Adult Children's Experiences with their Parent's Infidelity: Communicative Protection and Access Rules in the Absence of Divorce

Abstract

Guided by Communication Privacy Management (CPM), the goal of the current study was to examine parental infidelity and to learn what, if any, rules were enacted by participants to either provide access to or protect the information of their parent's infidelity. Rules used by participants to manage this information inside their family were labeled as internal, while rules used to manage this information outside their family were labeled as external. Participants included 13 adult children whose still married parents' relationship involved infidelity. Results indicated that participants created protection rules including two internal (maintenance and cultural) rules and one external (protecting the family from outside scrutiny) rule. Five access rules (context, sex, age, physical environment, and code terms), all internal, were also identified. The results of this study highlight the usefulness of CPM when examining how the knowledge of a parent's infidelity is managed by their children.