Parents advisements heavily influence their kids morals. When a parent teaches their child right from wrong, that is the childs fundamental moral basis for the rest of their life. Many juvenile delinquents do the terrible things they do because of how their parents raised them. If they were beaten as a child by their parents, that messes with a kids psychic and makes them think thats a norm, and doing bad things like that is morally acceptable (Totenberg). In the first Kohlberg dilemma, the way Joe reacts when presented with his difficult predicament is based on what his parents taught him was okay. Is it okay for Joe to say no to his father, or should he honor him and give him the money? Joes decision will be heavily influenced by how his parents raised him (Kohlberg). Kids thoughts and ideas are constantly developing, and their parents ideas are developing with them. Kids arent being taught morality, but rather subconsciously absorbing their parents ideas of morality along with their own.
Morality isnt as simple as judging based on whether someone did a good thing or not, there are times when people do bad things with probable cause, and in that case, circumstantial evid
ence needs to be used to evaluate whether an action is right or wrong. Juvenile cases are especially tricky to evaluate, because as Nina Totenberg says, their brains are literally less developed, they are more impulsive, more subject to peer pressure and less able to see the consequences of their acts(Totenberg). One cannot judge a teen the same as an adult, because they are on different intellectual levels. Every case cannot be judged the same, context must be taken into consideration. Without considering context, anyone who murdered someone would be facing life in prison, instead of taking into account self-defense or prevention of a crime. In the case of juvenile killers serving life behind bars Totenberg argues, In cases dealing with punishment for juveniles, context is everything. Sentencing juveniles to life without parole for a crime without factoring in their age or their circumstances is arbitrary and unjust. This is important because teens brains arent fully developed so they cant fully comprehend or consider the long-term consequences of their actions. When judging the morality of anything, the context must be looked at to fully understand the circumstance at hand.