The Intergenerational Self: An Exploration in Theory and Empirical Research Público
Merrill, Natalie Ann (2015)
Abstract
Family stories are shared regularly and provide lessons and insights for younger generations in ways that may contribute to well-being and identity development (Pratt & Fiese, 2004; Fivush, Bohanek, & Duke, 2008). Specifically, intergenerational narratives, the stories that parents tell children from their own childhood, provide a special opportunity for parents to impart life lessons and model meaning-making processes for their children as their children are developing their own narrative abilities (Fivush & Merrill, in press). Thus, these stories have the potential to become part of the many narratives that are important to the child's own understanding of self (Bohanek et al., 2009; Fivush, Bohanek, & Marin, 2010). Fivush, Bohanek, and Duke (2008) proposed the idea of the "Intergenerational Self," that is, that developing individuals use family stories to come to understand how the self, and their own personal histories, are situated among a larger familial history. Up to this point, there has been limited empirical work exploring this theoretical construct, and the purpose of this dissertation is to explicate further the idea of the Intergenerational Self both theoretically and empirically in three manuscripts. The first is a theoretical review which details the ways in which intergenerational narratives can influence the psychosocial development of individuals at two key stages in the life course, adolescence and midlife. The second article presents relations between knowledge of family history, identity development, psychological well-being, and parental relationship quality in emerging adults. The third article provides an empirical examination of intergenerational narratives, personal narratives, and narratives about friends in relation to identity and well-being in emerging adulthood. Together, these findings provide support for the link between intergenerational narratives, identity development and psychological well-being, but they reveal a more nuanced picture that these relations depend upon parental relationship quality and gender.
Table of Contents
General Introduction. 1
Theoretical Overview. 2
Definition and Frequency of Intergenerational Narratives. 2
Relations to Well-being and Identity. 5
Issues that Remain. 8
Summary of Articles. 9
Article 1. 9
Article 2. 10
Article 3. 10
Article Formatting. 11
Footnotes. 12
Figure 1. 13
Article 1: Intergenerational Narratives and Identity Across Development. 14
Abstract. 15
Introduction. 16
Theoretical Foundations. 18
Narrative Identity. 21
Narrative identity formation in adolescence. 22
Generativity and narrative identity in middle adulthood. 23
Intergenerational Narratives in Sociocultural Context. 25
Personal narratives in social cultural context. 26
Stories of shared family experiences. 28
Intergenerational Narratives. 29
"Telling" and Expressions of Generativity. 31
Goals of telling intergenerational narratives. 33
Intergenerational Narrative Identity. 36
Intergenerational Narratives and Well-being. 44
Future Directions. 50
Well-being. 51
Gender. 52
Culture. 53
Developmental Stage and Family Characteristics. 56
Conclusions. 58
References. 59
Article 2: Knowledge of Family History and Relations to Identity, Psychological Well-being, and Relationship Quality. 75
Abstract. 76
Introduction. 77
Hypotheses Summary. 82
Method. 82
Participants. 82
Procedure. 83
Materials. 83
Relationship Quality with Parents and Peers. 84
Well-being. 84
Identity Development. 85
Results. 85
Descriptive Information. 85
Relations among Family History Knowledge, Well-being, and Identity. 85
Relations to Quality of Parent and Peer Relationships. 87
Discussion. 88
References. 94
Tables. 98
Table 1. 98
Table 2. 99
Table 3. 100
Table 4. 101
Footnote. 102
Article 3: Perspective-taking and Self-event Connection in Intergenerational Narratives: Relations to Gender, Identity, and Well-being. 103
Abstract. 104
Introduction. 105
Perspective-taking in Narratives. 106
Self-event Connections. 110
Summary of Hypotheses. 112
Method. 114
Participants. 114
Procedure. 114
Narrative instructions. 115
Questionnaire measures. 116
Well-being. 116
Identity Achievement. 117
Narrative Coding. 117
Perspective-taking. 117
Self-event Connection. 117
Results. 118
Affect. 119
Cognition. 119
Self-event Connections. 119
Relations between Narrative Variables, Well-being, and Identity. 120
Discussion. 121
Limitations. 126
Conclusion. 128
References. 129
Footnotes. 136
Tables. 137
Table 1. 137
Table 2. 138
Figure 1. 139
Supplemental Materials. 140
Sample Narratives. 140
Coding Manuals. 143
Self-event Connection Coding. 143
Perspective-taking Coding. 146
General Discussion. 149
Summary of Articles. 149
Integrating Results across the Articles. 151
Limitations and Future Directions. 153
References. 156
About this Dissertation
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