Many of today's parents were raised in the '60s, the age of permissiveness. Their children were born in the age of affluence, the '80s, when materialism was rampant. These problems may make parents feel they have no effect on how their children turn out. But many studies show that parents are still the single most important influence on their children. The way a parent explains rules depends, of course, on the age of the child.
Many adults assume that kids see right and wrong in grown-up terms.
Many psychologists think that in children, the seeds of moral values are emotional, not intellectual. Even newborns respond to signs of distress in other. In a hospital nursery, for example, a bout of crying by one infant will trigger wailing all around. They are also most likely to absorb parental values. The first modern researcher to describe the stages of a child's moral development was Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget.