Catalysts and motivations for change in privacy coordination: transracial, internationally adoptive parents’ coordination of private, adoption-related information

ABSTRACT

Communication Privacy Management theory (CPM) was applied in a qualitative analysis of survey responses from parents in transracial, internationally adoptive families concerning their management of private, adoption-related information. Participants were 166 parents of at least one child adopted from China or Vietnam who responded to an open-ended online questionnaire. Most parents described at least one change in coordination of their child’s private, adoption-related information over time. Of the catalysts that prompted these changes, 43% were due to the child’s development, 30% to the parent’s lived experiences, and 15% to privacy turbulence. Parents reported a variety of motivations for privacy management before and after these changes. Expressive need represented 64% of the pre-change motivations. Control (45%) and preventing hurt (36%) represented the predominant post-change motivations. Significant to CPM, these accounts show parents acting as proxy owners for their young children and demonstrate developmental changes in privacy management within families.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication privacy management theory
• international adoption
• transracial adoption
• privacy coordination
• catalyst criteria

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a University of Denver Professional Research Opportunities for Faculty grant to the first two authors.

Notes on contributors

Mary Claire Morr Loftus

Mary Claire Morr Loftus (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Denver. Her research focuses on privacy management in family relationships, transitions in dating relationships, and communication in work/family conflict.

Elizabeth A. Suter

Elizabeth A. Suter (Ph.D., University of Illinois) is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Denver. Her research focuses on critical interpersonal and family communication, relational dialectics theory, and nontraditional families and relationships.

Daniel S. Strasser

Daniel S. Strasser (Ph.D., University of Denver) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Rowan University. His research envelops gender and family communication, masculinity studies, critical pedagogies, and communication theory specifically focusing on father-son relationships, classed identities and performances, and the perceptions and performances of masculinities.

Michele D. Hanna

Michele D. Hanna (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is the Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver. Her research focuses on child welfare, foster care, adoption, disproportionality and disparities.