Identity Development of Emerging Adults Revealing Negative Experiences of Their Parents

Abstract

This qualitative investigation explored the identity development of emerging adults who revealed their parents’ negative experiences. Participants were 169 Chinese college students ( M = 19.83, SD = 1.19, 76.92% women) from southwest China. Thematic analysis of the data which were collected in December 2022 suggests that the participants revealed various parental negative experiences including hardships and poverty, failure and regrets, as well as family scandals and interpersonal conflicts. The participants strived to make meaning out of such experiences and looked into the future to make a difference based on their meaning-making capacities. Such a process leads to both personal identity exploration and family identity negotiation which become foundations for their future family narratives. We created a model of personal and family identity development to capture the process of identity development in revealing parental negative experiences. The findings of this study contribute to the scholarship on family narratives and identity development.