Hurtful Episodes in Parent–Adolescent Relationships: How Accounts and Attributions Contribute to the Difficulty of Talking about Hurt

Abstract

This research examines sense-making about hurtful episodes between parents and adolescents and how sense-making processes relate to subsequent communication. Results highlight differences in the events parents and adolescents find hurtful and the complex forces that influence accounts for hurtful episodes. Children were less affected overall by hurtful episodes and provided more benevolent accounts of parents' hurtful actions and words. Parents demonstrated typical victim–perpetrator biases, particularly when relationship quality was low. Furthermore, findings provided evidence that sense-making about hurtful events may affect follow-up conversations. Intentionality attributions and the similarity of pre-interaction accounts predicted the difficulty and negativity of subsequent conversations, based on both perceived and observed ratings. Account similarity also predicted observed aspects of joint storytelling in the conversations.