

0.01(0.98 ) 0.28(1.09 )

0.13(0.88 ) 0.35(1.00 )

0.06(1.17 ) 0.13(1.19 )

0.02(1.26 ) 0.10(1.09 )

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factor being a within-subjects factor. This analysis yielded no signicant main or interaction effects. As Table 2 shows, in all groups, the mean factor scores were close to zero. Summarising the ndings of these analyses we may say that there were no effects of grade, sex of child, and sex of parent on child rearing, and that the effects of grade and sex of child on prosocial development were small.

Relations between Prosocial Moral Reasoning and Prosocial Behaviour The rst principal question addressed in this study concerned the relation between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour. We computed correlations between the indices of prosocial behaviour and prosocial moral reasoning. For the total sample, it appeared that the two indices of prosocial behaviour were positively related to the level of prosocial moral reasoning. The higher that level was, the more prosocial a child, according to his/her teacher (r = .17, P , .05) and according to classmates (r = .20, P , .05). Next, partial correlations were computed between prosocial behaviour and prosocial moral reasoning, partialising out grade level. The correlation between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour according to teacher disappeared (r = .12, n.s.); the relation between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour according to classmates remained ( r = .18, P , .05). In order to examine whether the strength of these relations between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour changed with children’s age, we computed correlations separately for each grade level. These correlations are presented in Table 3. Only for children in the rst grade were strong correlations found between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour. For children in the third and fth grades, no relation was found between level of prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour. TABLE 3 Correlations between Prosocial Moral Reasoning and Prosocial Behaviour


Grade 1

Grade 3

Grade 5

Prosocial behaviour according to teacher

0.35*

0.15

0.03

Nominated as most helpful

0.34*

0.25

0.09

38

47

Total number of children

*P ,

40

.05. Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016


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Relations between Child Rearing and Prosocial Development The second question addressed in this study concerned the relation between child rearing and the prosocial development of a child. Correlation s were computed between the indices of child rearing and the indices of prosocial development. In Table 4, correlations between the indices of parental behaviour, and the indices of prosocial development , are presented both for the total sample and the three grade levels separately. Sex of the child was not included in this table, because the relations found between child rearing and prosocial development were almost identical for boys and girls. For the total sample, it appeared that all relations examined between child rearing and a child’s prosocial development were statistically signicant. A supportive, authoritative , and less restrictive child-rearing style was associated with a higher level of reasoning about prosocial moral dilemmas and with more prosocial behaviour, whether assessed by teachers or classmates. TABLE 4 Correlations between Child-rearing Patterns and Prosocial Development


Prosocial Behaviour Teacher

Nominated as Most Helpful

Total sample Observation mother Observation father Interview mother Interview father

0.21* 0.24** 0.27** 0.23**

0.47** 0.43** 0.45** 0.38**

0.35** 0.37** 0.29** 0.20**

Grade 1 Observation mother Observation father Interview mother Interview father

0.46* * 0.46** 0.47** 0.43**

0.53** 0.45** 0.48** 0.35**

0.20 0.20 0.24 0.13


0.12 0.21 0.31* 0.21

0.27 0.21 0.44** 0.38*

0.42** 0.45** 0.28** 0.16


0.16 0.19 0.21 0.24

0.58** 0.63** 0.50** 0.47**

0.41** 0.42** 0.35** 0.30**

*P ,

.05; ** P ,

.01.


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To examine the effects of age on the strength of the relation between child rearing and prosocial development , the correlations between child rearing and the three indices of prosocial development were computed separately for each age group. These analyses revealed that, according to the teacher, prosocial behaviour was positively related to child rearing for all age groups. A supportive, authoritative, and less restrictive environment was positively associated with the child’s prosocial behaviour according to the teacher. Secondly, it appeared that the number of nominations as most helpful was also positively related to child rearing for children in the third and fth grade, but not for children in the rst grade. Thirdly, the correlation between child rearing and the level of prosocial moral reasoning held only for the children in the rst grade. For children in grade three or ve, nearly no relation was found between child rearing and the level of prosocial moral reasoning. The exception is the relation between maternal child rearing as assessed by the interview method and the level of prosocial moral reasoning of children in grade 3.

DISCUSSION In this study, we examined the various relations between child rearing, prosocial moral reasoning, prosocial behaviour, and age differences in these relations. For the total sample, we found positive relations between the level of prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour. The correlations found were statistically signicant, but moderate. This was due to the fact that the correlations only held for the youngest children (rst grade), and not for older children (third and fth grade). The moderate relation found between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour is in agreement with the ndings of Eisenberg (1982b). However, the nding that these relations held only for younger children and not for older children contradicts Eisenberg’s hypothesis that a stronger relationship between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviou r exists in older children. The present ndings may be explained by socially desirable responses, which may be more pronounced in older than in younger children. Younger children give more hedonistic reasons for their decisions than do older children. It is possible that the answers of older children were inuenced by the realisation that they were being observed by an adult interviewer. Younger children may be less conscious of the presence of an adult during the interview. Their role-taking capacity is less developed than the role-taking capacity of older children and therefore, they do not realise that the interviewer may judge particular answers as less desirable. Older children have already learned not to refer to hedonistic motives; based on these considerations, it is possible that they have concealed their egocentric motives to help, or not to help. Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016


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The nding that the relation between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour held only for younger children may also be explained by the fact that older children are more capable of considering other situational cues (e.g. the urgency of the other’s need or personal characteristics of the person in need), that may impede them to act prosocially in spite of their motivation to help. Younger children are less capable of considering all situational cues and, therefore, are more inclined to react impulsively. For example, in the birthday story, they often seemed to be impulsive in saying they would not help, and often referred to the sweet they would miss by helping the child in need. A third possible explanation as to why the relation between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour was found only in younger children may be that the level of dif culty or cost of the prosocial act proposed in the Eisenberg dilemmas is generally higher than that in the everyday situations evaluated by the children’s teachers and peers. It is possible that the younger children, owing to their lower level of social understanding, discriminate less between these situations than do older children, who have more elements of judgement with which to compare the situations and to decide whether to act prosocially or not. Perhaps if we had conducted an evaluation of real prosocial behaviour in difcult or costly situations we might have found a greater relation between prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial behaviou r in the older age groups. Eisenberg and Shell (1986) suggested the possibility that whereas advanced moral reasoning acts as a motivational force for prosocial behaviour in especially difcult or costly situations, it is possible to act more automatically in daily situations, when not so much difculty is involved, and therefore advanced moral reasoning is less of a factor. For the total sample, we found that supportive, authoritative , and less restrictive child rearing were positively associated both with reasoning about prosocial moral dilemmas at a higher level and with more prosocial behaviour, according to teachers and classmates. These relations were also found by Eisenberg et al. (1983). Why may there be these relations between child rearing and prosocial development ? With regard to the potential inuence of parental support, Hoffman (1963) suggested that support makes the child feel secure and minimises self-concern; because it is not necessary to worry about his or her own needs, the child has the opportunity to consider the needs of others. As far as the positive correlation between authoritative control and prosocial behaviour is concerned, Hoffman (1983) has emphasised the positive inuence of induction. According to Hoffman and Saltzstein (1967), induction motivates the child to pay attention to the victim’s harm and/or distress. The realisation that the child himself or herself is the cause of that harm or distress evokes an empathic response in the child. The child empathises with the victim and is motivated to repair the harm or to relieve the distress. Baumrind (1971) and Maccoby and Martin (1983) Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016

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suggested that demandingness would be very important for the child’s prosocial development , because by pointing out the social norms a parent directly teaches a child about “right” and “wrong” in social relationships. A negative effect of restrictive control on prosocial development was explained by Hoffman and Saltzstein (1967) through referring to the anger and fear evoked in a child by restrictive control; for example, after a child has transgressed a norm. As a result, the child does not focus on the victim’s harm or distress, but on the negative consequenc es the transgression has for himself or herself. Therefore, power assertion may promote an egoistic rather than a prosocial attitude. Only for younger children were relations found between child rearing and the level of prosocial moral reasoning. Children growing up in a supportive, authoritative, and less restrictive environment reasoned at a higher level about prosocial moral dilemmas than did children reared by a restrictive, less supportive, and less authoritative parent. Perhaps younger children’s reasoning about prosocial moral dilemmas does not depend on many cues; they are inclined to refer directly to behaviour and motives they have learned at home. A strong hedonistic orientation may be associated with less supportive and more restrictive parental behaviour, whereas a more altruistic orientation may be induced by supportive and authoritative child-rearing behaviour. Perhaps older children are less inclined than younger children to refer to parental ideas about helping, when asked to react on hypothetical situations. For these children, a reaction to a prosocial moral dilemma may depend on more factors than the values and norms taught by parents. It may be for these reasons that the relation between child rearing and level of prosocial moral reasoning was found only for younger children. For younger children, the number of nominations as most helpful was not related to child-rearing patterns. This nding may be explained by the fact that younger children do not help each other in the classroom as much as older children do. In the Netherlands, children in the third and fth grade work together on cognitive tasks more often than younger children and that may increase co-operation between classmates. Moreover, younger children probably do not know each other as well as their older peers do, who have supposedly been together longer. Children’s age seems a more important moderating variable than the sex of a child. In this study, no relation was found between the sex of a child and parental behaviour; neither was it found that the relations between child rearing and prosocial development were dependent on the sex of children. In this study, both paternal and maternal child-rearing behaviour were assessed through interviews and observations. In the past, relations between child rearing and prosocial development have been studied only for mothers and only using self-report measures. In this study we found that the Downloaded from jbd.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016


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relationships between child rearing and prosocial development held for both fathers and mothers, and held whether child rearing was assessed by interviews or by observations. With regard to the conceptualisation of child rearing, it must be noted that the three dimensions of child rearing distinguished in this study were not independent. Positive relations were found between parental support and authoritative control, and negative relations were found between these two child-rearing behaviours and restrictive control. In future, we need more studies in which patterns of child rearing are related to child development, instead of studies in which relations are examined between separate aspects of child rearing and child development . An issue in correlational studies such as this is the problem of the direction of in uence. This study examined concurrent relations between child rearing and prosocial development, and therefore cannot directly support any conclusions about causality. The parent-child relationship is probably best described by a reciprocal-inuence model (Bell & Harper, 1977), in which both parent and child are active participants and processors of each other’s input. Child rearing may inuence the child’s prosocial development, but the child’s level of prosocial development also affects the way in which the parent interacts with the child. Manuscript received January 1993 Revised manuscript received July 1995

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