Transmitting Relational Worldviews: The Relationship Between Mother–Daughter Memorable Messages and Adult Daughters’ Romantic Relational Schemata

Abstract

This study investigates memorable messages that daughters report hearing from their mothers about romantic relationships to examine the development of meaning in the content of parent–child communication and the ways in which these messages may affect and reflect adult daughters’ relational worldviews. Findings from a study involving 149 adult daughters revealed 4 supra-categories of memorable messages: value self, characteristics of a good relationship, warnings, and value the sanctity of love. Moreover, statistical analyses reveal that memorable message types significantly related to daughter's romantic relationship schemata as operationalized by Fitzptarick's (1988) couple types. Both message and couple type predicted intergenerational transmission.

Keywords:

• Intergenerational Transmission
• Family Communication
• Memorable Messages
• Mother–daughter Communication
• Relational Schemata

This research was supported by a University of Nebraska–Lincoln's Research Council Grant-in-Aid Award funded through a gift from the Jane Roberston Layman Fund. A previous version of this manuscript was presented to the Interpersonal Communication Interest Group at the Western States Communication Association annual meeting in Denver, CO, February, 2008 and received a Top Four Paper Award. I thank Erin Willer for her instrumental assistance on the manuscript, particularly her assistance in developing the inductive coding scheme. I also thank Beth Ribarsky and Elissa Arterburn for their help in coding the data.

Notes

The following are descriptions of couple types (directly adapted from Honeycutt, Woods, & Fontenot, 1993):

• Type 1: You believe that your romantic relationship is very important and that you should sacrifice some personal independence for the relationship. You believe in stability and stress the importance of being able to predict your partner and your life together. You spend a lot of time with your partner, avoid conflict in general and may argue only over very important issues. You actually disclose more positive than negative feelings/matters that are hardly risky to reveal. You and your partner present yourselves as a couple to others and downplay distinct individual traits, habits, or skills. You believe you are highly interdependent in your relationship with your partner. You may engage in conflicts with your partner when the issues are serious ones.

  Type 2: You believe that a romantic relationship exists for the gratification that the relationship gives to partners and that relationships should be based on the satisfaction that each partner gets from the relationship. You believe that in this quickly changing world it is vital that each individual have a strong sense of self that is not lost just because that person is in a committed romantic relationship. You do not keep regular daily schedules with your partner and have outside friends and interests. You disclose both positive and negative feelings to your partner. You are not afraid to openly express your views, are likely to engage in conflict, bargaining, and negotiation. You may agree to disagree. You hold what some may consider non-conventional views about romantic relationships. You are moderately interdependent with your partner and willingly engage in conflicts whether or not the issues are serious ones. Type 3: In your romantic relationship, togetherness is a matter of habit and convenience. You believe your relationship is stable, yet includes little sharing of time together. The major points of contact occur at mealtimes or other regularly scheduled daily events. You go to great lengths to avoid conflict. You have a sense of duty and obligations connected with being a boyfriend/husband or girlfriend/wife. Although you tend to avoid conflict, you may sometimes confront your partner and take a verbal “pot shot” at the other. You feel you cannot express your innermost thoughts to your partner. You are careful in conversations with your partner, tend not to interrupt each other, and generally don't talk very much to your partner. You see romantic relationships and/or marriage as the product of factors that are outside your control, factors that are part of normal stages of life. (p. 303)

Although Holm's sequential Bonferroni method did not find a significant difference when adjusting for family-wise error on schemata between women who received value self messages and those who received warnings, estimates of effect size (Cramer's V = .34) for this difference suggest an important relationship, as well as a trend that parallels the other two significant findings presented in the results for Message × Schemata Type.

The likelihood of transmission variable was able to be collapsed across the individual memorable messages because within-subjects tests of difference showed no significant difference in the likelihood of intergenerational transmission across message types within individuals: individuals with three memorable messages, F(2, 134) = 0.02, ns; and individuals with two memorable messages, t(60) = 1.65, ns. Thus, looking at the collection of memorable messages, along with the average likelihood of transmission within these collections of messages, was appropriate for testing RQ3..

Because all daughters recalled at least one memorable message, the first memorable message was used in the post hoc analysis. Thus, a one-way analysis of variance was run with Memorable Message 1 subtype as the independent variable and likelihood of intergenerational transmission of this message as the dependent variable. Findings of this analysis indicate that there was a significant difference between message subtype and likelihood of passing it on, F(12, 129) = 6.85, p < .001; and post hoc tests using Tukey's honestly significant difference test show that in all but one case (for the judgment of girls subtype), personal regret subtype messages were significantly less likely to be passed on than any other subtype. All means and standard deviations are presented in Table 4.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jody Koenig Kellas

Jody Koenig Kellas (Ph.D., University of Washington, 2002) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.