Parental styles of talking about the past.

Abstract

Past research indicates that mothers have different styles of reminiscing with their children (e.g., R.Fivush & F. A. Fromhoff, 1988). This study examined fathers' styles of talking about the past aswell. Mothers and fathers from 24 2-parent families talked separately with their 3-year-olds aboutshared one-time events. Consistent with previous research on mothers, parents displayed 2 distinctnarrative styles. The styles were not associated with gender of parent. However, parents of daugh-ters were generally more elaborative (i.e., they provided more narrative structure and talked longer)than parents of sons. In turn, daughters participated in the conversations to a greater extent thansons, but sons and daughters had similar linguistic skills. Parents do not appear to be basing theirnarrative styles on the memory or language capabilities of their children. Instead, the practice ofreminiscing may be a sex-typed activity.