Are Babies Moral?
Colleen Scheck, senior producer
“To have a genuinely moral system, in other words, some things first have to matter, and what we see in babies is the development of mattering.”
I’m in the midst of another parenting transition where my son’s development from infant to toddler has me focusing less on basics and more on behavior. 
“Hitting and biting are common during this time” (so true!) is a sentence included in the welcome packet I received recently from his new toddler-room teachers. So this week’s New York Times Magazine story on “The Moral Lives of Babies” caught my eye.
Contrary to historic theories that babies are a moral “blank slate,” the article describes new research out of Yale University that indicates babies may have a “rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.” This five-minute video demonstrates some of the research experiments behind these findings of whether babies can tell right from wrong. It’s a helpful way in to this lengthy article on behavioral testing and our ongoing fascination with the question of nature or nurture and human development.
[updated May 16, 2010: added the embed video]
1 Notes/ Hide
-
urbanfoodie likes this
-
beingblog posted this
