REPRESENTATIONS, REPERTOIRES AND POWER - MOTHER-CHILD CONFLICT

Previous research suggests that the sexes differ in their social representations of aggression. In women's expressive representation, aggression is interpreted as a temporary and regrettable breakdown of self control. In men's instrumental representation, aggression is seen as an act of coercion aimed at forcing compliance and demonstrating interpersonal control. These different social representations have been interpreted as following from the often confounded sources of gender roles and differences in interpersonal power. Mothering, however, requires the female gender role quality of nurturance while awarding women both interpersonal power and the requirement that they use it to control their child's behaviour. The present study is based on seven extended interviews with mothers of pre-schoolers about conflict with their children. The mothers distinguished three representations of conflict with their children: legitimate control, interpersonal power struggles and loss of self-control-the latter two corresponding to instrumental and expressive representations. The data are also used to evaluate the epistemological status of social representations which has been challenged by discursive psychologists who argue that discourse reflects contextual demands of social talk rather than processes of cognition.