Stories of family, stories of self: Developmental pathways to interpretive thought during adolescence (original) (raw)
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Past research has shown that family interaction has a significant impact on child well-being. The purpose of the present study was to specifically examine family interaction style when talking about past events in relation to preadolescents' self-esteem and locus of control. Family narratives may be a particularly important site for children's emerging sense of self both as an individual and as a member of a unified family. Conversations that had a coordinated perspective and incorporated information from all family members, were associated with higher self-esteem, especially in girls. The conversations with an individual perspective, in which family members took turns telling their thoughts and feelings about the event without any integration across perspectives, were associated with an external locus of control, especially in boys. Surprisingly, conversations with an imposed perspective, in which one family member was in charge of the conversation or which included unpleasant exchanges between family members, were not associated with either self-esteem or locus of control in boys or girls. Implications of these narrative interaction styles for children's developing self-understanding are discussed. Family narratives and self-understanding-3 Family Narrative Interaction and Children's Self-Understanding We experience many important and emotional events with our families, and reminiscing about these shared experiences defines who we are both within the family, and as an individual. When a family recounts the story of a shared past event, bits and pieces from each person's story are intertwined into the whole, with different family members playing different roles during the reminiscing. The ways in which these social dynamics combine to produce the one, shared story are complex, and provide a framework for each individual family member to understand and integrate shared events into their own individual life story. For adolescents, who are just developing the abilities to create coherent narratives of self (Bluck & Habermas, 2000; McAdams, 1985), the ways in which families co-construct shared experiences may play a critical role in self-understanding (Fivush, 2004; Fivush & Reese, 2000). More specifically, narratives are the way in which we make sense of our past, and provide evaluations and perspective on the self (Bruner, 1987; Fivush, 2001; Labov, 1982). Families that help their children to create mutually negotiated meaning and a validated shared perspective on past experiences may also be helping their children to develop a sense of self-worth and self-efficacy. Therefore, the objectives of the present study are, first, to examine the ways in which families co-construct narratives of shared past events with their preadolescent children, and second, to determine how the process of co-constructing a narrative may influence children's emerging sense of self. Family reminiscing Much of the research on family reminiscing has focused on parent-child dyads with young, preschool children. Findings indicate that there are stable and consistent individual differences in parent-child reminiscing (see Nelson & Fivush, 2000, and 2004, for overviews). Parents who are highly elaborative talk more about the past overall, provide more detailed Family narratives and self-understanding-4 information, ask more questions, and give more prompts and cues to engage their children in the conversation. Parents who are low-elaborative, or repetitive, tend to ask fewer questions about the past overall, and the questions are usually simple or redundant. Further, these high and low elaborative reminiscing styles are strikingly consistent across time (Reese, Haden & Fivush, 1993) and across same-sex siblings (Haden, 1998). Most important, longitudinal research has demonstrated that children of more highly elaborative parents come to tell more coherent and more detailed narratives of their own personal experience by the end of the preschool years
Although the ability to tell a story of a personal experience is learned between two and six years and is refined during middle childhood, how to coherently narrate the story of one’s life seems to be acquired only during adolescence. The life story integrates autobiographical memories with a biographical view of the self. In an initial cross-sectional study of how life narratives gain in global coherence across adolescence, a sample of 12-, 15-, and 18-year-olds produced life narratives that were analyzed for elements that contribute to global coherence and for ways in which the textual openings set the stage for one's life. Results indicate linear agetrends for the temporal extension of causally linked statements, for causal links between events and personal change, for past-present comparisons, for other biographical concepts, and for hedges relating to explanations. There were also age-differences in the degree to which family history served as a setting for the life narratives.
Emerging identities: Narrative and self from early childhood to early adolescence
Narrative development in …, 2010
You know when you were younger how everything seems so like happy and stuff? (Uh huh) You kind of wake up. (11-year old telling a researcher about a life-changing event) This chapter is about when and how we begin to draw meaning from important events in our lives. Although children may indeed "wake up" to a new level of selfreflection in adolescence, we will argue that these newfound realizations are built upon experiences and capacities that have been developing from early childhood. We will also propose that the ability to draw meaning from life events is present much earlier in development than previously assumed, at the very latest by early adolescence, and possibly even earlier. Our approach to self-understanding is grounded in narrative. A primary way that we learn about ourselves is through the stories that we tell to others about ourselves and through the stories that we hear about ourselves from others (McAdams, 1993, 2006; McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007; Singer, 1995). Eventually, these stories about self coalesce into a life story. We define a life story as a dynamic collection of self-defining memories that are in narrative form and that can be organized with respect to major lifetime periods (see Conway, Singer, & Tagini, 2004). Thus, a definitive life story does not exist for any individual. Rather, we reorganize the chapters in our stories throughout our lives, and we select different events to include in those chapters depending upon our audience and our current perspectives (Linde, 1993; McAdams et al., 2006). At what point in development is it possible to "have" (and to tell) a life story? If we adopt a dynamic view, we never really "get" a life story; instead, we are always in the process of revision. Although Habermas and Bluck (2000) originally argued that true life stories are not possible before mid-adolescence, at around age 15, there has actually been a dearth of research on life stories in preadolescent samples. Although there have been prior attempts to elicit life stories from preadolescents,
Personal and intergenerational narratives in relation to adolescents' well-being
New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2011
Narratives of the self are embedded within families in which narrative interaction is a common practice. Especially in adolescence, when issues of identity and emotional regulation become key, narratives provide frameworks for understating self and emotion. The authors' research on family narratives suggests that adolescents' personal narratives are at least partly shaped by intergenerational narratives about their parents' childhoods. Both personal and intergenerational narratives emerge frequently in typical family dinner conversations, and these narratives refl ect gendered ways of being in the world. Adolescents who tell intergenerational narratives that are rich in intergenerational connections and perspective-taking show higher levels of well-being. These fi ndings suggest that individual narrative selves are created within families and across generations.
Child and Youth Care …, 2001
This study is a qualitative investigation of the role of family and peer groups in the development of a stable identity in adolescence. A content analysis of the autobiographical accounts of five female and two male participants resulted in the identification of five recurring processes that reflect a dynamic and complex interrelationship between family and peer contexts in the formation of self-representation. The five identified processes were (a) subjective experience/idealized image discrepancy, (b) duplicating and mutually reinforcing evaluations of the self, (c) resolution of discrepancy and acceptable losses, (d) complementarity of gains and losses, and (e) protective mechanisms.
Gender and self in children's autobiographical narratives
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 1998
In this study, we examined relations among gender, self-concept and children's autobiographical narratives. Twenty-two white middle-class children 8 years of age (50% female) were administered the Children's Self-View Questionnaire (CSVQ). In addition, children were asked to recall a speci®c experience associated with each of the nine self-concept dimensions assessed by the CSVQ, including Achievement, Alienation, and Social Closeness. Consistent with previous research with adults, girl's autobiographical narratives were longer, more coherent and more detailed than were boys' narratives. Girls were also more likely to place their autobiographical narratives in a social context, to refer to more aliative themes, and to mention more people and more emotions than were boys. In all these ways, girls' narratives were more socially contexted and relational than were those of boys. However, no relations were found between speci®c dimensions of self-understanding and children's autobiographical narratives.
Origins of adolescents’ autobiographical memories
Cognitive Development, 2010
Adolescents (N = 46; M = 12.46 years) who had previously participated in a longitudinal study of autobiographical memory development narrated their early childhood memories, interpreted life events, and completed a family history questionnaire and language assessment. Three distinct components of adolescent memory emerged: (1) age of earliest memory and insight into life events;
Journal of Personality, 2009
The ontogeny of the ability to describe people culminates in adolescence in the development of the life story. An overarching temporal macrostructure and framing by a prehistory and a future-oriented global evaluation of life helps integrate disparate autobiographical memories into a coherent story. Two life narratives each of 8-, 12-, 16-, and 20year-olds (N 5 102) were analyzed in terms of how well-formed their beginnings and endings are and how much they follow a linear temporal order. By age 12, the majority of life narratives began with birth, ended in the present, and followed a chronological order. In late adolescence and early adulthood, more elaborate birth narratives and retrospective evaluations of life and outlooks into the future were added. These formal characteristics were related to biographical practices, biographical knowledge, and fluid intelligence. Text-analytical methods are proposed as a method for the analysis of biographical and autobiographical reasoning and understanding.
2011
The focus of this chapter is on the relationship between child development and socio-cultural context from a discursive practice approach. It addresses the central and constructive role played by language in the forming and structuring of self and identity. Specifically, it aims at investigating how communicative practices in early family conversations can be considered as reflecting cultural models that will also become evident in the narrative self in adulthood. Our intention is to identify developmental precursors of identity formation with regard to the dimensions of autonomy and relatedness. In doing this, we hope to contribute to the understanding of the dialogical relationship between culture and self. We will first give a theoretical outline of the interplay between self, narrative, and culture from a developmental perspective, followed by some empirical evidence from a longitudinal study to support our claim. We will conclude with a discussion of the presented data in light of the dynamic nature of culture and self over the lifespan. Kan der komme to linier mere på denen side?