gender differences in family stories: moderating influence of parent gender role and child gender

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Sex Roles [sers] PP023-290872 December 2, 2000 10:59 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Sex Roles, Vol. 43, Nos. 5/6, 2000

Gender Differences in Family Stories: ModeratingInfluence of Parent Gender Role and Child Gender

Barbara H. Fiese1

Syracuse University

Gemma SkillmanUniversity of South Dakota

One hundred and twenty families and their 4-year-old children participated ina study on family stories. The participants were primarily White (91%), withthe remainder Black (4%), Hispanic (2%), and Asian (2%). The parents wereprimarily middle class and upper class, with approximately 5% identifyingthemselves as from a lower socioeconomic background. Parents were askedto tell their son or daughter stories about when the parent was growing up. Allparents completed measures of child behavior and a subset of parents com-pleted the Bem Sex Role inventory. Stories were coded for the strength of affil-iation, achievement, and autonomy themes. No gender differences were foundfor parents or child in the strength of affiliation themes. Fathers told storieswith stronger autonomy themes than did mothers, and sons were more likelyto hear stories with themes of autonomy than were daughters. An interactionwas found between gender type of parent and gender of child for strength ofachievement theme. Traditional gender-typed parents told stories with strongerachievement themes to their sons, and nontraditional gender-typed parentstold stories with stronger achievement themes to their daughters. Exploratoryanalyses were conducted examining the relations among story theme, parentgender type, and child behavior. Higher levels of externalizing behaviors werefound in boys whose fathers endorsed strong masculine attitudes, but told sto-ries with weak achievement themes. Higher levels of internalizing behaviorswere found in girls whose mothers told stories with strong affiliation themes,but endorsed weak feminine attitudes. Family stories are proposed to be oneaspect of socialization that includes an interaction between child and parentcharacteristics.

1To whom correspondence should be addressed at 430 Huntington Hall, Department of Psy-chology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244-2340; e-mail: [email protected].

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0360-0025/00/0900-0267$18.00/0 c© 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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268 Fiese and Skillman

There are a variety of ways to consider how boys and girls differ. One ap-proach has been to consider whether males and females systematically in-terpret personal experiences in different ways. Briefly, it has been suggestedthat females tend to frame experiences along lines of affiliative themes andmales tend to frame experiences along lines of achievement (Gilligan, 1982;McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992). Although there is considerable controversyabout the relative stability and enduring nature of these differences acrossthe life span (Grossman, 1987; Gutmann, 1987), most researchers agree thatthe themes of affiliation and achievement play an important part in the de-velopment of personal identity. McAdams (1993) proposed that personalidentity is created through a narrative process. As one progresses throughvarious stages of life, different themes become integrated into the definitionof self. Whereas the tone of the life story is created in infancy, themes ofagency and communion come into play during early and late childhood. Todate, research detailing the strength of achievement and affiliation themesin male and female responses has focused on adult identity and personality(McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992). Rarely has the issue of how these thematicdifferences develop in the context of raising children been addressed. Ratherthan focus solely on the individual’s interpretation of personal experiences,this study focused on how parent’s storytelling to their children may be oneavenue for the socialization of achievement and affiliation.

Story telling as a family activity has been of interest to anthropologistsfor years, providing a window into important themes of group membershipsuch as intimacy, power, and individual responsibility. As an activity, familystories may be an opportunity to share family values and lessons in growingup (Fiese & Sameroff, 1999). Reiss (1981) proposed that story telling aids inthe family’s construction of meaning and understanding of the social world.In discussing the role of remembrances of personal experiences, Barclay(1994) states, “The remembered self can serve many pragmatic and symbolicpurposes for the individual and society. For instance, remembered selvesin autobiographical memories can convey to children, the character andmeaning of family through the parents’ telling of their personal histories” (p.64). As parents recount personal experiences of their own childhood, theymay construct the message in accordance with cultural mores and familyvalues (Miller, Wiley, Fung, & Liang, 1997). Narrative approaches may beparticularly important in studying early socialization practices, as the storiesthemselves are shaped by the transactions between parent and child andprovide a window into family meaning-making processes (Oppenheim, Nir,Warren, & Emde, 1997).

Fivush and colleagues provided evidence that, through narratives, moth-ers may socialize emotion differently to boys and girls. In recounting pastevents, mothers were more likely to tell stories of anger to their sons andstories of sadness to their daughters (Fivush, 1989; Kuebli & Fivush, 1992).

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When adults were asked to recount childhood memories, males were morelikely to include themes of mastery and striving for success and women weremore likely to use direct expression of emotion (Friedman & Pines, 1991;Schwartz, 1988). The expression of affiliation and achievement themes maybe interwoven into daily practices of raising children. Previous research hasindicated that mothers and fathers approach the task of parenting in differentways (Thompson & Walker, 1989), and that the role of parenting in definingself identity may differ for males and females (Cowan, Cowan, Heming, &Miller, 1991; Hooker, Fiese, Jenkins, Morfei, & Schwagler, 1996).

In a preliminary study of parents in the early stages of parenthood, thethematic content of narratives told by parents differed according to stageof parenthood and gender of parent (Fiese, Hooker, Kotary, Schwagler, &Rimmer, 1995). Parents whose oldest child was preschool age tended to tellstories with stronger themes of achievement than parents whose oldest childwas an infant. Fathers tended to tell stories with stronger themes of achieve-ment than mothers. It was suggested that the telling of family stories mayprovide one avenue of gender socialization and that the thematic content offamily stories is sensitive to the developmental context of raising children aswell as being regulated by the gender of the parent. The preliminary studydid not include an examination of whether thematic content differed accord-ing to gender of child hearing the story. The first goal of this study was toexamine whether mothers’ and fathers’ recounting of childhood experiencesdiffered in thematic content and furthermore whether thematic content offamily narratives differed according to whether the story was being told tosons or daughters.

We propose that parents begin to socialize their children in accordancewith cultural and personal values and that one avenue of this socializationprocess is through the telling of family stories. In addition to consideringwhether mothers and fathers differed in the types of stories that they toldtheir sons and daughters, we were interested in whether the gender-roleidentity of the parent would be consistent with the thematic content of thestories told to his or her child. Parental gender-role attributes and valuesmay become interconnected with the cultural expectations of how malesand females act. Oliveri and Reiss (1987) advanced the proposition that thefamily context is a powerful socializer of gender roles including the regu-lation of personal relationships and affect. Bem (1981, 1985) proposed thatmales and females differ in their capacities to process information associatedwith gender. These differences, however, are not linked just to biological sex,but include differences in values held that are consistent with masculine andfeminine characteristics.

Baumrind reported that gender typing of parents is related to parent-ing style and parent child interaction patterns (Baumrind, 1982). Gendertyping of parent was not necessarily related to parenting competence, but

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some noted gender differences were found. Androgynous men were morelikely to be communal in their attitudes and behavior, masculine motherstended to express less communal attitudes than their feminine counterparts,and masculine fathers and feminine mothers endorsed parenting attitudesconsistent with their gender type. These findings are suggestive of possiblethematic differences in the interpretation of personal experiences of par-ents according to gender type. The second goal of this study was to examinewhether gender type of parent was related to the thematic content of storiestold to their children.

The third question we addressed was more exploratory in nature. Wewere interested in whether thematic content of stories was related to reportof child behavior. In that we propose family story telling is a normative ex-perience for many children (Bruner, 1990; Fiese & Sameroff, 1999; Miller& Moore, 1989), we did not expect thematic content of stories alone to berelated to report of child behavior. We were interested in examining whetherthe gender values held by the parents, as reflected in their stories and theirgender-type attitudes, was related to the report of their child’s behavior. Thefindings in the literature are relatively inconsistent in regards to the relationbetween parent gender values and child behaviors (e.g., Baumrind, 1982). Toaddress this final question, we examined the relation between the thematiccontent of family stories and parent’s report of externalizing and internal-izing behaviors. We chose to focus on externalizing and internalizing as twodimensions of behavior that may be linked to gender differences in adjust-ment (Achenbach, Howell, Quay, & Connors, 1991). Whereas boys are morelikely to exhibit externalizing behaviors such as aggression and acting out,girls are more likely to exhibit internalizing behaviors such as somatic com-plaints and social withdrawal. Would messages of achievement in the contextof masculine values be more likely to be related to externalizing types of be-haviors and messages of affiliation in the context of feminine values be morelikely to be related to internalizing types of behaviors? On the one hand, astrong endorsement of achievement in stories told by masculine fathers maygive license to boys to act out in externalizing ways, as “boys will be boys.” Onthe other hand, masculine-typed fathers may provide stories of achievementthat emphasize working hard and sticking to a task that would be inconsistentwith externalizing acting-out behaviors. Both predictions appear plausibleand thus we consider this aspect of the analysis speculative and exploratory.

In summary, the purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to examinethematic differences in family stories told by parents according to genderof parent and gender of child, (2) to examine thematic differences in familystories according to the gender-type of parent, and (3) to examine the matchbetween family story themes and personal values in relation to the reportof child behavior. As part of a larger study on family stories and traditions,

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we selected families with 4-year old children, as this is period when childrenoften become interested in their parents’ own childhood experiences (Fieseet al., 1995) and are relatively good story listeners (McCabe & Peterson,1991). We focused on the themes of affiliation, achievement, and auton-omy. Autonomy has been found to be related to themes of achievement(McAdams, 1993; Williams & Best, 1982) and is consistent with the develop-mental task of pre-school-age children (Erikson, 1950). We predicted that fa-thers would tell stories with stronger themes of achievement and autonomy,that mothers would tell stories with stronger themes of affiliation, that sonswould hear stories with stronger themes of achievement and autonomy, andthat daughters would hear stories with stronger themes of affiliation. Second,we predicted that femininity scores would be related to themes of affiliation,masculinity scores would be related to themes of achievement and auton-omy, and parents of traditional gender-type (masculine and feminine) wouldbe more likely than androgynous or undifferentiated parents to tell strongachievement stories to their sons and strong affiliation stories to their daugh-ters. Third, we predicted that the relation between thematic content of thestories and reported child behavior would be modified by gender-type ofparent.

METHOD

Participants

One hundred twenty 4-year-old children and their parents participatedin the study. There were 56 boys and 64 girls identified as the target children.The target children ranged in age from 40 to 65 months with an average ageof 51 months (SD = 5.46). Twenty-five of the children were the only child inthe family, 38 were first born, with younger siblings, 39 were the youngest,with older siblings, and 18 had both younger and older siblings. On average,the parents had been married 9 years, with a range of 3–22 years. The samplewas primarily white (91%), with the remainder Black (4%), Hispanic (2%)and Asian (2%). The racial demographics of the sample are consistent withcurrent census demographics of the community. The families were primarilymiddle and upper middle class, with an average Hollingshead (1975) four-factor score of 56 (SD = 8.47) and distributed across four classes (V 61%, IV34%, III 4%, II 1%). The average age of the fathers was 36 years (SD = 5.66)and the average age of the mothers was 34 years (SD = 4.38). A subset ofthe sample completed questionnaires concerning gender-typing. This pro-cedure was introduced after a portion of the data had already been col-lected. Fifty-five families (110 parents) completed the sex-role questionnaire.

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The subset that completed the sex-role questionnaire did not differ from thelarger sample in regards to socioeconomic status, t(114) = .65, ns, number ofyears married, t(114) = .65, ns, age of mother, t(117) = .44, ns, age of father,t(117) = 1.27, ns, or age of target child t(118) = .267, ns.

Procedure

As part of a larger project aimed at studying family traditions, family sto-ries, and child adjustment, families were interviewed and videotaped in theirhomes. Families were recruited through announcements sent to area nurseryschools and newspaper advertisements. The parents were interviewed abouta variety of family practices as well as experiences they had in their fami-lies of origin. For the purposes of this analysis, stories were taken from oneportion of the interview. Parents were presented with a typed 3× 5 indexcard with the following instructions: “Please tell your child a story abouta time when you were growing up. A story about when you were a littleboy/girl.” The interviewers prompted the parents to think of who may havebeen involved in the story and to include a beginning, middle, and end tothe story. Parents also completed a variety of self-report questionnaires in-cluding the Child Behavior Checklist. Presentation of story-telling task wascounterbalanced with presentation of self-report questionnaires. Telling ofthe story was counterbalanced as to whether mother or father told the storyfirst. A subset of the sample completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory. All ofthe stories were transcribed verbatim.

Measures

Story Telling Outline of Relationships-Revised (STORI-R)

The STORI-R (Fiese & Skillman, 1994) assesses thematic content ofstories along three dimensions originally identified by Murray (1938): affili-ation, achievement, and autonomy. In previous studies, interrater reliabilityhas been reported to be in the range of k= .72–.83 (Fiese et al., 1995).

The thematic dimensions are not mutually exclusive and are codedseparately for affiliation, achievement, and autonomy. Based on previousresearch (McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953; Winter, 1973), athree-step coding process was used. Coders were trained to (1) assess thestory-teller’s desire or wish to be connected with others, successful, or au-tonomous, (2) determine whether the story-teller made behavioral attemptstoward the desire or wish, and (3) determine whether the story-teller was suc-cessful in accomplishing the desire. The strength of affiliation, achievement,and autonomy themes was calculated by summing the “yes” responses tothe three questions. Scores for each theme could range from 0 to 3.

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Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI)

The BSRI is a 60-item pen-and-paper questionnaire that produces aclassification of gender roles based on median splits, as well as a rating ofdegree of masculinity and femininity (Bem, 1974). Twenty adjectives de-scribe positive feminine characteristics, 20 items describe positive masculinecharacteristics, and 20 describe neutral characteristics. Masculine classifica-tion was determined by low feminine and high masculine scores; feminineclassification was determined by high feminine and low masculine scores;and androgynous classification was determined by high feminine and highmasculine scores; and undifferentiated was determined by low feminine andlow masculine scores.

The average masculinity rating was 4.85 (SD = .76) and average femi-ninity rating was 4.78 (SD = .63) for all parents. Fathers scored significantlyhigher than mothers on the masculinity scale, t(108) = −2.93, p < .005, andmothers scored significantly higher than fathers on the femininity scale,t(108) = 2.31, p < .05. Based on median-split categorizations for mothersand fathers combined, 29.36% were masculine gender-typed, 30% were fem-inine gender-typed, 25.45% were androgynous, and 18.18% were undiffer-entiated. These findings are consistent with distributions reported by Bem(1974).

Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)

The CBCL (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983) is a 113-item questionnaireassessing behavioral difficulties. Parents completed the CBCL. Test–retestreliability is reported at .84 and intraclass correlations of .98 have beenreported for interparent agreement. Externalizing and internalizing scoresmay be generated separately. Externalizing scores include positive responsesto items such as getting into fights, arguing, or being disobedient. Internal-izing scores include positive responses such as nervousness, stomach aches,and crying. The CBCL has been found to be discriminative in studies of fam-ily process and child adjustment in the normative range (Katz & Gottman,1993). T scores were used for all calculations in this study.

Training of STORI-R Raters

Initial training of story coders occurred over a 2-week period. Traininginvolved reviewing and discussing definitions of affiliation, achievement, andautonomy. Coders practiced the coding scheme on six practice videotapes.Differences were discussed and a consensus rating was reached. Followingthe initial phase of training, the two coders rated 14 stories, establishing

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baseline interrater reliability of affiliation k= .71, achievement k= .72, andautonomy k= .65. To maintain consistency over the 10-week coding period,interrater reliability was reassessed on 10 jointly coded stories. Agreementrates of .62, .67, and .62 were found for affiliation, achievement, and auton-omy respectively. These levels of agreement exceed what would be expectedby chance alone (Fleiss, 1981).

RESULTS

To examine the first question, a split-plot repeated-measures analysisof variance was conducted for the themes of affiliation, achievement, andautonomy. The analyses were conducted to examine the effects of gender ofparent and gender of child on theme. Because the child was told two stories,one by the mother and one by the father, the thematic content of the story wasrepeated across parent. There was a significant effect for gender of parentand child for autonomy themes. Fathers told stories with stronger auton-omy themes than mothers, F(1, 112) = 7.644, p < .007, and boys heard sto-ries with stronger autonomy themes than girls, F(1, 112) = 3.663, p < .05.Although mothers tended to tell stories with stronger affiliation themes(X= 1.81, SD = 1.20) than fathers (X= 1.68, SD = 1.19), these findingswere not statistically significant. There was also no effect of child gender onthe strength of affiliation themes. There was a statistical trend for fathers totell stories with stronger achievement themes (X= 1.25, SD = 1.28) thanmothers (X= 1.03, SD = 1.27), F(1, 112) = 1.67, p < .10. There was no ef-fect of child sex on strength of achievement themes.

Gender role of parent was also examined according to gender type.Analysis of variance was conducted predicting story theme according togender type of parent and sex of child. Only the effects associated withachievement themes were significant. A significant interaction was found be-tween child sex and parent gender type for strength of achievement themes.Masculine, feminine, androgynous, and undifferentiated parents differed inthe strength of achievement themes when the stories were told to sons ver-sus daughters, F(1, 102) = 3.15, p < .05. Sons were the targets of strongerachievement themes from masculine and feminine gender-typed parents,and daughters were the targets of stronger achievement themes from non-gender-typed parents (androgynous and undifferentiated). Results are pre-sented in Fig. 1.

To determine whether the thematic content of the stories was related toreport of child behavior, correlations were generated between story themesand CBCL scores. We did not expect the themes alone to be good predictorsof child behavior, but wanted to rule out any possible relations. The strongest

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Family Stories 275

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correlation was found between father affiliation and externalizing scores,r = .21, p = .11, and did not reach standard levels of statistical significance.

To examine whether parent gender type modified the effects of storytheme on report of child behavior, regression analyses were conducted in-corporating the interaction between parent gender type and story theme(Baron & Kenny, 1986). As recommended by Taylor and Hall (1982), mas-culinity and femininity were considered continuous variables in order to testthe interaction effect. A significant interaction was found between father’sachievement scores and masculinity in predicting externalizing t scores as re-ported in Table I. Analysis by gender of child indicated that the effects wereprimarily due to the interaction between father story theme and masculin-ity score in predicting boys’ externalizing scores. To better understand theinteraction between father masculinity and achievement themes for boys,the sample was divided into four groups using a median-split procedure:high masculinity/high achievement, high masculinity/low achievement, lowmasculinity/high achievement, and low masculinity/low achievement. Meanexternalizing t scores for boys for the four groups are presented in Fig. 2. Asdepicted in Fig. 2, the highest externalizing t scores were found in the groupwhere fathers endorsed relatively strong masculinity values, but told storiesrelatively weak in achievement themes.

None of the interactions between achievement theme and mother mas-culinity scores were significant in predicting externalizing t scores. Interac-tions between achievement themes and femininity scores were not significantfor mothers or fathers.

A trend was found for the interaction between mother’s affiliation andfeminine scores in predicting internalizing t scores for girls (standardized co-efficient = 5.08, t = 1.75, p < .09). To explore this interaction, four groupswere formed using a median-split procedure: high affiliation/high femininity,

Table I. Regression Analysis Predicting Externalizing Scores from Father Story Themeand Gender Role

StandardizedEffect Coefficient t p r2 F df

Total group 17 3.41 3, 51Achievement theme 2.65 2.71 .001Masculinity score .56 2.78 .001Achievement ×Masculinity 2.89 2.88 .001

Sons .34 4.02 3, 23Achievement theme 3.09 2.59 .01Masculinity score .86 3.16 .001Achievement ×Masculinity 3.46 2.82 .01

Daughters .11 .95 3, 24Achievement theme 2.485 1.39 .17Masculinity score .24 .74 .46Achievement ×Masculinity 2.64 1.45 .16

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Fig. 2. Mean externalizing t scores for boys according to narrative and gender-type groupingof fathers.

high affiliation/low femininity, low affiliation/high femininity, and low affilia-tion/low femininity. Consistent with the findings for fathers and boy’s exter-nalizing scores, mothers’ incongruence between story theme and gender rolewas evident in elevated internalizing t scores for girls. Mothers whose storieswere strong in affiliation, but whose attitudes were low in femininity haddaughters with elevated internalizing t scores. Group means are presentedin Fig. 3.

DISCUSSION

The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences in thethematic content of stories told to sons and daughters by their parents. Thefirst line of analysis focused on gender differences according to sex of parentand sex of child in the expression of achievement, affiliation, and autonomythemes. There were no significant main effects or interactions for affiliationthemes. This finding is consistent with previous research on family storiesin the early stages of parenthood (Fiese et al., 1995). As in the previousstudy, it appears that affiliation and being close with others is a universaltheme in families with young children. The parents’ emphasis on formingclose relationships was shared with their children regardless of sex of childor parent. The inclusion of affiliative themes across genders suggests that,at least in the context of raising children, personal experiences are valued

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Fig. 3. Mean internalizing t scores for girls according to narrative and gender-type groupingof mothers.

for their affiliative component and form a foundation of family life (Bowlby,1969). Previous studies that found differences between males and females inthe expression of affiliation themes relied primarily on the response of youngadults, many of whom are not parents. It is plausible that the role of parentaccentuates themes of affiliation for both mothers and fathers and may notbe linked as strongly to sex of parent as to stage of life (Grossman, 1987).

The strength of autonomy themes differed according to gender of parentand gender of child. In general, boys tended to hear stories that includedstronger themes of autonomy than girls, and fathers told stories with strongerthemes of autonomy than mothers. In reviewing the narratives, we werestruck with the prevalence of “getting into trouble” stories told by fathers totheir sons that were scored high on autonomy. The following example servesto illustrate.

Okay, now daddy’s gonna tell you a story. Do you want to hear my story. Let’s see.When I was a little boy a long time ago. I used to be very, uhm, very aahh hazardous.Do you know that word? When I used to get together with uncle M., and J. and V. Weused to play together and uhm, Daddy’s daddy. Remember Daddy’s daddy? Whereis he? When he was alive he would always tell me: don’t cause any trouble. Okay,but Daddy always used to get into trouble. I remember one summer I got in so muchtrouble that he wasn’t allowed to go outside and play anymore. Because I ended upgoing through the window. I got hit by a car. I got my teeth knocked out. This is allin one summer. Daddy’s daddy wasn’t very happy with him. I asked him, I said Dad,don’t worry about it, I’m O.K. He says, well when you get older and you become adaddy and you’ll know why I worry. I never understood that too much. Until? Untilwhat? Until you guys came along. Now I understand what he means. But I didn’t carethen. So I just went out and got hit by another car. But ahh, in the end I understood.I understand now what he was saying as being able to. Being concerned for, for meas his son. So that’s why, what does dad say when you’re out playing? Or when youare riding your bike? What do I say? Watch both ways right? O.K. That’s my storyand I’m still alive.

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It is apparent that there are multiple dimensions to this story. The em-phasis of autonomy themes in stories told to boys is consistent with culturalmores where boys are more likely to be active and impulsive than girls(Achenbach et al., 1991). Miller and Moore (1989) report that in the danger-ous environment of South Baltimore it is important for parents to socializetheir children about anger and the use of angry emotions in the context ofdanger. In our middle class sample, it may be that, for boys, the dangers toavoid include acting autonomously (and perhaps impulsively) and that fa-thers (given their experiences as boys) attempt to forewarn their sons aboutthe potential dangers associated with independent behavior. It would be in-teresting to pursue whether similar themes are evident during adolescenceand in high-risk environments.

The second aim of the study was to examine the relation betweenparent gender type and story themes. An interaction was found betweengender type of parent and sex of child for achievement themes. Sons werethe targets of stronger achievement themes from masculine and femininegender-typed parents, and daughters were the targets of stronger achieve-ment themes from non-gender-typed parents (androgynous and undiffer-entiated). These findings are consistent with Baumrind’s (1982) report ofgender typing and parenting style. Baumrind pointed out that traditionalgender-typed parents (masculine or feminine) are likely to engage in warmand authoritative parenting style and their children tend to be socially com-petent. Baumrind proposed that androgynous parents tend to be “child-centered” rather than authoritative or permissive. The findings from thisstudy suggest that androgynous parents may be sensitive to long-standingcultural mores against achievement for girls and therefore attempt to counterthis effect through emphasizing achievement to their daughters, but notnecessarily to their sons. For traditional parents, achievement for boys isconsistent with cultural values and was emphasized in the stories told tosons.

The final set of analyses were exploratory as there is little previous re-search examining the interaction between gender type and narrative themesin relation to reports of child behavior. Prior to discussing these results, itshould be kept in mind that this was a community-based sample and the mea-surement of externalizing and internalizing behaviors should be consideredin the average range and not indicative of behavior problems per se. Therewere no consistent findings relating gender type of parent or story themedirectly to child externalizing and internalizing behaviors. We had antici-pated this finding in that we propose that expression of different themes infamily stories is part of a normative socialization process and may only indi-rectly affect child behavior (Fiese & Marjinsky, 1999). What was interesting,however, was the interaction between parental gender type and story themein relation to the report of child behavior. When the parent’s message was

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culturally incongruent with their endorsed attitudes, there was a relation toexternalizing behaviors for boys and internalizing behaviors for girls. Whenfathers endorsed strong masculine attitudes, but told stories that were rel-atively weak in achievement themes, their sons had elevated externalizingscores. When mothers endorsed relatively weak feminine attitudes, but toldstories that were relatively strong in affiliation, their daughters had elevatedinternalizing scores.

These findings can be understood from the perspective of construc-tion of meaning in family stories. A central feature of a good story is itsrelative coherence. Coherence has been described as the integration of dif-ferent aspects of an experience that provides a sense of unity and purpose(McAdams, 1993). Narrative coherence is considered a benchmark for eval-uating integrity of self narratives (Grotevant, 1993) and has been found to berelated to the attachment relationship between mother and child (Crowell& Feldman, 1988). Implicit in the notion of coherence is a match betweenthe individual’s beliefs and the meaning expressed in the narrative. Storythemes consistent with gender-role values may be more coherent in theirexpression and reinforce to children values that they observe through theirparents’ behavior. Narratives that include a mismatch between personal val-ues and story meaning may be an expression of incoherence providing mixedmessages to children. Narratives may prove to be a valuable method in exam-ining how parents convey their convictions to their children. Oppenheim andcolleagues demonstrated that narrative coherence is linked to parent–childinteraction patterns and child adjustment (Oppenheim et al., 1997). Furtherexamination of the relative coherence in the messages sent to children andits relation to child behavior is warranted.

The child’s contribution to the narrative context should also be consid-ered. It was demonstrated that traditional gender-typed parents told storieswith stronger themes of achievement to sons than to daughters and thatandrogynous parents told stories with stronger themes of achievement todaughters than to sons. These findings suggest that characteristics of thechild may interact with motivational goals expressed in the parent’s stories.One could also speculate on how behavioral characteristics of the child mayinfluence the parent’s choice of story theme. A father’s story of hazardousbehavior might be stimulated by having a son with a history of acting onimpulse. In this regard, stories may act as a vehicle to teach children rulesof behavior based on the parent’s past as well as the child’s current conduct.Examination of a wider range of reported child behavior problems wouldmore clearly address this issue.

Methodologically, it should be emphasized that the stories we collectedwere told to children rather than coconstructed with them. The work ofMiller (Miller & Moore, 1989) and Oppenheim (Oppenheim et al., 1997)clearly point to the significance of coconstructing stories between parent

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and child. In light of the findings of this study, a coconstruction story-tellingtask may aid in identifying key characteristics of the child that may contributeto thematic differences found in family stories.

There are several limitations to this study. The first limitation concernsthe relative homogeneity of the sample with respect to race and socioeco-nomic class. Although we consider family story telling to be an ecologicallyvalid approach to the study of raising children in a variety of contexts, furtherefforts are needed to expand the approach to ethnically and socioeconom-ically diverse families. It is quite plausible that achievement and affiliationwould be emphasized differently in various cultures (Markus & Kitayama,1994). There are also limitations to the story-telling technique. The storiesthat were told were relatively brief, although rich in detail. It is possiblethat some of the findings that represent trends would have been stronger ifseveral narrative samples had been collected for each parent. The narrativesthat were collected were only a snapshot of the parent’s childhood remem-brances and do not reflect the range of childhood remembrances that couldbe evaluated.

It may be tempting to interpret the results of this preliminary study asevidence that traditional gender roles are alive and well and boys are social-ized in distinctive ways from girls. This interpretation would be warranted ifstronger main effects for gender of parent and gender of child were found.The more interesting results seem to be in the interaction between charac-teristics of the parent, such as gender role, and characteristics of the child.The stories that we heard were rich examples of how parents go about thecomplex task of imparting values to their children. We certainly recognizethat family story telling is not the only avenue of socialization, nor do we ex-pect socialization of gender values to occur in a single domain. The voice ofa parent’s childhood finds it way into the lives of his or her children, send-ing messages of the importance of forming close relationships and the valueof striving for success. The endorsement of these values may be affectedby gender of parent and child, but are also integrated into the larger socialmilieu.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute ofMental Health (R01 MH51771). Portions of the analyses concerning gendertyping was based on a master’s thesis submitted by the second author.

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