Exploring societal-level privacy rules for talking about miscarriage

Abstract

Communication privacy management (CPM) theory posits that culturally specific understandings of privacy guide how people manage private information in everyday conversations. We use the context of miscarriage to demonstrate how societal-level expectations about (in)appropriate topics of talk converge with micro-level decisions about privacy rules and privacy boundary management. More specifically, we explore how people’s perceptions of broad social rules about the topic of miscarriage influence their disclosure decisions. Based on interviews with 20 couples who have experienced pregnancy loss, we examined how couples described miscarriage as a topic that is bound by societal-level expectations about whether and how this subject should be discussed in interpersonal conversations. Participants reflected on their perceptions of societal-level privacy rules for protecting information about their miscarriage experiences and described how these rules affected their own privacy management decisions. We discuss these findings in terms of CPM’s theoretical tools for linking macro-level discourses to everyday talk.