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Abstract. The present study investigated culture- and gender-differences in mother- and father-child reminiscing with 3-year old daughters and sons in urban middle-class families from Costa Rica, Mexico, and Germany. Families of the three contexts were overall similarly elaborative and children contributed a similar amount of memory elaborations. However, context specific use of different elaborative elements related to specifi c elaborative styles. Compared to the Latin American families, conversations in German families were least socially oriented. Across contexts, parents talked more about social aspects with daughters than with sons. Costa Rican mothers and fathers were equally elaborative, whereas German and Mexican mothers were more elaborative than fathers. We found similarities but also specifi cities in parent-child conversations about the past across these contexts with similar educational backgrounds.Resumen. El presente estudio investigó diferencias según cultura y género en las conversaciones sobre el pasado de niños y niñas de 3 años de edad con sus progenitores en contextos urbanos en Costa Rica, México y Alemania. En los tres contextos, el nivel de elaboración general de las conversaciones fue similar y los niños produjeron una cantidad similar de recuerdos. Sin embargo, se encontraron diferencias culturales en algunos aspectos de elaboración. En comparación con las familias latinoamericanas, las conversaciones de las familias alemanas estaban orientadas socialmente en menor medida. En todos los contextos, los progenitores hablaron más acerca de aspectos sociales con las hijas que con los hijos. Padres y madres costarricenses evidenciaron niveles de elaboración similares, mientras que las madres alemanas y mexicanas mostraron niveles de elaboración mayores que los padres. Nuestros hallazgos indican la presencia de similitudes y diferencias en las conversaciones sobre el pasado en familias con niveles educativos similares provenientes de distintos contextos culturales.

The aim of this study was to investigate the socialization and internalization of children’s cultural self-representations. A total of 149 mothers and their 4-year-old children from four different cultural milieus representing different cultural models participated. The sociodemographic profiles of the four samples were associated with different emphases on autonomy and relatedness. There were 36 middle-class families from Berlin, Germany, and 42 middle-class families from Stockholm, Sweden (both representing the model of autonomy); 33 rural Cameroonian farming families (representing the model of relatedness); and 38 middle-class families from Tallinn, Estonia (representing the model of autonomy relatedness). Two tasks were investigated in view of children’s socialization and internalization of their self-representations: mother–child past event conversations and children’s drawings of themselves. Overall, the different cultural emphases on autonomy and relatedness were embodied in mother–child reminiscing and children’s drawings of themselves. Specifically, mothers in the autonomous contexts were more elaborative relative to being repetitive and focused more on the child relative to others during reminiscing. Accordingly, children provided more memory elaborations, referred more to themselves relative to others, and drew themselves bigger compared to children from the relational rural Nso milieu. Mother–child conversations in the Tallinn sample were very similar to those of the autonomous samples; however, children’s drawings were medium in size. Correlations between narrative and drawing variables were only prevalent in the autonomous milieus and not in the Tallinn and rural Nso milieus.

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