Raising Children Right... or Left

Do we make our children liberal or conservative by the way we raise them -- even before we ever discuss politics with them expicitly?

I would argue that we do give them an outlook on the world which likely predisposes them one way or the other.

But there are too many dimensions to politics, too many values informing our positions, for our children's political views, once they emerge, to conform perfectly to our own. Thank golly.

Into this teeming mix of values and lessons and clashing political views -- familiar to parents with teenagers, I imagine -- comes a new theory. It is worth examining from a parenting perspective.

Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist, has proposed a theory of morality which involves 5 "moral axes." They are: harm, fairness, loyalty, authority and purity. His ideas were discussed in the New York Times's Science section a few weeks ago, and the article generated a storm of commentary on the internet.

Haidt claims that liberals and conservatives, answering the same questions (you can do the test yourself to see where you come down) will find that their results cluster around different axes. Liberals will, according to Haidt, put far more emphasis on avoiding harm and ensuring fairness. Conservatives will add to these concerns a strong feeling for ingroup loyalty, a respect for authority and an interest in preserving sacredness/purity.

So Haidt would suggest that we are influencing our children's politics by the values we teach them.

"Of course," I wanted to say when I first read this. "Values inform politics, what else is new?"

But something about Haidt's approach continued to nag at me in the week after I read about it. Then I finally realized why. He suggests that conservatives have more moral axes, more resources for decision-making, than liberals -- five rather than the stunted two that I favor.

Here's how I counter Haidt's theory:

A dear friend of mine had a birthday recently, and I was thinking about his great qualities. One of his qualities is his deep loyalty and steadfastness towards his close friends. Suddenly, I remembered the Haidt moral axes. And so I asked myself, "Does this loyalty that my friend shows make him more moral in my view?" My answer was no. I realized from this that I do not consider loyalty to be a moral quality, merely an admirable personality trait.

With this thought-experiment in mind, the three "conservative" axes, (loyalty, authority, and purity) seem to me more tied to personality traits than they are a sense of morality.

Haidt (and cultural conservatives) would argue of course that I am so steeped in the contractual model of morality that I simply can't see these for what they are -- axes of moral decision. But the burden is not on me. It is on Haidt to demonstrate that his "5 axes" matrix is truly an exhaustive list of moral axes. Otherwise it's just a cute exercise.

Has he done that? I don't think so.

Why not add a few more "moral" axes, such as flexibility/rigidness, or openness to difference/desire for homogeneity? These two suggestions have a bias towards recognizing culturallly "liberal" acts of generosity and kindness as opposed to the Haidt axes of purity and authority and loyalty, which are biased towards recognizing conservative virues. But aren't they just as legitimate?

I would bet that we could generate a list of some 20 or 30 axes which would be borne out in studies as distinguishing liberal vs. conservative inclinations about morality. In short, the whole thing reeks of the typical weakness of psychology: mistaking labeling for insight.

Certainly, by encouraging, say, "openness to difference" rather than "ingroup loyalty," I am predisposing my children to political views on the liberal side of the spectrum. On that we can agree. But I am not making them morally deficient. They have the two crucial "moral axes" covered: minimize harm and try to be fair. The rest are a matter of taste. And some, like the cult of sacredness/purity, are not to my taste at all.

Comments

[Ellen Vaughan]

This was a most interesting entry. Morality is something I feel is essential in our interactions with others and our own self being. But what definition of morality are we discussing? It is a very broad and often broad and ambiguous. To me morality is a code of conduct put forward by a society - different than laws or religious rites. It doesn't necessarily involve all five axes described by Haidt - harm, fairness, loyalty, authority and purity: although it can. As an adult, I look back on classes which looked at situations from different approaches, for example, “bullying". We discussed different ways for people to react to different situations. I disliked these classes but found they influenced my "moral" character far more than I would have imagined. The different ways to look at the situations included peace and harmony, not causing harm to others, and helping those around you. By keeping these goals in mind and implementing them, we influence those around us, including our children. Does this mean we are teaching our children to stay within the confines of today’s society?

As time change, so do many of the moral aspects of our lives: for example, sexually accepted behaviors (sex on the screen). A Summer Place was the first riska (spelling) movie – it had no picture of the sexual act but it brought to light the fact that teenagers do have sex. From that moment on, sexuality on the screen has increased and grown creating an atmosphere which glorifies the role of sex for the teenager. Pandora’s box was opened. Is this a moral problem? Is it the roll of society to try to reduce the amount of sex and violence (against women in the sexual act) or does morality not play a role here? I contend we educate out children by example. As a moral parent you will try to keep your children from being exposed to elements of society you consider “bad”, “immoral” or “evil”. Thus you are influencing your children based upon your moral character (liberal, conservative, or whatever). You are providing a code of conduct for your children which fits into the society you recognize.
Now that I said that, lets look at homosexuality, racism, abortion, and (on your part) religion. Different groups within our society have slightly differing views of morality. How do we deal with organizations which have different moral outlooks? How do we decide who gets saved from harm or who doesn’t – as with abortion. Do we harm the fetus to make life better for the mother, or do we harm the life of the mother to not harm the fetus? There are different reasons for deciding one way or the other.

During the early years of our country, there was a definite split of the morality of slavery. Our forefathers decided not to address the slavery issue at the time our country was formed – this was a moral question. Should slavery be addressed in the constitution? By doing so, the new country would have been destroyed even before it began. The writers of the constitution decided the new nation had a chance to survive if the moral question of slavery was avoided – thus continuing the harmful effects of slavery. Was this the right thing to do?
As a teacher, I think having students look at situations from different perspectives gives them the opportunity to learn how other people react to given situations and why. That way they can learn to make their own decisions based upon incites from other perspectives - both from parents and society. This type of situation should not be religiously based or politically influenced.
I will have to do some research on morality again – while getting my educational degree in Australia, we spent two weeks discussing the role of morality in the school situation. I will have to track down some of the references and refresh myself on my arguments then.