BEING BRAVE, BEING NICE - THEMES OF AGENCY AND COMMUNION IN CHILDRENSNARRATIVES

Although much is known about the presence of themes of agency and comm union in adults' autobiographical stories, little is known about the p resence of these themes in children's autobiographical stories. In thi s paper we examine the extent to which children describe themselves an d others as agentic and communal beings in ordinary conversational nar ratives. Subjects were 96 rural, working-class children between the ag es of 4 and 9 years. Personal narratives were elicited in the course o f informal conversations with an adult experimenter. Narratives were a nalyzed for the presence of storyworld participants, and for the prese nce of themes of agency and communion. For both genders, themes of age ncy were more common than were themes of communion. Girls, however, we re more likely to describe themes of communion than were boys, and wer e more likely to include family members in their narratives than were boys. Finally, correlations between themes of agency and communion wer e generally low. The findings extend the age to which the concepts of agency and communion can be productively applied to personal narrative s. Implications for future theoretical and empirical work are also dis cussed.