Discuss how children separate moral imperatives from social conventions, and explain how they learn to distinguish between these moral domains

What will be an ideal response?

The domain approach to moral understanding focuses on children's developing capacity to distinguish and coordinate moral imperatives, which protect people's rights and welfare, from two other types of social rules and expectations: social conventions, customs determined solely by consensus, such as table manners and rituals of social interaction; and matters of personal choice, such as choice of friends, hairstyle, and leisure activities, which do not violate rights and are up to the individual. According to domain theorists, children construct these systems of social knowledge out of their experiences with three types of regularities in their social world. And research reveals that children arrive at these distinctions early, displaying more advanced moral reasoning than assumed by the externally controlled vision of Kohlberg's preconventional morality.
As children construct a flexible appreciation of moral rules, they clarify and link moral imperatives and social conventions. Gradually their understanding becomes more complex, taking into account an increasing number of variables, including the purpose of the rule; people's intentions, knowledge, and beliefs; and the context of people's behavior. School-age children, for example, distinguish social conventions with a clear purpose from ones with no obvious justification. They regard violations of purposeful conventions as closer to moral transgressions. With age, they also realize that people's intentions and the context of their actions affect the moral implications of violating a social convention.