Telling Stories and Getting Acquainted: How Age Matters

Whether through sharing the minutiae of everyday life or making heart-felt disclosures, whether conversing with a spouse, a child or a grandchild, most family relationships could be described as the direct result of a life span’s worth of dyadic exchanges. Particularly in late adulthood, many (if not most) conversations are carried out between only two people-spouses, children, grandchildren, care givers, friends, and acquaintances. Arguably, the wellbeing of family members across the generations is dependent upon how informative, and how pleasant, intergenerational talk is.