Teenagers are influenced by everything around them, in all aspects of life. Moral development is perhaps the most important part of adolescence and can be influenced by many sources. However, parents have the potential to have the greatest influence on the moral development of their children. Whether parents are heavily involved in the child's life, absent from the child's life, or even how parents choose to apply rules and punishments to the child will all impact the child's moral development during adolescence. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Parents are role models for their children, and during adolescence most of the moral influence will come from parents. Parents may enforce some rules more heavily than others, promoting a specific morality that they would like to instill in their children (Camodeca, Taraschi, 2015). For example, if parents do not tolerate lying and impose heavy punishments on their children if they are caught lying. It becomes evident that parental honesty is of high moral significance. Adolescents are also more likely to follow behaviors their parents consider acceptable. For example, when consuming alcohol, if parents drink casually at home, the teenager will be less reluctant to drink at a party or come home under the influence of alcohol, because, although there will be consequences, it is not seen as a taboo in their family. On the other hand, if a teenager grew up in a family where there is no alcohol and the parents believe that alcohol is forbidden, it is likely that that teenager does not drink or is very reluctant to try alcohol for fear that his parents find out. I personally have known people whose parents were okay with them drinking when they were nineteen or twenty, and sadly one of them had gotten his first DUI before he even turned twenty-one, and it was almost treated like a right of ride. However, for me, I grew up in the second family, my parents don't drink at all and my mother would go so far as to say that drinking even one beer is sinful. This is why I can assure you that I never drank as a teenager, because in my mind being caught drinking would have been the end of the world. I think this example could be true for many other situations as well, if a parent lives a certain lifestyle, the child will generally consider that lifestyle acceptable, and the opposite is also true. Perhaps the most important aspect of a parent's influence on the moral development of the adolescent child is the parent's level of involvement in the child's life. Obviously, if the parent is not present or is hardly present, he will have little or no influence on the child, and the child will look to someone else as a model for moral development. However, parents who are involved in the child's life and show interest in their child's choices, activities or hobbies can have a great influence (White, Matawie, 2004). Parents who spend quality time with their children doing activities they enjoy will create a strong parent/child bond. These parents will gain their child's respect and the child will be more likely to come to them to talk about any problems they may be having. Adolescents with this close bond with their parents are also likely to follow their parents' moral values, because they do not want to disappoint them and want to maintain a good relationship with them. Personally, this was me in my teens, when I was growing up my life pretty much revolved around baseball and my dad would take me.