Content of maternal open-ended questions and statements in reminiscing with their 4-year-olds: Links with independence and interdependence orientation in European contexts

Abstract

Mother's open-ended questions and elaborative statements during reminiscing were analysed for their content (child agency, co-agency, non-social, and social context) in three cultural contexts. Participants were 115 mothers and their 4-year-old children: 35 dyads from Berlin, Germany, 42 from Stockholm, Sweden, and 38 from Tallinn, Estonia. Across samples the most prominent content was talk about non-social context followed by co-agency and child agency. Tallinn mothers asked the children to talk about themselves, and Berlin mothers asked the children to talk about themselves together with other people, more frequently than they talked about these contents themselves. The content was related to the cultural orientations of mothers assessed through questionnaires: the Berlin mothers whose independence/ interdependence ratio was higher talked less about other people and asked the children fewer questions about other people; the Stockholm mothers with a higher independence/interdependence ratio talked more about child agency. In Tallinn both correlations existed on a trend level. The results are discussed in the light of common conversational practices and mothers’ orientation to independence and interdependence in these cultural contexts.

Keywords:

• Mother–child reminiscing
• Cultural differences
• Content of reminiscing

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the children and mothers who participated in the study, and the research assistants who helped with the data gathering. Research for this article was supported by the Baltic Sea Foundation in Sweden (grant No. 3000903), the Estonian Research Competency Council (grant No. SF0180025s08), and the German Research Council (KE 263/46-1 to 46-4).