Mother Recollections of a Tornado

Abstract

Abstract The goals of the present study were to explore how meaning-related features of mothers’ individual recollections of a devastating tornado and its aftermath related to mothers’ perceived stress approximately one year later, and to elucidate ways in which mothers altered their recollection qualities when talking about the tornado with their children present. Participants included 41 mothers (ages 25 to 57) with 50 children (ages 8 to 12) who experienced a tornado. Multiple measures of meaning-related recollection qualities, including meaning making, coherence, emotional expressiveness, elaborativeness, and language sophistication were coded from verbatim transcripts of individual interviews and mother-child conversations about the tornado. Meaning-related recollection qualities were largely unrelated to mothers’ levels of perceived stress, with the exception of positive and negative emotion-related terms. When talking about the tornado with their children present rather than individually, mothers used less sophisticated language, more positive emotion terms, were more coherent, and made more references to positive meaning making, suggesting efforts to match children’s developmental levels and to encourage a positive interpretation of the tornado. Implications for future study of meaning making in adults and children are discussed. Keywords: trauma, disaster, meaning making, autobiographical memory, parenting