Family Communication Patterns and Adolescent Experiences During Parental Military Deployment and Reintegration: The Role of Inappropriate Parental Disclosures and Perceived Family Understanding

This study examines associations between adolescent reports of family communication patterns (FCPs) and difficulties experienced during the deployment and reintegration of a military parent. Data from 106 adolescents (9–17 years) in 72 National Guard families where a parent had recently returned from overseas deployment were analyzed to examine direct and indirect links between FCPs, perceived family understanding, inappropriate parental disclosures, and adolescent difficulties. Results indicate direct effects for conformity orientation, with it being inversely associated with adolescent difficulties during both deployment and reintegration. Conversation orientation exerts mixed effects on adolescent difficulties during deployment. At a trend level, conversation orientation shares a direct, negative association with adolescent difficulties during deployment but also an indirect, positive association via family inappropriate parental disclosures. Implications of the findings for future research on FCPs as well as programs working with military families are discussed.     

Videotime: Selection and Structuring Family Social Time With Rented Commercially Prerecorded Electronic Media

Using in-depth interviews, this research investigates family members' processes for renting and watching commercially prerecorded video electronic media. The study finds that renting prerecorded video material is a negotiated process that begins in advance of viewing, and concludes that the social aspects of viewing are of paramount importance and concern to most family-oriented renters. In short, the viewers consider the time spent watching a rented video, or videotime, as family social time that is structured around this communal act. This study extends previous research in this area by explicating how families make decisions and negotiate the structuring of videotime.     

Intrafamily secrets in various family configurations: A communication boundary management perspective

Although extant literature suggests that blended, single‐parent, and biological/adoptive (i.e., nuclear) families differ in terms of the boundaries that separate family members, little systematic research has compared such boundaries. The current investigation examined this issue by focusing on communication boundaries as indexed by intrafamily secrets. As expected, college students in blended families reported that their original parents and siblings were more likely than their stepparents or stepsiblings to know the family secret that they reported in this study. This suggests the presence of a relatively rigid communication boundary between original family members and stepfamily members. Interestingly, participants in blended families, single‐parent families, and nuclear families were quite similar in terms of: (a) the number of intrafamily secrets they perceived in their family, (b) the topics of the secrets they reported, and (c) the functions they reported being served by the secrets. Also, regardless of family form, there was an inverse association between participants’ family satisfaction and their perceptions of how many intrafamily secrets their family held. Overall, in contrast to the literature that often portrays blended families and single‐parent families as particularly problematic, these results suggest remarkable similarities across family configurations in terms of communication boundaries.     

Communication Processes that Predict Young Adults’ Feelings of Being Caught and their Associations with Mental Health and Family Satisfaction

In this study, the degree to which young adults felt caught between their parents was tested as a mediator between marital conflict behaviors and young adults’ mental health and family satisfaction. Participants included 1170 young adult children from first marriage and postdivorce families in four different states. Using structural equation modeling, the results revealed that parents’ symbolic aggression, demand/withdraw patterns, and negative disclosures were positively associated with young adult children's feelings of being caught. Such feelings, in turn, were inversely associated with children's reports of family satisfaction and mental health. Although young adult children from divorced families witnessed, on average, more marital aggression, negative disclosures, and demand/withdraw patterns than those from nondivorced families, the associations in the model were relatively comparable across both family types. Further, tests of mediation revealed that feeling caught served primarily as a partial mediator for family satisfaction and as a full mediator for mental health, though such feelings suppressed the positive effect of parental disclosures on family satisfaction for children in nondivorced families. Finally, children's closeness with both parents moderated the associations in the model.     

Children's Exposure to Negative Internet Content: Effects of Family Context

Concerned that inappropriate Internet content may jeopardize the health or safety of children, this study is designed to provide insights into children's exposure to negative Internet content by building a hypothesized theoretical model that examines the effect of family context factors (family cohesion, shared Web activities, parents' Internet skill, and parents' perceived control) on children's exposure to negative Internet content. Findings from the 178 participating families who completed the survey demonstrate that children are more exposed to negative Internet content than what most parents expect. Parents' perceived control, obtained through shared Web activities and family cohesion, was determined to actually reduce children's exposure to negative Internet content.     

The Assimilation of In-Laws: The Impact of Newcomers on the Communication Routines of Families

Although our popular culture stereotypes relationships with in-laws as problematic, these relationships have largely been overlooked by communication researchers. In contrast to existing studies focusing on dyadic relationships, this study looked at how in-laws are assimilated into the family group as newcomers, using structuration theory to examine how routines are reproduced in families. In personal interviews, participants described how their families had assimilated newcomers or how they themselves were received into their spouse's families. A thematic analysis revealed specific communication routines that had to be adjusted upon entry of newcomers, including conversational topics, expected amount of interaction, use of joking, and conversational styles. Adjustments to these routines, although difficult to negotiate because they were not openly discussed, helped to transform the family of childhood into the family of adulthood. Structuration theory would suggest that the perceived stress in relationships with in-laws occurs because newcomers upset the comfort of families by disrupting their communication routines.     

When Dysfunction Complicates Caring: Critiquing a Family Caregiving Model for Alzheimer's Dementia

The challenges posed by the increased prevalence of Alzheimer's dementia (AD) demonstrate a need to understand this social issue better. A case study is used to critique Wilson's (Applied Nursing Research, 2(1), 40–44, 1989) model of family caregiving for a person with AD. Although the case fits the model in some ways, these data suggest that the model may ignore nontraditional family situations. Suggestions for future research involve modifying the model or creating multiple caregiver models.     

An integrated model of parental mediation: the effect of family communication on children's perception of television reality and negative viewing effects

This study proposed and tested an integrated model of parental mediation involving family communication, parental mediation styles, children's perceptions of televised realities and the actual world, and perceptions of the negative effects of television viewing. A total of 348 Korean adolescents participated in a nationwide survey. The findings demonstrated that parental, instructive mediation, in combination with open family communication, increased not only children's perceived disparity between televised realities and the actual world, but also children's perceptions of the potentially negative effects of television. Restrictive parental mediation styles were also found to mediate the role of open family communication on children's perception of negative effects of television. In contrast, co-viewing mediation was not found to directly affect either the children's perceived reality or their perception of negative effects of television viewing.     

Grieving Gender: Trans-identities,Transition, and Ambiguous Loss

More and more families include a member who is trans-identified, and therefore, may be called to consider how sex and gender matter to identity and relationships. Previous research shows that for some family members this is not a simple matter. Often, family members experience transition as a living death, wherein the trans-identified person is perceived as somehow present and absent, the same and different, at once. The purposes of this study were to understand what it is about the transition of sex/gender that incites this meaning struggle and how meaning-making is connected to ambiguous loss. Relational Dialectics Theory was used to analyze how family members construct meanings for transition through competing discourses related to sex, gender, and personal identity. Findings suggest that family members' meaning making processes position them to endure, overcome, or avoid the feelings of grief related to transition.     

Family Ties: Communicating Identity Through Jointly Told Family Stories This paper is based on the author's dissertation study and was presented on the Top Four Panel of the Family Communication Division at the National Communication Association Convention,November 2003, Miami,FL.

Family stories work to construct family identity. Little research, however, has examined storytelling in families. This study examined storytelling content and process to assess the extent to which families jointly integrated or fragmented a shared sense of identity and how these discursive practices relate to family qualities. Results of a study involving 58 family triads indicate relationships between story theme (e.g., accomplishment vs. stress), person referencing practices (e.g., we-ness vs. separateness), and interactional storytelling behaviors (e.g., engagement, turn-taking). Moreover, story framing, perspective-taking, statements about selves-in-the-family, and identifying as a “storytelling family” emerged consistently as positive predictors of family satisfaction and functioning. The results offer a portrait of how families communicate identity and functioning in joint storytelling interactions and further position storytelling as a communication phenomenon worthy of consideration.     

Exploring Survivor Experiences and Emotions Expressed about Loss and Responsibility Following a Thrombosis Event

We explored the experiences and emotions women expressed about having a blood clot, including revelations about family members' decision to avoid disclosing inherited risk for clotting. We do this through analysis of in-depth life reflection interviews (N = 20) of women who experienced a first venous blood clot between the ages of 18 and 50 years. Selective coding reduced the data to an overarching story associated with thrombosis survivorship and loss across multiple life domains. The themes identified include participant revelations about living in the shadow of genetic susceptibility for thrombosis. Participants manage changes associated with lingering health effects, and daily routines for work and life, adapting their lives to manage coagulability. A second theme reveals the fallout linked to the severity of thrombosis encompassed in haunting psychological scenarios, persistent emotional concerns, and social discrimination. Participants assumed responsibility to disclose inherited risk, with the women expressing empowerment in knowing risks and acknowledging possible genetic testing mistakes. The overarching perspective was one of hope through proactive actions in occupational, recreational, and relational realms. We offer our findings as a theoretical depiction of thrombosis survivor identity and the need for public health and clinical communication to support disclosing family history for clotting.     

“What Do You Say to Your Mother When Your Mother's Standing Beside You?” Birth and Adoptive Family Contributions to Adoptive Identity via Relational Identity and Relational–Relational Identity Gaps

Grounded in the communication theory of identity, the present study explores how adoptive identity—an individual's understanding of what it means to be an adopted person—is influenced by the relational layer of his or her adoptive and birth family relationships. Seven focus group interviews were conducted in which participants were prompted to engage in a dialog about their experiences as an adopted individual. Analyses revealed that adoptees' relational identity with both their adoptive and birth families contributed in meaningful ways to their adoptive identity, but these relationships at times come into conflict with one another and with the adoptees' personal layer of identity, generating relational–relational and personal–relational identity gaps.     

An analysis of role conflict and role ambiguity within the cancer information service's communication network

This research examines the relationship between individuals' positions in a communication network and their corresponding levels of role conflict and role ambiguity. As part of a larger research program, the data for this study were collected at two points in time from members within the Cancer Information Service (N = 56), an award winning information service of the National Cancer Institute. In general, findings suggest lower levels of role conflict and ambiguity experienced by members of the CIS. In addition, neither the role conflict model nor the role ambiguity model were consistent with the data. Revised models, however, did suggest that experiencing role conflict and role ambiguity may lead to a decrease in the perception that a person is powerful within one's network. In addition, as members' interpersonal contacts increased, levels of role conflict and role ambiguity between regional offices and the National Cancer Institute decreased. The implications of these results for the CIS and other organizations are discussed.     

Hurtful Family Environments: Links with Individual,Relationship, and Perceptual Variables

Family members create a social environment that varies in terms of the degree to which it evokes hurt. Two studies were conducted to examine the nature of hurtful family environments and to assess whether the association between people's experience of their family environment as hurtful and their perceptions of hurtful family interactions could be described by a sensitization or a habituation model. The results indicated that hurtful family environments are characterized by aggression, a lack of affection, neglect, and violence. Individuals’ views of their family environment as aggressive were negatively associated with their own verbal hostility and their self-esteem, but positively linked to their anxiety and to their tendency to see a family member's hurtful behavior as intentional. People's tendency to note their family displayed a lack of affection was positively linked to their own verbal hostility and negatively associated with their self-esteem. The findings also offered partial support for a habituation model: Those who said their family environment was characterized by a lack of affection rated hurtful family interactions as less emotionally painful than did others. Together, the results provide a rationale for examining the emotional contexts created by family members as well as the implications of those contexts for individuals and their family relationships.     

Family Communication Patterns and Cognitive Processing: Conversation and Conformity Orientations as Predictors of Informational Reception Apprehension

This study examined the unique and combined associations among family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity orientations) and young adult children's informational reception apprehension (IRA; i.e., listening anxiety and intellectual inflexibility). Participants included 592 young adult children from first-marriage and postdivorce families. Results indicated that family conversation orientations are inversely associated with listening anxiety and intellectual inflexibility, whereas conformity orientations are positively associated with both traits. Furthermore, an interaction effect between conversation and conformity orientations emerged, such that high-conformity orientations moderate (or reduce) the inverse association between family conversation orientations and young adults' listening anxiety. Among the more important implications in this study is the finding that family communication patterns have a small but meaningful association with individuals' information-processing skills.     

The Assimilation of In-Laws: The Impact of Newcomers on the Communication Routines of Families

Although our popular culture stereotypes relationships with in-laws as problematic, these relationships have largely been overlooked by communication researchers. In contrast to existing studies focusing on dyadic relationships, this study looked at how in-laws are assimilated into the family group as newcomers, using structuration theory to examine how routines are reproduced in families. In personal interviews, participants described how their families had assimilated newcomers or how they themselves were received into their spouse's families. A thematic analysis revealed specific communication routines that had to be adjusted upon entry of newcomers, including conversational topics, expected amount of interaction, use of joking, and conversational styles. Adjustments to these routines, although difficult to negotiate because they were not openly discussed, helped to transform the family of childhood into the family of adulthood. Structuration theory would suggest that the perceived stress in relationships with in-laws occurs because newcomers upset the comfort of families by disrupting their communication routines.     

The Role of Family Verbal Aggression and Taking Conflict Personally in Romantic Relationship Complaint Avoidance

This study examined complaint avoidance in adult romantic relationships as a function of both exposure to family verbal aggression in childhood and taking conflict personally. Four hundred thirty-seven college students completed measures assessing their histories of family verbal aggression, complaint avoidance behaviors, and tendencies to take conflict personally. Results indicated that a history of family verbal aggression and three components of taking conflict personally, namely positive relational effects, negative relational effects, and like/dislike valence, were negatively associated with complaint avoidance. In addition, a history of family verbal aggression was positively associated with positive relational effects, negative relational effects, and like/dislike valence. The relationship between a history of family verbal aggression and complaint avoidance, however, was not mediated by taking conflict personally.     

Exploring Family Discourses About Purity Pledges: Connecting Relationships and Popular Culture

This study explores connections between popular culture and family interaction. Multiadic interview data were collected from families who enacted purity pledges. Using contrapuntal analysis, results indicate how competing familial discourses about popular culture serve as both centrifugal and centripetal forces. Fathers rejected many sexual values in popular culture texts, but they also appreciated that popular culture makes purity rings intelligible to others. Mothers expressed frustration at portrayals of teenage pregnancy on television. Children indicated that their parents did not understand how they saw popular culture, in competition with the aforementioned parental discourses, but appreciated that their parents cared. They also articulated parental disapproval of a current generation's popular culture choices as ongoing ritual, thus allowing the competing discourses to operate in a centripetal fashion. Overall, it is apparent that distal popular culture discourses inform proximal, constitutive family discourses about sex and sexuality.     

Testing Components of Confirmation: How Acceptance and Challenge from Mothers,Fathers, and Siblings are Related to Adolescent Self-Concept

The current study assessed how confirmation from family members (mothers, fathers, siblings) was related to adolescents' (ages 13–22) self-concepts. To extend confirmation theory, two components of confirmation were distinguished—acceptance and challenge—to understand their unique and combined contribution to predicting adolescent sense of self. 206 adolescents completed a general questionnaire, and a subset (n=60) completed daily diaries regarding conversations with family members. Analyses of the general perceptions of family interactions suggested the roles of acceptance and challenge in predicting adolescent sense of self varied by family member, whereas analyses of adolescents' reports of daily conversations suggested acceptance and challenge were strong predictors of sense of self regardless of family member. In addition, although the combination of acceptance and challenge was hypothesized to predict the strongest levels of sense of self, analyses suggested the effects of acceptance and challenge were additive. Adolescent participation in conversations, as hypothesized, also mediated the relationship between confirmation and sense of self. Overall, analyses provide partial support for the theoretical extensions, and directions for further theory development and future research are discussed.     

The emergence of homogeneity and heterogeneity in knowledge structures during a planned organizational change

Scholars and practitioners increasingly strive to understand the complexities marking implementations of organizational change programs. Studies on this topic often concentrate on members' cognition about a planned change, regularly finding that members' knowledge structures and interpretations either converge or diverge over time. Using interviews, observations, and a unique discourse processing technique, a nine-month case study of one division of a municipal government organization shows that members' knowledge structures simultaneously converged and diverged as a consequence of both the change initiative and several unanticipated organizational events, including a clash between workgroups. The study's findings and theoretical perspective suggest a challenge to cognitive perspectives on knowledge and traditional research on organizational change; they also provide lessons for practitioners on how organizations may learn from complex change dynamics.