CHILDRENS NARRATIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF MOTHERS - THEIR DEVELOPMENT AND ASSOCIATIONS WITH CHILD AND MOTHER ADAPTATION

We investigated associations between children's representations of mot hers in their play narratives and measures of children's and mothers' socioemotional adaptation, and explored the development of these repre sentations between the ages of 4 and 5 years. Fifty-one children were interviewed using the MacArthur Story-Stem Battery to obtain their nar rative representations of mothers. Positive, Negative, and Disciplinar y representation composites were generated. Children who had more Posi tive and Disciplinary representations and fewer Negative representatio ns had fewer behavior problems and their mothers reported less psychol ogical distress. In addition, 5-year-olds had more Positive and Discip linary representations and fewer Negative representations than did 4-y ear-olds, and there was moderate stability in individual differences i n children's representations of mothers across the 2 ages. The results add an important dimension to research on parent-child relationships- that of children's perspectives on these relationships.