Elderly Individuals' Reminiscences About the Life-Span Development of Their Family

Abstract

Elderly individuals were asked to compose “family autobiographies” describing past events representing the beginning of their family, their family when the parents were middle-aged, and their family as it is today. Content analyses of the participants' recollections showed elderly adults' memories of the beginnings of their families were focused on episodes that illustrated the initial occurrence of family themes and values. In contrast, elderly individuals' recollections of their families when they were middle-aged and their families of today showed a tendency to attempt to identify continuing themes and trends from the episodes of their families' lives. These findings were taken to indicate individuals' reminiscences of their family lives changes as the relative importance of the families' developmental tasks changes. This pattern of findings was discussed in terms of Duvall's (1988) model of family developmental tasks.