I. The Family Narrative Consortium: A Multidimensional Approach to Narratives (original) (raw)
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Use of Family Narratives as a Tool of Effective Parenting
Family narratives and reminisces can be effectively used by parents as a tool to help children develop self-concept. Family narratives are the way through which children and adolescents connect across generations to create self-identity. By anchoring oneself in family history, one develops a sense of place and security that may facilitate self-confidence and self-competence. In the modern world where nuclear family is the norm, parents need to ensure that family narratives are used effectively in helping children navigate through challenges of life. Parents and grandparents have to pay careful attention to family history and narratives; and put in efforts in developing strong family narratives to be shared with children. Also, parents need to be careful while sharing those reminisces and narratives by avoiding individual comparison of their children with others in the past. Celebrating certain occasions as a day for showing gratitude towards grandparents and older generations can also generate curiosity and interest among children about family narratives. The current study looks into family narratives practices, challenges and how parents can develop strong family narratives to be shared with their children.
III. Dinnertime Stories: Connecting Family Practices with Relationship Beliefs and Child Adjustment
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1999
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The Family's Construction of Past Stressors: Clues in the Measurement of Family Stories
1990
This study investigated the ways in which families operate as a unit while presenting a story to an interviewer, and the ways in which they interface with the outside world, as represented by the interviewer. A description of the study is preceded by an overview of relevant literature, including studies that concerred microsocial analyses, shared family constructs, family storieLi, and research interviewing. The design of the study involved four steps. First, two stories about stressful family events were elicited from 44 families. The family as a group described to an interviewer how it reacted to the events. Second, a theory of family regulation as manifested through the storytelling process was constructed. Third, descriptors for evaluating family interaction were chosen. These included family communication, boundary maintenance, cohesiveness, vitality, flexibility, and humor. Fourth, a coding protocol for assessing levels of behavior, meaning, and memory in the storytelling process was developed. Dimensions coded included: (1) the family's self-presentation; (2) the family's relations with the outside world; (3) intrafamily connectedness; (4) story structure; and (5) family affirmation and closure. Family continuity was also assessed. At the time of presentation of this paper, preliminary data analyses were proceeding. A reference list of 27 items is included. (BC)
Children's perspectives of the family: A phenomenological inquiry
Human Studies, 1994
Families and everyday life are inextricably linked. Family occurrences, images, and stories are the grist of the conversations of daily life. These conversations teach people their roles within families. Discourse provides information about the practice of family living and help to shape and transform families. Whether the transformation comes through learning gender roles or life expectations, the conversations generate and perpetuate the practice. The purpose of this study is to examine the integration of children's lived experience into the family discourse; the specific focus will be on the ways in which they enter and are transformed by the practice of everyday life. An understanding of children's situatedness in families will depend on the ability to disentangle the intertwining threads traversing the multiple and contradictory everyday practices. An analysis of children's discursive content, its forms and its presence, will help to explicate the production and situatedness of their everyday life. Children's perspectives provide a unique and privileged place from which to observe and understand family practice and relationships. Children's constructions of "family" are not presently known. The ideology of "common sense" (Belsey, 1989) suggests that what is already known, assumed, and taken for granted about families is true. For instance, a common assumption is that the family of origin will influence understanding of, family roles in, and organization in later family households (Fields, 1986). Common sense is produced in a specific society by the way it talks about and experiences the family. Review of literature The family is a social institution with a rich body of literature, but no clear definition (Brennan and Wamboldt, 1990; Trost, 1990). Too, while family structure, family task performance, and the family as a transactional process
An ecological systems approach to family narratives
Memory Studies, 2016
We propose an ecological systems approach to family narratives that describes three dynamically interacting systems of family narratives: shared family narratives, communicative family narratives, and family history. We review developmental research on family storytelling within each of these levels and describe how they interact to create individual narrative identity, focusing on adolescence.
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
Family Narrative Interaction and Children's Sense of Self
Family Process, 2006
Family narratives about the shared past may be a particularly significant site for preadolescents' emerging sense of self both as an individual and as a member of a unified family. We examined the relations between family narrative interaction style when reminiscing and preadolescents' sense of self. Results indicated three narrative interaction styles that describe the extent to which families discuss or fail to discuss their past in integrated and validating ways. Specifically, conversations with a coordinated perspective incorporated information from all members and were related to higher self-esteem, especially in girls. Conversations with an individual perspective, in which family members took turns telling their thoughts and feelings about the event without integration among the perspectives, were associated with a more external locus of control, especially in boys. Conversations with an imposed perspective, in which one family member was in charge of the conversation or in which unpleasant exchanges between members occurred, were not associated with either self-esteem or locus of control. Implications of these narrative interaction styles for children's developing sense of self are discussed.