The Rules-Based Process of Revealing/Concealing the Family Planning Decisions of Voluntarily Child-Free Couples: A Communication Privacy Management Perspective

Abstract

This study explains how members of voluntarily child-free (VCF) couples make unsolicited disclosures to social network members about their family-planning decision. Thirty-two members of VCF couples were interviewed. Communication privacy management (Petronio, 2002) was used as the theoretical framework to discern the salient characteristics that lead to such disclosures. Participants reported the following interrelated processes as comprising how they revealed/concealed their family-planning information: (a) the rules-driven structure of revealing the child-free decision to social network members, (b) confidant selection, and (c) the salient characteristics of concealing the decision from others. These findings contribute to a growing body of knowledge on family-planning communication and privacy management.

Keywords:

• Disclosure
• Family Planning
• Privacy
• Voluntarily Childlessness

The author gratefully acknowledges the insights of the informants who generously shared their stories.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wesley T. Durham

Wesley T. Durham (Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln) is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Southern Indiana. This manuscript is adapted from the dissertation of the author. An earlier version of this article was presented at the National Communication Association Conference, Boston, MA, November 2005. The author would like to thank Drs. Dawn Braithwaite, Loreen Olson, Chad McBride, Paige Toller, and Karla Bergen for their insight and assistance with this research.