Spiritual and Moral Development in Childhood and Its Impact on Adulthood: A Review Article

Spiritual-moral development is one of the most fundamental concepts in the field of study of the psychologists of religion. Psychologists since G. Stanley Hall has emphasized that childhood is an important period for one's spiritual and moral development. They believe that if spirituality and morality are defined as a desire for excellence and meaning, children will undoubtedly have a strong moral and spiritual nature, as children will seek for meaning and excellence, and this experience will in turn influence their adulthood. However, the question may be raised as to what research has influenced the development of such growth in children from the perspective of research. Therefore, this review study seeks to discover how spiritual and moral development in children is based on empirical research conducted mainly in the West and in English. For this study, the keywords of child spirituality, child ethics, spiritual development and child morality were searched in research conducted between 1990 and 2003 and recorded in databases such as Science Direct, Wiley Online Library, google scholar, libgen. Analyzes showed that religious socialization, children's attachment to spiritual-moral parenting, and helping to refine the child's image of God are the most important factors highlighted in these studies for promoting and enhancing children's spiritual-moral development and its impact on adulthood.