Subverting parental overreach: Children endorse defiance and deception as legitimate modes of moral resistance and social opposition

This research examined how children evaluate the legitimacy of various sorts of rules as well as children's reasoning about the legitimacy of covertly defying and lying to parents to resist those rules. We asked U.S. 6-, 8-, and 11-year-olds (N = 118) to assess seven hypothetical situations depicting comparably aged children engaged in defiance and deception to circumvent parents' prohibitions. The nature of parents' justifications for the prohibitions varied in terms of social-cognitive domain (moral, personal, prudential, pragmatic, or conventional). Evaluations and justifications for the legitimacy of parents' prohibitions and children's defiance and deception were examined, as were general evaluations of deception and parental authority. Across situations, increased age was associated with decreased acceptance of proscriptions and, in several situations, increased acceptance of defiance and decep-tion. Children responded significantly differently to prohibitions by domain of norm. With age, children increasingly justified defiance and deception for reasons of personal autonomy. They also increasingly endorsed defiance and deception as moral obligations required to resist immoral norms. This research shows that children value parental authority, but not at the expense of their personal autonomy, and they value honesty but sometimes subordinate it to competing moral concerns.(c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This research examines how children assess the legitimacy of different rules and their reasoning behind covertly defying and lying to parents to resist those rules. The study found that as children grow older, their acceptance of rules decreases while acceptance of defiance and deception increases. Children also respond differently to rules in different domains, with older children justifying defiance and deception as a matter of personal autonomy and as a moral obligation to resist immoral norms.