Carol Gilligan and Her Moral Development Theory - Essay Example

Carol Gilligan Running Head: Carol Gilligan Carol Gilligan and her Moral Development Theory Carol Gilligan 2 Carol Gilligan is an internationally acclaimed American feminist, ethicist, psychologist and prolific writer from New York. Her moral development theory has created immense interest all over the world because of its relevance in the contemporary world. This paper briefly analyses Carol Gilligan and her famous moral development theory. Introduction “Moral behavior means behavior in conformity with the moral code of the social group.’ Moral’ comes from the Latin word ‘mores’ meaning customs ,manners and folkways .Moral behavior is controlled by moral concepts,. Moral development has both an intellectual and an impulsive aspect. Children must learn what is right and what is wrong. Then, as soon as they are old enough, they must be given explanations of why this is right and what is wrong.” (Theories of Moral Development -Personality Theories) It is an established fact that the elderly people keep more ethical standards in their life compared to youths. The childhood, adolescent period and the youth period are normally considered as immature periods and hence morality may not have much place in such periods. The ethical standards of a human being will improve immensely as he grows. He will be capable of segregating the rights and the wrongs as he goes past his 30’s or 40’s, more than ever. Carol Gilligan, a famous psychologist has researched a lot Carol Gilligan 3 about the morality and was successful in creating a theory based on morality called “moral development theory”. Carol Gilligan and her Moral Development Theory “Gilligans primary focus came to be moral development in girls. Her interest in these dilemmas grew as she interviewed young men thinking about enlisting for the Vietnam War and women who were contemplating abortions.” (Carol Gilligan (1936-present)) She was the first person who revealed the importance of gender differences in developing morality. The attitude of girls and boys towards establishing relationships, caring others are different. The perception of the terms like caring and relationship are different for boys and girls. She believed that women were taught to care for other people and expect others to care for them. (Carol Gilligan (1936-present)) Boys have a different perception about caring. They may not be much concerned about caring others compared to girls. Girls are keener in establishing and sustaining relationships with others than boys. While teaching at Harvard, Carol Gilligan joined as a research assistant to famous psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg is known for his research on moral development and his stage theory of moral development, justice and rights. “Kohlberg had applied Piagets theory to the development of moral thinking” (Gilligans In a Different Voice) Carol Gilligan 4 Soon after joining the company of Kohlberg she realized the drawbacks of his research work. He was actually selected only the privileged people especially the boys for his studies. (Carol Gilligan (1936-present)) He never researched much about the under privileged people or never bothered about studying the differences in the development of morality between boys and girls. He thought morality has nothing to do with gender. Carol Gilligan challenged these views and she was successful in convincing other the difference in ethical standards between boys and girls. In her opinion the ethical standards are more oriented towards ‘justice” in the case of boys and “care” in the case of girls. She has attributed these differences to the gender factors. Female has a natural tendency to care others, naturally because of the maternity factors. Caring of the children is one of the main duties of a female and hence she has the tendency to care others also naturally. So she believed that most of the female ethical standards are associated with this attitude of caring. But in the case of boys, it is different. Boys don’t have any inherited traits such as caring as in the case of females. So they will be more polished in their thinking and their attitudes. They will be more concerned with justice rather than caring. It is because of this justice factor, youths protest against any of the injustices they might feel. It is a fact that in most of the student agitations boys exceeds the girls in numbers. Carol Gilligan argued that this is because of their morality association with justice. Carol Gilligan 5 “She outlines three stages of moral development progressing from selfish, to social or conventional morality, and finally to post conventional or principled morality.” (Carol Gilligan (1936-present)) Children at their early stages are more selfish than at the later stages. They will never think about others at the early stages. Most of their demands will be controlled by selfish thoughts. But as they grow, they will start to recognize others and also their requirements and hence the selfishness will gradually diminish and morality will come into the picture. At the first stage children will be changed from a selfish stage to a responsible stage. Then at the second stage they will be changed from responsible to goodness stage and then they will be changed from the goodness stage to the stage of truth ultimately. The identification of truth is the end product of morality as per Gilligan. Selfish principles will be outclassed by the moral principle when children become matured. “Kohlbergs approach was based on Piagets cognitive developmental model. Gilligans is based instead on a modified version of Freuds approach to ego development. Thus Gilligan is combining Freud (or at least a Freudian theme) with Kohlberg & Piaget.” (Gilligans In a Different Voice) The main drawback of Kohlberg’s theory of morality was because of its base in cognitive domain alone. But Gilligan succeeded in linking Freud’s and Piaget’s approaches. She has defined another variable ego in the development of morality. She believed that the variations in the ego level make variations in the morality also. She argued that the difference in moral Carol Gilligan 6 standards of different people is not only because of cognitive changes, but it is because of the ego changes as well. Drawbacks of Carol Gilligan’s Morality theory Current research agrees with Gilligan that there is a difference in the morality levels of boys and girls, but the difference is more complex than Gilligan suggests (Gilligans In a Different Voice) Though Gilligan succeeded in establishing the difference in morality approaches of boys and girls, she failed to go deeply in to the grass root level of the difference. Several studies have now found both men and women using both justice and care dimensions in their moral reasoning. (Gilligans In a Different Voice) this is again against the principles of Gilligan’s theory. Gilligan believed that justice is associated with the boy’s morality while care associated with the girl’s ethical standards. Conclusion Carol Gilligan was successful in giving a direction to the moral development of people based on the gender. She was able to conclude that the development of morality in girls and that in boys are entirely different and guided by different things. She was successful in connecting justice principles to boys and care principles to girls in their morality development stages. She has made good use of cognitive and ego theories of Piaget and Freud in developing her moral development theory. Her morality theory Carol Gilligan 7 succeeded in bringing out the hidden facts about the moral development in women especially the adolescent girls. The moral developments in the transition stages of adolescent girls were unknown till Gilligan formulates her theory. Though this theory has some defects, it will known for ever as the first moral theory which successfully established the differences in the moral developments in boys and girls. Carol Gilligan 8 References 1. Carol Gilligan (1936-present), Retrieved on February 27, 2009 from http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilligan.html 2. Gilligans In a Different Voice, Retrieved on February 27, 2009 from http://www.stolaf.edu/people/huff/classes/handbook/Gilligan.html 3. Theories of Moral Development -Personality Theories, Retrieved on February 27, 2009 from http://nursingplanet.com/nr///index.php?blog=1&p=42&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 Read More