Abstract

Parenting, morality, and friendship may be interrelated in the area of interpersonal attraction. Friend selection has been argued to occur on the basis of similar moral development. Research indicates that different parenting styles lead to differing levels of moral development. This study examined the impact of parenting style on moral development and investigated whether children befriend similarly morally developed others who have experienced similar parenting styles. Questionnaires were given to 120 children (mean age = 11.2 years), who identified friends, nominated morally-oriented peers, rated responses to moral dilemmas, and rated the emotional climate of their homes. Findings indicated that: (a) justice and care vary significantly across parenting styles; (b) girls endorse conventional more than preconventional responses to moral dilemmas; (c) boys who perceive their parents as low in warmth and control and the friends of these boys endorse preconventional more than conventional responses; (d) girls who perceive their parents as low-warmth/high-control befriend girls who are more just than the friends of other girls; (e) girls who perceive their parents as low in warmth and control befriend girls who are more caring than the friends of other girls; (f) parental control ratings by children and their friends are positively related; and (g) parental warmth ratings by children and their friends are negatively associated. These findings suggest that adolescent friend selection may rely upon the similarity of certain friend characteristics, while upon the complementarity of others.