|
Building Strength Through Stories: Family Dinnertime Narratives
|
Robyn Fivush, PhD
Emory University
|
 During adolescence, children begin to construct an independent self-identity through reflecting on, questioning and challenging the norms and values of their families, communities and cultures. In the Family Narratives Project, we are examining patterns of family ritual and story telling that may help adolescents as they begin their journey into adulthood. We focus on narratives because narratives are the way in which we make sense of our experiences. Narratives move beyond the simple description of experienced events to provide explanatory frameworks and emotional evaluation of what these events mean to the individual.
Narratives told around the family dinner table may be especially critical for adolescents. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) has found that children who have a regular family mealtime are less likely to smoke, drink, use illegal drugs, experiment with sex at a young age, or get into fights. Further, these children are at lower risk for suicidal thoughts and are more likely to do better in school. Teens that have frequent family dinners are more likely to be emotionally content, to work harder, to have positive peer relationships, and to have healthier eating habits. Family mealtime is the single strongest predictor of academic achievement scores and low rates of behavioral problems, regardless of race, gender, education, age of parents, income, or family size. Mealtime is a more powerful predictor of these child outcomes than time spent in school, studying, at church, or playing sports. Clearly, something is happening at the family dinner table that builds positive skills and behaviors and creates resilience to the stress of adolescence. We think one of the most important aspects of dinner table interaction is the telling of family narratives.
Dinnertime narratives take many forms. These include each individual's stories of what they did that day, as well as shared stories of the day. For example, the mother and child might tell the father about the child's performance at a school event that the father could not attend. These kinds of stories bring each individual family member back into the fold of the family. Dinnertime narratives also include stories from the shared family past, such as holidays, visits to or from relatives, or family vacations. These kinds of stories create a shared history, anchoring each individual firmly within the family and creates a shared family identity. Finally, there are also intergenerational stories, stories about the parents childhood, or about grandparents, aunts and uncles not present at the table but that form a web of relationships in which each individual family member is cradled. These kinds of stories give the developing child a sense of self, a sense of belonging and a sense of security, each of which helps to build strengths and resilience.
When we examine family dinner time conversations, indeed, family narratives emerge quite frequently, about once every 5 minutes for most families. Most of the stories are about what happened to each individual family member during that day, but about a third of the narratives are about more remote events, building a family history that places the individual child in a secure family past. There are several important aspects of these narratives that are worth emphasizing.
First, even when a family member tells a story about their individual day, this narrative is collaboratively told; especially when children talk about their day, parents, and especially mothers, ask questions, add background information, and generally help in constructing a coherent narrative of what occurred. In this way, individual stories are validated by the family, although as I'll discuss in a moment, families differ in the extent to which they engage in this kind of collaborative story-telling.
Second, parents also tell stories about their individual day. Family dinnertime narratives do not simply focus on parents questioning children about their day at school. Parents also share with their children what they did at work and home. And children participate in these narratives; they ask questions, they provide emotional evaluation for example, "that's cool" or "Yuck!" and express interest in their parent's experiences. In this way, these narratives help adolescents to develop perspective taking, an ability to understand their parents both as their parents but also as individuals in their own right, with lives, and relationships, and emotions that are separate from their children. This kind of perspective talking is a critical skill for the development of empathy and identity. Children who are better able to take the perspective of others, to see others as individuals with their own lives and needs, are less likely to engage in antisocial behavior, and more likely to engage in prosocial behavior.
Third, although most of the narratives are about each person's day, about a third of the narratives are about more remote events, including shared family experiences such as vacations, previous houses lived in, and funny or poignant stories of past adventures. Importantly, when these topics emerge in conversations, the telling of the narrative is a joint family venture. These narratives are just as long as narratives of the day's events, and multiple family members participate in the telling, suggesting that the family is engaged and enjoying the narration. These narratives are important in maintaining a family identity. Even as the adolescent begins to develop an individual identity, these family stories maintain a sense of identity as a member of the family, and this family identity anchors the adolescent in a secure emotional space.
This research establishes that family narratives are a frequent and integral part of family dinner times. Around the dinner table, families share the stories of their day and the stories of their past. Moreover, families are engaged in this activity, with multiple family members participating in the telling of any given story, even when it is about a single individual. The patterns also suggest that adolescents are learning important skills and developing a sense of self and identity both as an individual and as a family member by participating in these narratives.
Importantly, families that tell stories of their shared past around the dinner table are helping their adolescents to create healthy identities. Families that tell more shared narratives of their past have adolescents with higher self-esteem and a higher sense of self-efficacy, the idea that one is an active agent in the world. Adolescents in these families also show fewer behavior problems, including fewer internalizing problems such as depression and anxiety and fewer externalizing problems such as aggressions and delinquency. Clearly, family stories about the shared past is a positive factor in adolescent's developing identity.
Our work on the Family Narratives Project has identified family story-telling as a frequent and important part of daily family interaction, especially around the family dinner table. Families that share their past through stories, and that create emotional bonds through a shared history and a shared perspective, have children who face the challenges of adolescence armed with a secure sense of self as embedded in a safe and caring world. How do we apply these findings to help buffer adolescents against the difficulties they face.
Applications
At the most basic level, we need to help families understand the importance of shared family mealtimes. The research is unambiguous in the beneficial effects of having a family dinner time at least three times a week. And we need to educate families about the importance of sharing their experiences and their lives with each other. We need to develop ways to teach families to talk about their individual and shared past together in ways that facilitate adolescent self-understanding and self-esteem. We need to teach families to talk about their negative experiences and their negative emotions in ways that help adolescents learn to manage and regulate their negative affect, rather than to act out on it. These are not difficult concepts; if we can help families to collaboratively construct narratives then we can help families buffer adolescents from the stress and storm of adolescence and help these adolescents to form healthy adult identities. Families build resilience through building stories.
References
Bohanek, J.G., Marin, K., Fivush, R., & Duke, M. (2006). Family narrative interaction and children's sense of self. Family Process, 39-54
Bohanek, J.G. Thomas-Lepore, C., Fivush, R. & Duke. M. (2005) Narrative Interaction in Family Dinnertime Conversations, Available from author.
casacolumbia.org (2003). Family day: a day to eat dinner with your children. Retrieved October 4, 2003, from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
Fivush, R., Bohanek, J.G., & Duke, M. (in press). The intergenerational self: Subjective perspective and family history. In F. Sani (Ed.). Individual and Collective Self-Continuity. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Nelson, K., & Fivush, R. (2004). The emergence of autobiographical memory: A social cultural developmental model. Psychological Review, 111.486-511.
Ochs, E., Taylor, C., Rudolph, D., & Smith, R. (1992). Storytelling as a theory-building activity. Discourse Processes, 15, 37-72.
Back to CYF News Home
|
