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INTRODUCTION
For many years,
as a psychologist and a parent, I have keptmy ear tuned to the latest wisdom parents receive about how toraise children who will become caring, strong, and responsiblepeople. I have combed popular articles, tracked politicians’ ideas,gathered advice rom talk show experts.The basic messages are predictable: single parenthood, peerpressure, and popular culture are destroying our children’s moraloundations. Parents and other adults are ailing as role modelsand neglecting to teach children basic moral values and standards.Kids need to know right rom wrong. According to a major survey by the organization Public Agenda, more than six in ten American adults identied “as a very serious problem” young people’s ailureto learn undamental moral values, including honesty, respect, andresponsibility or others.There is, to be sure, some truth in these explanations or chil-dren’s moral troubles. I have seen the powerul infuence o peerpressure on my own kids, and my wie and I certainly try to limittheir exposure to aspects o popular culture that seem designed toobliterate every particle o their humanity. Children need con-structive role models who teach right rom wrong.But or anyone who is willing to enter children’s worlds andlook hard at what shapes their development, there is much aboutthese explanations that is mystiying, i not deeply unsettling. Atbest they miss the point; at worst they are a kind o massive cover- up and cop-out. Blaming peers and popular culture lets adultso the hook — and dangerously so. It dodges a undamental truththat is supported by a mountain o research. Children’s moral de-velopment is decided by many actors, including not only me-dia and peer infuences but their genetic endowment, birth order,gender, and how these dierent actors interact. Yet
we 
are theprimary infuence on children’s moral lives. The parent-child rela- tionship is at the center o the development o all the most impor-
 
2
 
Introduction
tant moral qualities, including honesty, kindness, loyalty, generos-ity, a commitment to justice, the capacity to think through moraldilemmas, and the ability to sacrice or important principles. While there’s nothing wrong with exhorting adults to be betterrole models and to teach values, this by itsel does nothing to helppeople actually be and do these things. I don’t know any adult whobecame a better role model simply by being told to be one. Nor dothese exhortations reach the heart o what it is to be a person whois an eective parent, a true moral mentor.What I am acutely aware matters most as a parent is not whethermy wie and I are “perect” role models or how much we talk aboutvalues, but the hundreds o ways — as living, breathing, imperecthuman beings — we infuence our children in the complex, messy relationships we have with them day to day.This knowledge came to me gradually in the rst years o my children’s lives, but there was one specic aternoon when it struckme most sharply. Sunday aternoons were sacrosanct, reserved oramily outings. My three kids are three years apart, and it was o-ten hard to nd something that was un or every one.One blustery, sunny Sunday, we went to a park near the ocean.My oldest son, then about seven years old, was withdrawn andseemed listless. The park was not his avorite place. My week hadbeen stressul, and I’d been looking orward to this outing. I lashedout at him or sulking. We had done what he’d wanted to do theSunday beore, I reminded him, and I expected him to rally, tocheerully participate.
 
It also seemed to me that this was an oppor-tunity to reinorce a basic notion o reciprocity.My wie certainly agreed with me that our son should be ex-pected to engage in activities or the sake o the amily. But, shepointed out, he seemed more tired than unhappy, and she re-minded me that I, too, could seem less than enthusiastic duringamily activities I didn’t enjoy. She added, gently, that perhaps Ishould rethink whether the real issue in this case was teaching my son a moral standard. Instead, maybe I’d gotten angry because I’d
 
Introduction
3been expecting this amily event to pull me out o my own badmood.Ater some grumbling, I came to see that my wie was right. Iapologized to my son and explained to him that I had had a roughweek. But what dawned on me suddenly was that under the guiseo teaching my son a principle, I had made it harder or him tocare about how I thought or elt, more sel-protective, and per-haps a little less willing to pitch in or the amily. What also hit mewas that while this single event wouldn’t do lasting damage, many times a week we had interactions with our kids in which my wieand I succeeded — or ailed — in disentangling and balancing ourneeds and theirs and in enabling them to take other perspectives,and that these interactions, cumulatively, deªned their notion o what a relationship is and powerully shaped their capacity orcaring, respectul relationships. Our children’s moral qualitieswere also shaped day to day by what we registered, or ailed to ac-knowledge, in the world around us, and what we asked them toregister — whether we let them treat a store clerk as invisible, orcommented when a child in a playground had been treated un-airly, or pointed out to them a neighbor’s good deed. We were,too, constantly aecting their moral abilities by how we denedtheir responsibilities or others, and by whether we insisted thatthose responsibilities be met. Our eectiveness as moral mentorshas hinged, most basically, on whether we have earned our chil-dren’s respect and trust by, among many things, admitting ourerrors and explaining our decisions to them in ways that they seeas air. It was these day-to-day details o our relationship with ourchildren — ar more than our talk about values — that ormed theirmoral core.What has clearly been hardest or my wie and me — and orevery parent we know — is being vigilant about these things whenwe have been stressed or depleted or outright depressed. There are“strategies” that can help us with our children during these criticalmoments, to be sure. But what is undamentally being challenged
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