ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a more concrete understanding of how culture and narrative are integrated not only within and across cultures but also in early maternal reminiscing style and the creation of adolescent identity through family reminiscing. As will become evident, culture remains a slippery construct, and the ways in which individuals and families construct their experiences and themselves through narrative is both culturally universal and uniquely individual. Through telling one’s personal story, one recreates the cultural narratives from which it derives. Thus, in a very real sense, culture is defined through the narratives individuals tell. Within the autobiographical memory literature, cross-cultural differences play an especially important role, with the most significant distinction laying between independent cultures – cultures that value autonomy and individualism – and interdependent cultures, cultures that value community and relationships. The chapter discusses the importance of looking within cultures to individual differences in mothers’ goals and strategies for reminiscing with their young children.
