Parenting styles and Chinese preschoolers' moral sensitivity: domain-specific associations and moderating roles of child gender and age
Parenting is widely regarded as an important factor in children's early moral development. The present study examined the associations between maternal and paternal parenting styles (emotional warmth, overprotection, and rejection) and preschool children's moral sensitivity across the five moral foundation domains (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity) in a Chinese sample, and tested whether child gender and age moderated these associations. Participants were 143 preschoolers aged 3 to 6 years (70 boys, 73 girls) and their parents from six kindergartens in Guangzhou, China. Parents independently completed the short form of the EMBU; children's moral sensitivity was assessed using a scenario-based transgression evaluation task. Regression analyses revealed that parenting associations were concentrated in the loyalty domain: maternal overprotection (β = −0.25, p < 0.01) and paternal emotional warmth (β = −0.21, p < 0.05) were both negatively associated with loyalty sensitivity. There was no evidence that child gender moderated any parenting–moral sensitivity association. Bayesian model comparison favored the no-moderation model in this sample. No parenting associations emerged for care, fairness, authority, or purity, and child age did not moderate any association. These findings suggest that parenting is associated with early moral development in a domain-specific and culturally situated way, with loyalty sensitivity being especially responsive to family socialization processes in the Chinese context.