Possibility of loving boy and girl: A study from the perspective of children

• Autor(a) principal: Alves, Ariadne Dettmann
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Moulin de Alencar, Heloisa, Ortega, Antonio Carlos
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Psicologia (Fortaleza. Online)
• Texto Completo: http://www.periodicos.ufc.br/psicologiaufc/article/view/788
• topic: Moral development; moral judgments; virtues; love; desenvolvimento moral; juízo moral; virtudes; amor.

We investigated the school children judgments about the possibility of loving a child of the opposite sex and same sex. We interviewed, individually, 40 children (6 and 9 years) equally divided by gender, belonging to a private school, using the clinical method. We verified that 85% of the participants considered the possibility of loving a child of the opposite sex, justifying it, mainly by ‘observation of lived experience’ and ‘positive feature of the beloved’, the latter having increased with age. However, 65% considered it possible to love a child of the same sex, basing their arguments on the ‘friendship’ and ‘positive result for oneself’, both of which increased with age. We emphasize that this issue, although very relevant, is poorly studied in the field of psychology of morality. Thus, more research and discussions on the subject is needed in order to provide new education proposals on moral values.