Abstract
Recently, independent lines of research have indirectly supported the notion
that social variables, especially parent-child relationships, have a
significant impact on adults' memories of their early life. In order to
directly assess this, Italian students were asked to recall as many memories
involving parents as they could from before the age of 6 in a 3-minute timed
recall task (i.e., memory fluency). They also filled out assessments about
parental involvement in their lives as well as the quality of their
relationships with their mothers and fathers. We found that for males, the
more involved the parents and the warmer the relationships between sons and
both their mothers and their fathers, the more early memories, the more
positive early memories, and the more episodic memories men recalled. For
women, the warmer the relationship with their mothers, the earlier their
earliest memory. Results are discussed in terms of gendered parent-child
interactions as well as McAdam's emergent life-story theory.