ABSTRACT
Family privacy orientations come from S. Petronio’s communication privacy management theory. One type of cultural-level influence on privacy management and disclosure practices is the family unit. Over time, families socialize members of the unit about the sharing of private information related to two distinct kinds of family privacy boundaries: exterior and interior. The exterior family privacy boundary “regulates all family private information to nonfamily members”. The interior family privacy boundary regulates the amount of private information typically shared between family members, including “marital couples, parents and children, or internal family collectives”. Family privacy orientations reflect norms about how thick to thin permeability levels are within each distinct type of family privacy boundary. Mary Claire Morr’s initial scale development work with family privacy orientations demonstrates face and content validity. The interior family privacy orientation has been examined and tested more often in research, given its focus on explaining how members of a family unit share private information internally with each other.
