Tani, F., Bonechi, A., Peterson, C., & Smorti, A. (in press). Parental influences on memories of parents and friends. Journal of Genetic Psychology.

This study evaluated the role parent-child relationship quality has on two types of memories, those of parents and friends. 198 Italian university students recalled memories during four separate timed memory-fluency tasks about their preschool, elementary, middle school, and high school/university years. Half were instructed to recall memories involving parents and the remainder memories involving friends. Moreover parent-child relationships were assessed by the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI- Furman & Buhrmester, 1985) and Adolescents' Report of Parental Monitoring (Capaldi & Patterson, 1989). Results showed that males with positive parent-son relationships had more memories of parents and more affectively positive memories of friends, supporting a consistency model positing similarity between parent-child relationships and memories of friends. Females with positive parental relationship quality had more affectively positive memories of parents but for friends, positive relationship quality only predicted positive memories when young. At older ages, especially middle school-aged, negative parent-daughter relationships predicted more positive memories of friends, supporting a compensatory model. Gender of parent also mattered, with fathers having a more influential role on affect for memories of friends.