Maternal reminiscing during middle childhood: Associations with maternal personality and child temperament from the Growing Up in New Zealand cohort study.

Abstract

The way that mothers talk about the past (reminisce) with young children is linked to key memory, language, and socioemotional outcomes. The present research explored the role of a range of child, maternal, socioeconomic, and cultural factors that predict maternal reminiscing style, with a particular focus on maternal personality and child temperament. A total of 1,404 mother-child dyads from the prebirth longitudinal cohort study Growing Up in New Zealand (https://www.growingup.co.nz) participated in a reminiscing task about a negative event when children were 8 years old. This broader cohort is broadly representative of the New Zealand population in terms of maternal ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Conversations were scored using a revised version of the Elaborative Reminiscing Scale. Child temperament during infancy, but not childhood, uniquely predicted maternal reminiscing style. Maternal extraversion also predicted a more elaborative reminiscing style. Other maternal factors, including education, ethnicity, and age, were also identified as unique predictors of maternal reminiscing style. These findings fit well with an ecological systems view of maternal reminiscing as a function of child, maternal, and cultural factors. Public Significance StatementThese findings suggest that mothers differ in their style of reminiscing with their children based on a number of individual and sociocultural factors, including the mother's personality and the child's temperament. Further research on the directionality of the relationship between reminiscing and child temperament may inform the development of reminiscing coaching programs for parents.

From infancy to eight: How early maternal mental health, emotion reminiscing, and language shape children’s mental health

“…Prior to analysis assumptions were tested, and no significant multicollinearity was detected. Covariates were selected for their known associations with reminiscing in current and previous samples (Garnett et al, 2023;Swearingen et al, 2023). Multivariable regression analyses were conducted to identify covariates for inclusion in the serial mediation models.…”

“…A random selection of transcripts was coded for reliability by two independent coders (n = 173, 14%). The two coders utilized this coding in their research investigating behavioral difficulties (Garnett et al, 2023) and infant temperament (Swearingen et al, 2023). Inter-rater reliability was calculated using ICC with a two-way random-effect model based on single measures and absolute agreement, at .81 in the acceptable range (Syed & Nelson, 2015).…”