Memorable Messages and Their Crucial Effects

Communication is a key aspect in human life that seems to be an innate capacity. Indeed, it belongs to the crucial skills that children gain in the early childhood under parents’ supervision. Parents provide the first communication experience in person’s life. Communication helps a child understand an essence of events and phenomena, and navigate within the system of existing relationships. The set of ideas, rules and values, called memorable messages, is a life road-map for child’s further communication. It forms the individual traits and reaction models that person applies reflexively during the entire life, which influences not only his or her personality, but also the society. Successful communication promotes the development of the community, where the interaction has a place. Individual communicational barriers certainly transform into the social obstruction. Therefore, it is important to know both positive and negative consequences of memorable messages in order to find and maintain the balance in the parenting approaches for preventing an individual and social crisis.

Parents’ messages may not have an unquestionably positive impact, because no universal opinion could be completely correct and fit any situation. Life-affirming parenting experience provides the person with the substantial ground for further successful communication. In contrary, destructive messages are the crucial precursor for a set of internal barriers that obstruct person’s self-realization in all kinds of relationships. Thus, the question appears whether the memorable messages provide support or oppression of the child. The current paper provides review of the literature related to the following question: what are the positive and negative impacts of memorable messages on the basic individual traits and communicational principles? It starts by analyzing the concept and essence of memorable messages. The paper proceeds to explicate investigations described in the literature about social communication, including mother and father’s perspectives related to memorable messages, reflection on person’s life priorities, the behavioral manner in the situation of relational transgression, and possible threats they provoke. The paper ends with ideas for future research priorities and conclusion.

Review of Literature

The paper reviews six literature sources that investigate the issue of parents-child interaction and its effects on the human ability to communicate with other. Despite the fact that authors emphasize the crucial meaning of the memorable messages for creating of person’s communicational models, they disclose different aspects of the question. Thus, the reviewed studies underline the difference between mother and father’s influence on a child, the effects that memorable messages have on life’s events, and reaction in communicational crisis, and possible negative experience parents may transmit through memorable messages. The aforementioned aspects of the issue will be further discussed.     

Memorable Messages as the Ground for Further Communication

Each person is the member of society, and integrating the social process is the primary task for people. Taking into account the fact, communication may be considered as an instrument for socializing. Goodman (1985) consider socialization to be a negotiated reality divided into three sub-process, such as “learning, social interaction and communication” (Starcher, 2015, p.206). Thus, learning is the first stage of socialization that is inextricably linked with the interaction within the family when parents show and explain to their children what is needed to do at any given moment.

Parents provide the child with the basic knowledge and ideas about the world and how he or she should relate to the society. Experience and knowledge are transmitted to the child through dialogs and discussions, different types of encouragement, common activities, family traditions, and wisdom of previous generations. In others words, the factors are the parents’ messages focused on meaningful concepts of socialization, such as sociocultural knowledge, values and norms (Starcher, 2015). The proverbs, rules, clichés are diverse manifestations of language acquisition. The children keep parents’ messages in their memory and may recall them, when the similar situation occurs in their adult life. Thus, “memorable messages are a verbal messages that appear to be remembered for a long time, were received early in life and were perceived to have a major influence on people’s lives” (Medved, Brogan, McClanahan, Morris & Shepherd, 2006, p.163)

There are numerous aspects related to the context, ways of transmitting the information and its interpretation by the children. They could be differentiated based on gender perspectives, have the positive or negative impact, children may adopt or reject them, but they certainly have considerable “lasting impression on children” (Kellas, 2010, p.459).

Father’s Messages: Leading Interaction Environment, Spheres of Influence

Traditionally, mother is considered as the primary parent in child’s socialization. However, the research centered on father-child interaction has found that fathers also play a great role in children’s development, including well-being and social competence (Starcher, 2015). Men’s active participation in different types of dynamic leisure, including sports, is the primary precursor for father-child interaction. It often remains underestimated as people consider leisure a fun activity, but not a learning process. Indeed, the reality differs from the stereotype.    

Leading Environment for Father-Child Interaction

Common activities, such as sports, are the primary type of leisure involving mostly the fathers. Besides the fun and pleasure effects, the experience creates ample opportunities for interacting process between parents and children. The primary reason is the presence of emotional connection in fun moments, besides verbal messages. Thus, sport, as one of the widespread social team activities, exists in every culture as a way of family leisure and self-training. It provides a compelling environment for dynamic parent-child interaction and, thus, creation of memorable messages (Starcher, 2015). Moreover, communication with parents through sports may include not only active participation but also passive observation, listening or talking about sports events or previous common experience (Starcher, 2015). Parents’ may represent their position on the rules, manner and purposes by judging and explaining the situation.

Spheres of Father’s Influence

Parents and children common participation in sports activity is the crucial factor for emphasizing the aspects. According to parents’ set of values and beliefs, it is the ground for parenting. Thus, the memorable messages that children receive during sports communication often have key meaning for further person’s emotional stability, her or his purposefulness, and the ability to enjoy the competition. Parent’s help the children make significant accents regarding the balance between the victories at all costs and appreciating the other participants. Thus, father’s memorable message is the central self-positioning concept that a person uses in professional communication, friendship, and romantic relationships.

The participants of Starcher’s studies selected a list of the most important questions considering the messages given them by their parents. The question of children’s character traits, their physical skills, the efforts needed to win, communication within the team and with opponents and having fun were among the factors (Starcher, 2015, p.210).

Thus, despite widespread stereotypes about minor father’s role in the process of child’s socialization, the Starcher’s study showed the opposite fact. Father-child interaction that mostly occurs during sports activity provides the children with the basic social skills, such as the ability respect others and perseverance. Mother’s influence is weaker in competitive interaction, and it may be unnecessary, except for the situation when the father-child confrontation exists (Kanters et al., 2008). Thus, one can see that father’s role in the communicative process is not investigated completely.

Aspects of Mother-Daughter Interaction

The relations between mothers and daughters are the closest relationships of all the other systems of interaction. Thus, they are characterized by the most significant links and aftermaths. Women are often called “co-authors” of one another’s lives because they transmit their experience from mothers to daughters and construct their realities about the relationships according to the collected information. Thus, the mother-daughter relationships are the central aspect of understanding “the relational transmission through communication” (Kellas, 2010, p.462). 

The family experience is the information that is transmitted mostly in the system of relations between mothers and daughters. Thus, numerous findings indicate that the message that women usually recall, includes self-valuing aspects, good relationships’ characteristics, the sanctity of love and different warnings (Kellas, 2010, p.473). Obviously, the memorable messages are aimed at providing the understanding of daughter’s place in her future family and emphasizing the role of family for a woman. Obviously, the interaction has a large effect of creating the woman’s vision of the future husband’s traits and appropriate level of interrelations within the couple.

Kellas (2010) suggests that the success of a new family depends on household values that determine appropriate communication style in the couple. It also predicts some personal and behavioral dimensions, such as marital satisfaction, family power, and conflicts that may take place in family relations (Kellas, 2010, p.463).

Medved et al. (2006) addressed Giddens’ explanation of socialization process as not only “incorporation of a child into society, but the succession of the generations” (p.163). Thus, it is worth mentioning that the relationships between mothers and daughters play a significant role in transmitting of generational experience. Transmission of messages from parents to their children, from generation to generation for centuries is the primary reason for the communicative interpretation. It can mostly be said about traditions and family customs. However, successful experience as an integral part of family achievements that “reinforce individual and family identity” also occupies one of the central places in family communication (Kellas, 2010, p. 465). Moreover, it is a crucial precursor to self-identity development. Each experience can be beneficial as well as damaging, and thus mother’s memorable messages can also be transformed from valuable gains to fatal oppression. 

Influence of Memorable Messages on Child’s Life Priorities

The system of social communication is rather diversified, which provides ample opportunities for many-sided self-realization. People cannot cover all areas with equal efforts, and they should rank them according to the life’s values. Traditionally, work and family are the two most competitive spheres of social life are the leading ones among human life priorities. There is no surprise that the situation exists because of parental influence on the person’s worldview in the early childhood. Thus, parents provide their offspring with the key concepts of future family and work arrangements. Mothers and fathers encourage their children to get a good education, develop individual skills and be interested in different subjects in order to get a decent job. Moreover, the job should allow the person to reach the appropriate social level to create a family. However, the nature of the memorable messages is not completely known (Medved et al., 2006). The messages are different in their context, motivation, parent’s expectation, their individual unrealized aspirations, etc.

Thus, the gender diversity between memorable message related to the professional and family priorities is the most widespread and evident element of the socialization. Despite the fact that parents emphasize the role of employment and family for both men and women, the messages that women receive are significantly different from the lessons given to the men (Medved et al., 2006, p. 161). Thus, memorable messages that advice to refuse a good job for the sake of family responsibilities are more often transmitted to women than to men (Medved et al., 2006, p. 173). 

On the other hand, considering employment as the measure of personal fulfillment, choosing the profession based on gendered nature and reinforcing the role of the family in the adult life of young men are the most noticeable and widespread aftermaths of parental socialization. The questions reflect the challenges of ideological aspects in conjunction with family and work discourse and show the need to re-envision them. However, as the process of ideological changes could be implemented effectively only through the transmission of new information from parents to children, it is a lifetime of ongoing and dynamic sense making (Medved et al., 2006, p. 173).

Person’s Behavioral Manner: Relation between Memorable Messages and Reaction on Relational Transgression

Communication is the process of interaction between the persons, who have a subjective vision of reality, the different set of values and life priorities, diverse traits, aims, and desires. The various features are the substantial precursor for relational conflicts and confrontations, including the interaction between the dearest persons. Therefore, the ability to cope with the communicational crisis is the crucial skill for successful social interaction. The capability of both participants to communicate constructively after the situation of transgression is the most crucial precursor for being productive representative of the society. The ways of response to the relational transgression are also formed under the influence of memorable messages. 

Careful consideration of the other’s feeling is a critical element of successful interpersonal communication. The manner is especially appreciated in critical life or relations moments, such as transgression, because forgiveness is the primary expression of concern. The ability to communicate with the offender or seek forgiveness of the aggrieved person seems to be the highest human achievement in family, friendship or romantic relationship. Forgiveness in communication has its varieties caused by the different preconditions, including parenting.

Thus, in the frame of his study, Kelley collected 304 narratives about relational accidents in conjunction with the process of forgiveness (Waldron & Kelley, 2005). The relations between siblings, parents and children, friends and intimate partners were touched upon in the narratives. The diversity of perspectives allowed Kelley to develop the taxonomies for all the dimensions and underline three behavioral manners of forgiveness-granting: direct, indirect and conditional forgiveness (Waldron & Kelley, 2005, p.725). The definitions speak for themselves regarding their connection with parenting and memorable messages. However, analyzing which manner of people’s behavior is used in different systems of interaction, one can see the influence of family communication. Thus, indirect forgiveness means nonverbal response that is aimed at avoiding confrontation, and is applied more often by friends (52%) (Merolla, 2008, p.128). The conditional behavioral manner that provides granting forgiveness if the offender never acts in the same way again is mostly used in romantic relationships. Thus, prevailing family values, which are the primary memorable message at all times, remain actual and show the influence of parenting on the ways of forgiveness communication.

However, there is one significant moment concerning forgiving communication. Despite the fact that memorable messages correlate to the necessity to grant forgiveness as the crucial precursor for successful interpersonal communication, Merolla’s studies (2008) show that many people are not able to avoid ongoing negative effect (ONA). Almost half of the study’s participants (45%) declared the presence of deep resentment after communicating forgiveness. Thus, one can see that the process of forgiveness requires cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity, whereas memorable messages can provide only cognitive ground for forgiving communication (Merolla, 2008, p.119).

Threats of Memorable Messages

Each of memorable messages has a profound generational context. The results of Starcher’s (2015) study are the bright confirmation of the previous statement. Thus, 86.1% of the participants, who were asked whether they wanted to share the message they received from their parents with the children, gave the positive answer (Starcher, 2015, p.218). It means that the majority of people transmit the experience of previous generations. The fact is positive in the context of national traditions and nonmaterial cultural heritage. However, all of the stereotypes, which often are the ground for conflicts among people, also become a memorable message. It  is the barrier obstructing the solving of numerous world problems. 

The different types of obsessions that are the results of parenting are another biggest social threat. Parents often try to impose their individual unrealized wishes and aspirations on children. The choice of activity can be an example of imposing. Thus, the authoritarian parents’ attitude to the child’s choice of sports activity or their insistence on any other decisions may provoke protest or refusal to participate in sports (Kanters, Bocarro, & Casper, 2008). Moreover, the complexity of the problem is hidden in the different perception of the pressure by the parents and their children. According to the findings, parents’ vision of the amount of attacks they impose the children are lower than the score their children report (Kanters, Bocarro, & Casper, 2008). The same can be application to the choice of work. Thus, the results of to the study Medved et al. (2006) shows that the reason for choosing the profession, the messages like “My mother always said I have to be a teacher because she is one and I will get the summers off” people declare rather often (Medved et al., 2006, p. 171)

Mother’s memorable messages also belong to the group with the high threat level. By concentrating daughters’ attention on the marital unhappiness that faces the women of the family for a few generations, they provoke the belief that it is the hard women destiny. Obviously, the obsessive experience sets the daughter on the repetition of mother’s fate through the internal barriers that do not allow them to allocate the effort to create the happy family.

The child’s interpretation of the parent’s memorable message has another crucial meaning besides their direct influence. Each child is a personality with her or his individual traits and emotions that do not allow them to be the passive observer and absorber of memorable messages. Children’s reaction to any information is often surprising for the parents because of the large difference between the thoughts they try to give the offspring, and the results child produces. Therefore, it is necessary not only to provide the needed information, but also control its reflection by the child.

The mentioned threats have the crucial influence on the further models of interpersonal communication destroying the leading concepts. Thus, the inability to communicate successfully brings the disappointment and discontent to the people and transforms them into asocial persons. Moreover, personal crisis related to the feeling of hostility to others is rather fast it becomes the biggest problem of the whole community.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Pinterest

Related Free Research Essays