When my parents tell their stories: The investigation of vicarious memories in the family context

Stories that have not been personally experienced by children and are only told by their parents are called vicarious family stories (e.g., Pillemer et al., 2015). A burgeoning body of literature has shown that vicarious family stories are an important part of children’s narrative ecology (e.g., Fivush & Merrill, 2016; Merrill & Fivush, 2016). However, to date, only a handful of studies have examined the role of vicarious family stories in adulthood years. The primary aim of the present thesis was to extend the boundaries of research by examining the role of individual, familial, and cultural characteristics in vicarious family stories of young, middle-aged, and older adults. In the first study, we investigated the characteristics of vicarious family stories in the Turkish cultural context. Seventy-two Turkish families including three generations of women and men from different samples of families were recruited. Results can be described in three main sections: a) intrafamilial similarities; b) gender differences; and c) cross-generational differences. For intrafamilial similarities, members of the same family showed similarities in terms of the volume and number of other-related words. For gender differences, women focused more on social interactions, used more other-related words and subjective perspective terms, and made more identity connections between others and parents than men. When describing their parents’ reasons for telling family stories, women were also less likely to report development and teaching reasons and more likely to report emotional reasons compared to men. For cross-generational differences, the oldest generation’s stories were less coherent than the youngest and middle generations’, and less voluminous than the middle generation’s. Additionally, the youngest generation reported entertainment reasons more often than the oldest generation. Emotional reasons were more common for the middle generation than for the youngest and oldest generations. In the second study, we examined whether vicarious family stories are linked to family climate and well-being among young, middle-aged, and older adults across two different samples from Turkey. In total, there were 168 triads of Turkish families (N = 504). Across Sample 1 (written narratives) and Sample 2 (spoken narratives), we found a significant link between family climate and well-being. In addition, participants from Sample 2 who experienced a more positive family climate narrated more coherent family stories. The results also revealed that participants from Sample 1 who rated their stories as more emotionally positive and participants from Sample 2 who included more identity connections in their stories reported higher levels of well-being. In the third study, we examined the characteristics of vicarious family stories about mothers across Turkish and New Zealand (NZ) cultures and investigated individual variations in cultures with regards to the internalisation of cultural orientations (i.e., self-construals). There were 108 Turkish and 79 NZ women in this study. We found that Turkish women’s stories were more thematically coherent and included more social interactions and other-related words than NZ women’s. In addition, when reporting reasons for why they think family members told stories, didactic purposes and expressing emotions were more common reasons for Turkish women, whereas sharing family history and entertainment were more common reasons for NZ women. However, Turkish and NZ women’s vicarious stories were similar in terms of identity connections and affective tone. Counter to our expectations, we did not find a significant role of individuals’ self-construals in the link between culture and vicarious stories about mothers. Overall, the present thesis: a) contributes to the growing area of research on family narratives by examining the elements of narrative identity in family stories across three generations; b) emphasises the links to well-being for family climate and family stories, and highlights the importance of capturing different characteristics of vicarious stories (elicited via different methods) across generations; c) extends our knowledge by showing the commonalities and differences in the construction of vicarious family stories across cultures; and d) supports the ecological system approach to family narratives (see Fivush & Merrill, 2016) by demonstrating that vicarious family stories are heard and internalised by younger generations (see also Reese, Fivush, et al., 2017; Zaman & Fivush, 2011)