Media Release
May 16 2007
Childhood stories set the tone for life
Stories from early childhood that people liked and remember establish
values that remain important for the rest of their lives, a University
of South Australia study shows.
All of the participants in the study, which included people ranging from
teenagers aged 15 years to 80 year olds, talked about the importance of
the stories they heard, saw or read before the age of about 10 years,
according to School of
Communication lecturer,
Dr Julia de Roeper.
“When asked what they learnt from those early stories, people’s
responses were, ‘I learnt about good and bad’, or ‘right and wrong’, or
‘I learnt about how to make the right decisions’,” Dr de Roeper said.
“The stories we encounter in childhood are important in establishing our
feelings about how our lives should be lived. They influence the way we
see the world and how we see ourselves in the world,” she said.
Dr de Roeper’s research suggests that stories play the same role in
people’s lives across the different generations, but the way that people
access those stories has changed.
For the elderly participants, who grew up between the wars, children’s
books were scarce and television didn’t exist, so most of the stories
that they remembered from their childhood were from storytelling around
the dinner table in large family groups.
“It was like living in a soap opera. The family stories from their
childhood were the same stories that they recalled 50 to 60 years later,
and the values that they learnt from them had a major impact on their
lives,” Dr de Roeper said.
Radio was important for baby boomers and many more had access to
children’s books after World War II. By the time they reached their
teenage years, they had established a pattern of reading.
“Younger participants aged in their 30s and 40s and down to teenagers
accessed technologies that were visual, with stories sourced from TV,
video, DVD, Internet and game stations,” Dr de Roeper said.
“Some of the people, who grew up watching soaps such as Neighbours and
Home and Away, talked about those stories in exactly the same way that
the older participants talked about stories told around the dinner
table. The medium of delivery had changed but the role of the story and
the message had remained with them.”
Contact for interview
-
Dr Julia de Roeper office (08) 8302 4710 mobile 0418 842 961 email julia.deroeper@unisa.edu.au
Media contact
-
Geraldine Hinter office (08) 8302 0963 mobile 0417 861 832
email geraldine.hinter@unisa.edu.au