Privacy Management as Unfinished Business: Shifting Boundaries in the Context of Infertility

Abstract

Privacy dilemmas are prevalent for women who experience a fertility problem. In this study, we use communication privacy management (CPM) theory to explore how privacy boundaries shift over time as women cope with infertility. Based on interviews with 23 women, we found that women described distinctive patterns of shifting privacy boundaries, including situations in which the experience of infertility served as a change agent, patterns in which women became more or less open over time, and patterns that indicated a continuous oscillation of boundaries. These ever-changing patterns of talk indicate that managing private information about infertility is unfinished business.

Keywords:

• Disclosure
• Health
• Infertility
• Privacy
• Relational Communication

This manuscript is based on the first author's dissertation under the direction of Daena J. Goldsmith. The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on early versions of this paper.

Notes

We used pseudonyms to protect women's identities.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer J. Bute

Jennifer J. Bute (PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University.

Tennley A. Vik

Tennley A. Vik (MA, North Dakota State University) is a doctoral student in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University.