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Children's Narrative Representations of Mothers: Their Development and Associations with Child and Mother Adaptation
Author(s) -
Oppenheim David,
Emde Robert N.,
Warren Susan
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1997.tb01930.x
Subject(s) - socioemotional selectivity theory , psychology , developmental psychology , narrative , child development , mental representation , cognition , linguistics , philosophy , neuroscience
We investigated associations between children's representations of mothers in their play narratives and measures of children's and mother socioemotional adaptation, and explored the development of these representations between the ages of 4 and 5 years. Fifty‐one children were interviewed using the MacArthur Story‐Stem Battery to obtain their narrative representations of mothers. Positive, Negative, and Disciplinary representation composites were generated. Children who had more Positive and Disciplinary representations and fewer Negative representations had fewer behavior problems and their mothers reported less psychological distress. In addition, 5‐year‐olds had more Positive and Disciplinary representations and fewer Negative representations did 4‐year‐olds, and there was moderate stability in individual differences in children's representations of mothers across the 2 ages. The results add an important dimension to research on parent‐child relationships—that of children's perspectives on these relationships.