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This study focused on how adopted adults who have reunited with at least one birth family member experienced identity shifts related to their original birth certificates (OBCs). Framed by the Communication Theory of Identity (CTI), 50 adopted adults discussed their experiences related to their OBCs and how their identities are connected to this symbol through three of the layers of CTI, the personal, enacted, and relational layers. Participants discussed the presence of an ambiguous and unsolvable identity that interpenetrated with their other identity layers. Findings extend CTI to include an additional layer for adoptees – phantom identity – which can explain the life adoptees would have lived had they not been adopted. This identity was salient for participants as it manifested in ways such as expressing frustration with obstacles in gaining access to their OBC and refocusing their professional life to support other adopted adults. Moreover, findings offer implications for the examination into current adoption record practices in the United States, additional state mutual consent registries, and increased access to adoption-competent counselors for adoptees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The all-consuming role and responsibilities of providing care to an aging parent or spouse create identity disruption and stress. However, this stress may be resolved as family caregivers integrate the role of caregiver into their identity and construct an aspect of their identity around providing care (i.e., caregiver identity). Rooted in the retrospective heuristic of communicated narrative sense-making theory (CNSM), this paper investigates the identities family caregivers construct through online narratives about their caregiving experiences. Using thematic narrative analysis to analyze a corpus of 40 online narratives, this study yielded four distinct caregiver identities: the prisoner, which is defined by a sense of being trapped by the responsibility of caregiving; the crumbling caregiver, which focuses on extreme exhaustion in providing care; the companionate caregiver, which focuses on the relational aspects of providing care; and the redeemed caregiver, which is defined by growth through difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial minority families engage in "racial socialization," the process by which individuals develop meaning and understanding of what race is, and its implications. While parents are often seen as the site of this socialization, we wanted to explore which racial socialization messages were salient for young adults, and from whom they received these messages. This paper utilized focus groups to explore messages that young Black adults received about race, and what this means for their racial identity. We identified three dominant themes in our analyses: (a) the content of familial messages regarding race, identity, and prejudice, (b) critical incidents that shaped individuals' understandings of Black racial identity, and (c) familial sources. Each of these themes is constituted by various experiences and examples that shed light on racial socialization in today's social climate. Overall, parents, extended family members, and community members were sources of socializing what race meant to young Black adults. We discuss implications for research on racial socialization and family communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even with heightened scrutiny and augmented visibility of cases, the Black community continues to experience police brutality more than their racial counterparts. Previous research has highlighted the prominence of the Black family in the process of racial socialization and identity construction, and other research has reinforced the family as an influential factor in one's perception of police. However, still, there is a significant absence of communication-centered research that analyzes the issue of police brutality, especially within the Black family. This is true even though police brutality has a well-documented and long-lasting impact on the Black family. Therefore, guided by core tenets of Critical Race Theory, this qualitative study utilized interviews to analyze how interviewees from Black families communicate about police brutality. The following themes emerged from the analysis: (1) Critical Cases: family members remember Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland, (2) Critical Incidents: communication about first-hand accounts and familial stories, and (3) Critical Conversations: stages of "the Talk." Findings from this study can be used to understand better how Black families navigate police brutality, an issue known to increase stress, trauma, and rates of race-based mortality. This study's findings can be applied to social work, family therapy, and mental health fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded in communicated narrative sense-making theory (CNSM), this study explored how women who were pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 21) communicatively made sense of their experience in light of their received social support. Interview data were inductively analyzed for emergent themes and deductively analyzed for type of social support and narrative tone. Findings uncovered themes of a) connecting to mitigate stress, b) drawing on others' knowledge, c) receiving socially distant instrumental support, and d) lacking medical professional support. Further, instances of informational, instrumental, and/or emotional support frequently occurred in stories with a positive narrative tone, whereas instances of insufficient support frequently appeared in stories with a negative tone. These results support previous research on the benefits and barriers of social support during pregnancy and extend theorizing about the implications of interpersonal interactions on CNSM. Practical applications are explored for medical professionals endeavoring to support pregnant women during a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Storytelling functions as a means for making sense of and reframing difficulty. The translational storytelling heuristic of communicated narrative sense-making theory proposes that storytelling interventions which facilitate narrative reflection, positive re-framing, and interactional sense-making will positively benefit individuals and families. In this article we describe the process of synthesizing CNSM theory with narrative medicine, narrative theory of identity, and narrative therapy to create a translational storytelling intervention called narrative connection. We then offer a case study using an adaptation of this intervention in the context of parenting. Nine parents in two groups completed the three-week narrative parenting intervention. Preliminary results of the case study suggest that the intervention resulted in an overarching sense of solidarity among parents, facilitates feeling understood, contributes to deeper (self) awareness, and facilitates reassurance, reframing, curiosity, and validation. Overarching benefits included feeling not alone and future plans to be more vulnerable with other parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Familial separation due to incarceration present numerous challenges to the enactment of relational maintenance behaviors. This study explored self-reported maintenance behaviors and perceptions of barriers that hinder feelings of connectedness for non-incarcerated women who have a relational partner in jail. Responses from an open-ended questionnaire of 124 non-incarcerated women with relational partners in jail were analyzed to highlight issues of long-distance relational maintenance. Results from an inductive exploratory analysis yielded twelve maintenance behaviors and seven perceived barriers that the women in this study perceive factor into relational maintenance with an incarcerated partner. I organize the relational maintenance strategies in this context by intrapersonal, dyadic, and network-level behaviors. Openness, assurances, and future planning were reported as frequent behaviors utilized by non-incarcerated women to maintain connectedness with an incarcerated partner. These women also identified a lack of intimacy and communication as barriers to relational maintenance with an incarcerated partner. Findings indicate a strong parallel in maintenance behaviors enacted by women with deployed spouses and the women of incarcerated partners. In this context, the restrictions of prison policy and stigma affects the women of incarcerated partners from exploring network involvement as a way to stay connected to an incarcerated relational partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnographic study examines the forms and functions of ritualizing in migrant families, using Chinese rural-urban migrant workers’ annual Spring Festival family reunions as a case study. In-depth interviews with migrant workers and participant observations of family reunions in rural China reveal that both celebratory and non-celebratory family activities are ritualized. In particular, the study suggests that the Spring Festival family reunion has transformed into a meta-ritual comprised of five categories of ritual activities: festival rituals, reunion rituals, patterned interactions, reunions with friends, and communal rituals. These rituals constitute both the internal and external identities of migrant families, but may also remind them of the traumatic reality of family separation or trigger hidden tensions within the family. Implications for studying family communication in times of mobility and family diversity are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because Western societies are becoming increasingly religiously diverse, the sociocultural context in which young adolescents currently grow up differs from that of their parents. This raises the question to what extent adolescents are interested in communicating with their parents about religion. In a crosssectional study of 498 Belgian adolescents ages 12-18-years (mean age = 14.94, SD= 1.34), we examined how adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion was related to the link between parental religious socialization messages and adolescent religious out-group attitudes. Testing two models, we aimed to understand whether (a) adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion mediated the link between parental religious socialization and adolescent religious out-group attitudes or (b) parental religious socialization mediated the link between adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion and adolescent religious out-group attitudes. Results revealed a dynamic interplay between study variables, and highlighted the importance of considering adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are hundreds of thousands of children in foster care in the United States, nearly a majority of whom are placed with nonrelative foster parents (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015). Few scholars (e.g., Nelson, 2014) have explored the communicative process through which a sense of family is created and maintained in foster families, despite the potential positive impact that developing a foster family identity may have on foster family functioning. The purpose of the present study was to understand the communicative strategies that foster parents use to create family identity. Data from interviews with 18 current and former foster parents revealed that through their talk inside and outside of the family, foster parents engaged in integrating biological and foster families, ritualizing, explaining, labeling family roles, and reframing. I discuss the importance of these findings for foster families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study addressed the question: How are families communicating to construct a family identity in the face of a child’s autism diagnosis? Interviews with 19 parents of children, teens, and adults with mild, moderate, and severe autism highlighted the discursive construction of family identity. Findings reveal that families construct an internal family identity that is marked by unified usage of the name “autism,” emotive and mundane daily discussions, narratives that serve functional purposes, and normal/structured rituals. Externally, families communicate about autism to outsiders to help others understand, to educate others about autism, to show their loyalty and protection for their family, and to highlight their family’s normalcy. These findings illustrate that the discourse-dependent practices are useful not just for constructing membership in families that differ structurally from societal expectations, but also for constructing identity in that face of unique family functioning resulting from a chronic health concern. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discussions about racial and ethnic differences may allow international, transracial adoptive families to construct multiracial and/or multi-ethnic family identities. However, little is known about the ways family communication influences how discussions about racial and ethnic differences occur. This study examined associations between observed family communication constructs, including engagement, warmth, and control, and how adoptive families discuss racial and ethnic differences using a sample of families with adolescent-aged children adopted internationally from South Korea (N = 111 families, 222 adolescents). Using data collected during mid-adolescence and again during late adolescence, higher levels of maternal control and positive adolescent engagement were independently associated with a greater likelihood that family members acknowledged the importance of racial and ethnic differences and constructed a multiracial and/or multi-ethnic family identity. Adolescent engagement was also related to a greater likelihood that family members disagreed about the importance of racial and ethnic differences, and did not build a cohesive identity about differences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This autoethnography about motherhood investigates secrets in my family which explain why my mother abandoned me when I was a baby. To make sense of long-term anger in my family and family stories which conflict, I use narrative theory and relational dialectics theory to reframe my identity. Moving back and forth through time using a “layered account,” I compare family stories with my memories and contrast my childhood perspective with my adult perspective. Using this method enables me to analyze interpersonal tensions and sociological issues as I explore the complexity of “truth” in family stories, provide insight into the dynamics of the forgiveness processes in family relationships, and problematize the cultural ideology of the “good” mother, particularly for mothers and children who live in poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of the present study was to explore the communication and identity-related experiences of members of donor-conceived families. Guided by the theory of symbolic interactionism and a constitutive view of communication, the present study sought to understand the ways in which anonymous sperm donor-conceived offspring (DCO) make sense of their experiences and communicatively construct their identities. In-depth interviews with 14 adult DCO and 24 online postings by DCO about their experiences being donor-conceived were inductively analyzed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, 2011). The following five identity constructions were identified: (a) victims, (b) wanted children, (c) enigmatic, (d) storytellers, and (e) processes. The findings capture the multiplicity and complexity of DCO’s communication and identity processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by Communication Accommodation Theory, we examine the communicative management of religious difference in parent-child relationships. Using survey data from emerging adults (N= 409), we found that religious difference is associated with decreases in relational satisfaction and shared family identity. Further, parents’ religious communication has the potential to promote relational well-being. Accommodative communication (religious-specific supportive communication and respecting divergent values) was associated with increases in relational satisfaction and shared family identity. Two forms of nonaccommodative communication (inappropriate self-disclosure and emphasizing divergent values) were associated with decreases with relational satisfaction and shared family identity; giving unwanted advice was associated with decreases in relational satisfaction but not shared family identity. Giving unwanted advice moderated the relationship between religious difference and relational satisfaction. Differences were also discovered between families with inter- and intrafaith parental dyads. Findings suggest theoretical and methodological contributions to family communication, religious, and intergroup research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]