Developing A Child’S Identity As A Musician: A Family ‘Script’ Perspective

Abstract Past research has shown that the beliefs held by one family member will influence the values, attitudes and behaviour of the others to the point that the identities of both children and parents seem ‘shaped’ by the interactions between them (Radford, 1990). Despite this, it is only recently that music psychology research has acknowledged that family members are key in determining a child’s musical development (see Csikszentmihalyi etal., 1997, who look at the role of parents in the development of musical ability of talented teenagers).