Communication Privacy Management Within the Family Planning Trajectories of Voluntarily Child-Free Couples

Although the phenomenon of voluntary childlessness has garnered increased attention from researchers in a number of disciplines over the past 20 years (Connidis & McMullin, 1996; Letherby, 1998; Morrell, 1993 Morrell, C. A. 1993. Saying no: Women's experiences with reproductive refusal. Feminism & Psychology, 10: 313–323. [Google Scholar]; Park, 2002 Park, K. 2002. Stigma management among the voluntarily childless. Sociological Perspectives, 45: 21–45. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), little is known about the interaction processes that comprise the family planning of couples who choose to remain child-free. In the present study, the researchers used Communication Privacy Management (Petronio, 2002 Petronio, S. 2002. Boundaries of privacy: Dialectics of disclosure, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. [Google Scholar]) as the theoretical framework to describe the intradyadic communication processes that comprised the family planning and decision making of voluntarily child-free couples. An interpretive analysis was performed on the transcripts of interviews with members of child-free couples. The researchers developed and described four different family planning trajectories that illustrate the unique communicative pathways voluntarily child-free couples enacted as they engaged in family planning and arrived at a child-free decision.