Cultural life scripts and life stories of heterosexual and sexual minority parents in Brazil and the United Kingdom

Not all of our experiences can be included in the narrative of our lives. When recalling their life stories, people must select their most relevant experiences to represent who they are. The way these events are recalled and chosen is influenced by cultural expectations about what a typical life should look like. Studies investigating these cultural life scripts typically focus on specific nationalities. Our study explores the expectations and experiences of heterosexual and sexual minority parents from Brazil and the United Kingdom. We asked participants to report the five events most likely to occur in the life of a child from their culture, gender, and sexual orientation, as well as the five most important events in their own lives. The results revealed similarities between the expected and experienced events of participants from both cultures and sexual orientations, but also significant specificities. Sexual minority parents reported more events related to minority stress than heterosexual parents. Additionally, Brazilian participants reported more expected and experienced events during and before the reminiscence bump period. These findings support the cultural life script account of the reminiscence bump and highlight important group-specific differences.