Aging Mothers' and Adult Daughters' Retrospective Ratings of Conflict in Their Past Relationships KAREN L. FINGERMAN Pennsylvania State University Retrospective accounts of past conflict between parents and offspring have been asso- ciated with a variety of implications for individual well-being and relationship quality in adulthood. The present study involved 48 dyads of healthy older mothers (mean age=76) and their adult daughters (mean age=44). Participants independently rated degree of conflict in their relationship when daughters were ages: 5-12, 13-17, 18- 24, and 25-present. Mothers and daughters provided descriptions of the source of problems and their behaviors during the time period rated as most conflicted. Moth- ers' and daughters' memories of past difficulties were related to their roles in the relationship, but not to present relationship quality or individual well-being. Key words----older women, conflict, interpersonal tension, mothers and daughters, adolescence, memory, retrospective Relationships with offspring are central in the lives of older adults (Carstensen, 1995; Ryff, Lee, Essex, & Schmutte, 1994; Suitor, Pillemer, Keeton, & Robinson, 1995). One factor that distinguishes the parent/child relationship from other types of relationships in adulthood lies in its past history. Relationships between parents and their offspring involve continuity and discontinuity. The relationship changes in marked ways over time. There is a progression from the period in which infants are completely dependent upon parents, to the adolescent years in which they may rebel against parents, to the adult years when offspring may establish their own families. Aging parents' and adult children's perceptions of their past relationship may play an impor- tant role in their present well-being. For example, attachment patterns in adulthood have been classified based on reminiscence of childhood attachment experiences with parents (Benoit & Parker, 1994; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). A grown child's perception of the early relationship with an aging parent appears to influence her willingness to care for that parent when needed (Whitbeck, L., Hoyt, D. R., & Huck, 1994; Whitbeck, Simons, & Conger, 1991). A variety of psychiatric symptoms in offspring, notably depression, are associated with memories of past conflict with par- ents (Amato, 1991; Brewin, Andrews, & Gotlib, 1993). As parents and offspring grow older, perceptions of past difficulties may also play an important role in current relationship functioning. Parents and offspring may frame the present relationship in more positive or in more negative terms based on their sense of the early relationship. Some parents may fault past difficulties as the reason Current Psychology: Developmental 9 Learning 9 Personality 9 Social Summer 1997, Vol. 16, No. 2, 131-154.