Openness of Parental Disclosures about Depression with Children: Examining the Impact of Family Privacy Management and Stigma

Abstract

This study employed use of the communication privacy management (CPM) theoretical framework to better understand how stigma and family privacy management practices (current and family-of-origin) influence parental disclosures of depression-related private information with children. Stigma plays a minimal role in this process, but family privacy management norms significantly influence how much private depression-related information that parents share with their children. Both the current family privacy management norms as well as the family-of-origin privacy management practices impact parental levels of openness about depression-related private information with children. In particular, parents from families who shared more private information were more open with their children about depression-related private information. Furthermore, parents who were more open with their children in general also shared more depression-related private information with them. Finally, parents were more likely to emulate the privacy norms in their own family that were normative in their own family-of-origin. We discuss the implications of these findings.

Keywords:

• Communication Privacy Management
• Depression
• Disclosure
• Family Communication
• Parent-child

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shawn C. Starcher

Shawn C. Starcher (Ph.D., Kent State University) is an assistant professor of Communication at Muskingum University. His research explores how parents and children discuss mental health in the family environment.

Jeffrey T. Child

Jeffrey T. Child (Ph.D., North Dakota State University) is a full professor of Communication at Kent State University. His research focuses on how users of social media think about the overall management of their online disclosures.