The mother and the motherland: Their internal representations among immigrant and non-immigrant adolescents

Abstract

This paper studies associations between internal representations that adolescents hold for their mothers and internal representations of the country they belong to, and the extent to which such internal representations impact on psychological adjustment. Two studies were conducted: the first with 328 Russian adolescents in Russia, and the second with 178 Jewish adolescent immigrants from Russia in Israel. In both samples, representations of the mother as caring were significantly related to the adolescents' positive attitudes towards their country of living. In addition, the adolescents' positive attitudes towards country of living were significantly related to their psychological adjustment, over and above internal representations of mother. Findings suggest the importance of theories of internal representations for understanding the dynamics of the adolescents' attachment to social objects and their psychological adjustment.

Keywords:

• internal representations of mothers
• internal representations of a country
• attachment to social objects
• high-school adolescents
• psychological adjustment
• Russia
• Israel

Acknowledgement

This article was written under equal authorship.

Notes

1. Since socio-demographic characteristics were not in the focus of the study, they were not included in the analyses. In addition, all adolescents were in a narrow age range between 15–16, which further supported our decision not to include age in the analysis. Preliminary analysis found no significant correlations with gender, which supported our decision not to include gender in the analysis.