ABSTRACT
Much of family interaction focuses on telling family stories; in everyday interactions, over the dinner table, in the car, across the television dialogue, and in more formal, ritualized interactions, at holiday dinners, family reunions, weddings, and funerals, family members engage in co-constructing the events they have shared together in the past. These narratives, often told again and again, deWne the shape of each family’s emotional life. The way in which individual family members participate in the recreation of the family’s shared past modulates an evolving self-understanding both as an individual and as a member of the family. In this chapter, we examine the ways in which families co-construct narratives. Our focus is on individual diVerences in the process of family reminiscing, and we argue that the way in which families co-construct their shared past has implications for children’s developing emotional well-being and resilience. More speciWcally, families that are able to talk about emotionally complex and diYcult events in more open, integrated, and
coherent ways may help provide children with the resources to cope with and resolve aversive experiences.
