How three generations narrate their vicarious family stories: intrafamilial similarities, gender and cross-generational differences

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the memory characteristics of vicarious family stories. Seventy-two 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 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. These findings contribute to the growing area of research on family narratives by examining the elements of narrative identity in family stories across three generations.

KEYWORDS:

• Vicarious family stories
• narrative identity
• intrafamilial similarities
• gender differences
• three generations

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all of the students for their assistance and families for sharing their stories. We also thank Elif Gizem Tursel for coding stories to assess the inter-coder reliability. Finally, we are grateful for the suggestions of the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.