What makes stealing wrong

People can steal words and ideas , too. For instance, if someone takes your book report and tells the teacher that she — not you — wrote it, that's another form of stealing. Imagine how upset you would be if that happened to you! Little kids age 4 and younger may not understand that they shouldn't take things that don't belong to them.

But by the time you are 5 or 6, you understand what's right and what's wrong. Most school-age kids know that they aren't supposed to take something without asking or without paying for it.

Still, some kids lack self-control. They might see something they want and take it. They don't stop to think first about what might happen. They might not think to buy the object or ask to borrow it. Kids get better at self-control as they grow. Some kids may need extra help learning self-control.

Some kids steal because their friends or family members do it or because they might have been dared. They might believe their friends will like them more if they steal. Doing something for these reasons is called peer pressure , but kids don't have to give in to it. Some kids steal because they feel something is missing in their lives.

What's missing may be love or attention. Or simple things like food and clothing. They may be angry , sad , scared, or jealous. They might steal as a way to deal with the situation. But stealing won't fix what's missing. Other kids might have personal problems that lead them to steal. They may feel jealous of what others have. They may feel unloved and neglected.

When the child has paid for or returned the stolen merchandise, the matter should not be brought up again by the parents, so that the child can begin again with a "clean slate. If stealing continues or is present in a child with other problem behaviors or symptoms, the stealing may be a sign of more serious problems in the child's emotional development or problems in the family.

Children who repeatedly steal may also have difficulty trusting others and forming close relationships. Rather than feeling guilty, they may blame the behavior on others, arguing that, "Since they refuse to give me what I need, I will take it. In treating a child who steals persistently, a mental health provider will evaluate the underlying reasons for the child's need to steal, and develop a plan of treatment.

Important parts of treatment can be helping the child form trusting relationships and helping the family to direct the child toward a healthier path of development.

Your support will help us continue to produce and distribute Facts for Families , as well as other vital mental health information, free of charge. When confronted with a child who is lying, it is important to first remember the child's age and developmental stage. Children under the age of 3 don't lie on purpose. This age group does not understand what they are saying and instead are just experimenting with language and new-found facts about the world.

They might also lie to avoid punishment because they understand the consequences but have an undeveloped moral code. Children from the ages of 3 to 7 often have problems separating the real world from fantasy.

They might have imaginary playmates at this age and enjoy fairy tales and make-believe play. The lies told by this age group are mostly tales that they have made up, not intentional lies. By the age of 6 or 7, however, children understand what lying is, but will continue to cheat if able.

Children from the ages of 6 to 12 understand what lying is and the moral wrongness of this behavior. However, children may continue to lie in order to test adult rules and limits. The child may admit to telling a lie, but usually he or she has many reasons for having done so. Rules are very important at this age, so cheating becomes less important. First of all, let us start by asking about the principle of utility as the foundational principle of morality, that is, about the claim that what is morally right is just what leads to the better outcome.

Mill derives the principle of utility from this claim based on three considerations, namely desirability, exhaustiveness, and impartiality. The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner…the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. Mill [] , Ch. In defending exhaustiveness, Mill does not argue that other things, apart from happiness, are not desired as such; but while other things appear to be desired , happiness is the only thing that is really desired since whatever else we may desire, we do so because attaining that thing would make us happy.

Finally, in defending impartiality, Mill argues that equal amounts of happiness are equally desirable, whether the happiness is felt by the same person or by different persons. We may wonder, however, whether this last argument is truly adequate. Utilitarianism claims that we should thus calculate, to the best of our ability, the expected utility that will result from our actions and how it will affect us and others, and use that as the basis for the moral evaluation of our decisions.

But then we may ask, how exactly do we quantify utility? Here there are two different but related problems: how can I come up with a way of comparing different types of pleasure and pain, benefit or harm that I myself might experience, and how can I compare my benefit and yours on some neutral scale of comparison? Suppose the following are the case:. Since, on all of these measures, drinking a pint of beer is more pleasurable than reading Hamlet , it follows according to Bentham that it is objectively better for you to drink the pint of beer and forget about reading Hamlet , and so you should.

Of course, it is up to each individual to make such a calculation based on the intensity, duration, certainty, etc. This brings us back to the problem we mentioned before that, realistically, we cannot be expected to always engage in very difficult calculations every single time we want to make a decision. In an attempt to resolve this problem, utilitarians might claim that in the evaluation of the moral rightness and moral wrongness of actions, the application of the principle of utility can be backward-looking based on hindsight or forward-looking based on foresight.

That is, we can use past experience of the results of our actions as a guide to estimating what the probable outcomes of our actions might be and save ourselves from the burden of having to make new estimates for each and every choice we may face.

Mill, for example, would respond to our claim that drinking beer is objectively more pleasurable than reading Hamlet by saying that it overlooks an important distinction between qualitatively different kinds of pleasure.

Mill justifies this claim by saying that between two pleasures, although one pleasure requires a greater amount of difficulty to attain than the other pleasure, if those who are competently acquainted with both pleasures prefer or value one over the other, then the one is a higher pleasure while the other is a lower pleasure.

For Mill, although drinking a pint of beer may seem to be more pleasurable than reading Hamlet , if you are presented with these two options and you are to make a choice—each and every time or as a rule—you should still choose to read Hamlet and forego drinking the pint of beer. Reading Hamlet generates a higher quality although perhaps a lower quantity of pleasure, while drinking a pint of beer generates lower quality although higher quantity of pleasure.

In the end, these issues may be merely technical problems faced by utilitarianism—is there some neutral scale of comparison between pleasures? The more serious problem, however, remains, which is that utilitarianism seems willing in principle to sacrifice the interests and even perhaps lives of individuals for the sake of the benefit of a larger group.

And this seems to conflict with our basic moral intuition that people have a right not to be used in this way. While Mill argued that the notion of rights could be accounted for on purely utilitarian terms, Bentham simply dismissed it.

Let us conclude by revisiting the question we started with: can the ends justify the means? I stated that as far as utilitarianism is concerned the answer to this question is in the affirmative. While the answer is plausible and right for utilitarians, it is implausible for many others, and notably wrong for deontologists. As we have seen in this chapter, on a close examination utilitarianism is less persuasive and less reasonable than it appears to be when it is far away.

Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Anarchical Fallacies.