Stories of Hope: Parental Optimism in Narratives about Adolescent Children

This longitudinal study focused on the level of optimism expressed in stories that mothers and fathers told about their adolescent children, and its relations to subsequent parenting practices. The investigation involved 35 families, focusing on adolescents aged 14 at Time 1 and 16 at Time 2, on ave...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of social and personal relationships 2001-10, Vol.18 (5), p.603-623
Main Authors: Pratt, Michael W., Norris, Joan E., van de Hoef, Sherri, Arnold, Mary Louise
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescence
Adolescents
Attitudes
Childrearing Practices
Family relationships
Human behaviour
Interpersonal relations
Narratives
Optimism
Parent Child Relations
Parental Attitudes
Parenthood
Parents
Psychology
Value systems
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Summary:This longitudinal study focused on the level of optimism expressed in stories that mothers and fathers told about their adolescent children, and its relations to subsequent parenting practices. The investigation involved 35 families, focusing on adolescents aged 14 at Time 1 and 16 at Time 2, on average. Stories of an incident illustrating how the parent had taught values to the child were scored for two separate indices of optimism, overall tone of the narrative, and a focus on growth rather than control in socialization. As predicted, narrative optimism at Time 1 was generally associated at Time 2 with reports of more autonomy-granting to the child and with less punitiveness. This research provides supportive evidence for a construct of `parent optimism,' and indicates that it is reflected in meaningful ways in the stories that parents tell about family life and relationships.
ISSN:0265-4075
1460-3608
DOI:10.1177/0265407501185003