Parents’ Anticipated Discussions About Death With Young Children

Guided by family communication patterns theory and terror management theory this mixed-methods investigation explored how parents ( N = 112) of young children (ages 3–6) described the way they would discuss death when it comes up in conversations. Responses were coded inductively, resulting in four themes: explanations that death is inevitable, explanations that death is in the distance, the use of religion to frame discussions of death, and finally, discussing afterlife connections to deceased family members. Logistic regression analyses were used to evaluate whether parents’ conformity or conversation orientations were associated with the frequency with which parents discussed death with their child and the content of parent vignette responses. Quantitative analysis revealed parents’ conversation orientations were associated with the frequency with which they discussed death with their child and conformity orientations were associated with parents’ use of religion and discussing afterlife connections to deceased family members in their responses.

An Interactive Family Tourism Decision Model

To establish an interactive model reflecting how children’s involvement in family tourism decisions interacts with internal and external factors, this study examines the interrelationships between children’s individual characteristics (tourism knowledge and tourism attachment), parental characteristics (socio- and concept-orientation family communication patterns), and children’s influence on family tourism decision making (initiation and search/decision stages) using structural equation modeling. Results reveal that tourism knowledge and socio- and concept-orientation patterns are positively related to children’s influence on both decision stages. Specifically, tourism knowledge mediates relationships between socio- and concept-orientation patterns and children’s influence on the initiation stage; tourism attachment mediates the relationship between the concept-orientation pattern and children’s influence on the initiation stage. Lastly, theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

Arguing about social distancing and family relationships

With the COVID-19 pandemic, families are having to coordinate their behaviors to face new challenges, such as negotiating the social distancing measures that the family will or will not take in their daily interaction. This study utilizes Family Communication Patterns Theory to examine conversations that young adults reported having with their family members about social distancing measures and what factors predicted the outcomes of these disagreements. A family’s level of conversation orientation and the interaction of conversation orientation and conformity orientation predicted change in relational closeness due to the argument and the perceived positivity level of predicted outcome value levels for future interaction with these family members. Additionally, level of conformity orientation predicted perceived relational harm from disagreements about social distancing.

The Role of Family Communication in the Family Resilience of Deaf Children’s Families

This study examines the family resilience of deaf children through the perspective of family communication. We examine the relationship between family communication patterns (including conformity and conversation orientation) with family resilience and compare differences in processes in family resilience of family types. Parents of deaf children ( n = 129) in Indonesia completed a survey of family communication patterns and family resilience. Our findings show that there is a significant positive relationship between family communication patterns and family resilience, with preference to conversation orientations. All family types were identified as having a relationship with family resilience with different uniqueness in their resilience processes. With the relationship between these two concepts, perhaps the concept of communication patterns in the family can become a theoretical framework that binds the literature on family resilience in a sample of families with deaf children. Implications and direction for future research are discussed.