Fam Proc 34:455-469 1995 Stability and Change in Family-of-Origin Recollections Over the First Four Years of Parenthood JERRY M. LEWIS, M.D. a MARGARET TRESCH OWEN, Ph.D. a a Send correspondence to either author: Timberlawn Psychiatric Research Foundation, 2750 Grove Hill Road, Dallas TX 75227. This article, one of several from a longitudinal family study, examines stability and change in family-of-origin recollections. Family-of-origin data were collected by means of a questionnaire from both husbands and wives prior to the birth of their first child and 4½ years later. The questionnaire probed the subjects' recollections of their relationships with their mothers and fathers and of their parents' marital relationships. With median correlations for the women and men of .70 and .72, family-of-origin recollections appear relatively stable over this 4½-year period. One exception to the relative stability was that women recalled their fathers and the closeness of their parent's marriage less positively after 4 years of parenthood. These changes in women's recollections were related to contemporaneous experiences with husbands' depression and qualities of the husband's parenting. The family of origin is emphasized in a wide variety of theoretical systems of marital and family functioning. Empirical studies usually describe the relationship between family-of-origin variables and a concurrently measured adult function. During the past 12 years, for example, representative studies explored the relationship between qualities of the family of origin and marital adjustment, affectionate attitudes, adult defense mechanisms, obligation to kin, social bonds, three-generational relationships, and adolescent drug abuse (Fine & Hoestadt, 1984; Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Parker, Barrett, & Hickie, 1992; Rossi & Rossi, 1990; Searight, Manley, Binder, et al., 1991; Tauschke, Merskey, & Helmes, 1990; Truant, Herscovitch, & Lohrenz, 1987; Wallace, 1981; Whitbeck, Hoyt, & Huck, 1993; Wilcoxon & Hovestadt, 1983). Most of these studies report evidence for positive relations between healthy relationships in the family of origin and qualities of adult functioning. The retrospective nature of the data, however, and cross-sectional data collection make inferences of causality problematic. In considering the contribution of family-of-origin relationships to qualities of an individual's parenting, a longitudinal design provides the opportunity to collect subjects' recollections of childhood relationships prior to their becoming parents and, thus, with their recollections uninfluenced by the experiences of their own parenthood (Cox, Owen, Lewis, et al., 1985). In previous reports from our longitudinal study of young families, we described findings that support relations between recollection of family-of-origin relationships prior to becoming a parent and subsequent observer-based measures of early parenting sensitivity, infant-parent attachment, and whole-family interaction patterns (Cox et al., 1985; Lewis, Owen, & Cox, 1989). Moreover, family-of-origin recollections were related to dyadic and triadic parenting for men and women even when effects of their psychological health and marital quality were controlled. That is, family-of-origin effects were not mediated by either individual psychological health or marital quality but, rather, by independently predicted qualities of parenting and family interaction patterns in the child's first year of life. The nature of the relations between family-of-origin recollections and parenting differed, however, for men and women (Lewis et al., 1989). Although positive recollections of mother and of the parental marital relationship were positively related to both men's and women's concurrent marital and future parenting relationships, the effects of positive recollections of the relationship with their fathers differed for men and women. For men, recalling a close relationship with father during childhood was associated with a wide variety of positive outcomes. Surprisingly, women's recollections of a close relationship with father during childhood were associated negatively with psychological health, marital quality, and parental sensitivity. However, neither the reports of concurrent relations nor the ability to predict from earlier measurements of family of origin to subsequent functioning address the stability of recollections of childhood experiences nor the degree to which interpretations of those experiences are influenced by present situations. It is unclear how stable such recollections are over time, and whether particular aspects of family-of-origin recollections are more apt to change and, if so, whether changes are systematic. Currently, there is debate in some clinical quarters about the essential nature of all autobiographical accounts. Those clinicians with a more empirical perspective tend to interpret such accounts as mostly fact, while those clinicians attracted to narrative theory tend to understand autobiographical accounts as involving much fiction. For the latter group, what is _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1