“I still remember when…”: narratives of child maltreatment by emerging adults

Abstract

The present study examines autobiographical narratives of childhood memories in emerging adults, including child maltreatment experiences. To date, research is inconclusive in identifying the specific characteristics of narratives of child maltreatment. We tested whether narratives of child maltreatment contained fewer evaluative statements and more narrative immersion when compared to other emotional childhood narratives, in addition to narratives of a control group. We analyzed oral narratives of stressful, sad, angering, and happy events collected from a total of 171 college students at an English-speaking university located in Cairo (48% with a history of child maltreatment and 52% without). The hypothesis that narratives of emotional events by the maltreated group contained fewer evaluative statements was confirmed; more specifically, they contained fewer emotion words. However, groups did not differ in the degree of immersive storytelling. Our findings are essential for mental health professionals, researchers as well as legal workers to help further understand the consequences of child maltreatment. The generalizability of the findings is limited by the cultural and social specificity of the sample. Therefore, further research is needed to replicate this study in clinical samples in different cultures, conducting the research in the subjects’ first language. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/26904586.2022.2036285 .