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This study examined moral reasoning in parent-child conversations within a U.S. evangelical Christian community. The goal was to identify social-communicative processes that may promote the development of Divinity in children's moral reasoning. Sixteen parent-child dyads (6-9 years old) discussed hypothetical moral vignettes about failures to help peers in need. Analyses revealed that Divinity typically co-occurred with Autonomy in these conversations and that such co-occurrences typically happened through three distinct social-communicative processes, labeled "align," "scaffold," and "counter." Findings are used to explain the shifting priority of Autonomy and Divinity over the life course among members of evangelical Christian faiths that previous research has documented. More broadly, findings highlight socialization processes through which children can rationalize their developing moral outlooks in culturally distinct ways.

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A popular social discourse in the United States is that play is important for children's learning and that parental involvement maximizes play's learning potential. Past research has concluded that parents who hold this view of play are more likely to play with their children than those who do not. This study investigated the prevalence of this view among Euro-American and immigrant Latino parents of young children in order to illuminate the extent to which it uniquely and uniformly motivates parent-child play. Parents' models of play were assessed through interviews and naturalistic observations in a children's museum. Analysis revealed ethnic group differences in parent-child play that corresponded with parental beliefs about play. Within-group analysis, however, revealed diversity in the ways that these play behaviours and beliefs came together to comprise parents' models of play. Discussion focuses on the social nature of play, the dynamic nature of culture, and the issue of individual subject validity. Implications for the interpretation of parent-child play in early childhood settings are considered.

The way that people think about moral responsibility and personal freedom in their moral judgments is a complex issue that has been extensively theorized and researched from the perspective of Social Domain Theory. In this study, I offer a cultural reinterpretation of the Social Domain Theory of moral reasoning to examine how judgments about helping others are linked to cultural visions of morality and personal freedom within U.S. evangelical Christian religious cultures. Sixteen parent-child dyads from an evangelical Christian church produced conversations in response to hypothetical vignettes about helping others in need. Mixed quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed conceptions of personal freedom that prioritized personal regulation of self in line with standards for helping actions and desires determined by God, rather than personal determination of correct action and desire. Findings are interpreted and discussed in light of local conceptions of morality, self, and helping. I conclude by using these findings to illuminate the role of culture in constituting domains of social knowledge.