and girls are taught to value different qualities, with boys taught to value independence and girls taught to value connectedness.
2) Boys and girls think differently, with boys more given to abstract concepts and girls to caring and nurturing.
3) Boys and girls reach levels of cognitive/moral stages of development at different rates.
Counterarguments are to be considered as they challenge these arguments and attack the thesis:
1) It can be argued that some girls reach a higher stage of moral development than most boys. However, this is only evidence of the statistical overlapping of population curves. The thesis should be taken in the broad generalization of population means and not apply to specific and aberrant instances.
2) Older children and adults use the same criteria for making social judgments. This only shows that cognitively, boys "catch up" in late adolescence.
3) If boys and girls are taught to value the same qualities, then they would use the same criteria in their making of moral judgments. However, because of societal influences and the gender identity children receive from society, boys and girls choose behavior that matches the pre-existing roles of male and female in their society.
Piaget and Kohlberg each addressed the question of how children develop moral judgment and a sense of morality. There are similarities between the two in that each postulates stages of moral development, though they indicate a different number of stages for this process. Piaget indeed offers developmental stages for cognitive development extending throughout life. As noted, both Piaget and Kohlberg are seen as concentrating on only one aspect of the issue, Piaget on moral development in males, and Kohlberg on justice and rights as shown in moral thinking.
Jean Piaget was one of the most influential experimenters and theorists in the history of developmental psychology and the study of human intelligen...