Paul Crittenden sets out to recover the past philosophical practice of treating developmental questions as an important part of ethical inquiry and to bring moral development, moral education, and moral philosophy back together again.

The first part of this extremely thorough work is concerned with the main contemporary accounts of how children come to be moral beings. Against this background, the second part consists of historical studies of major accounts of morality in a developmental context. Crittenden stresses the necessity of community for moral development and also address a number of conceptual questions, including the relationship between morality and religion.