Casing the Family: Theoretical and Applied Approaches to Understanding Family Communication

New Second Edition Now Available!

There is no one strict definition of family communication, because each family is different.

Sarah Symonds LeBlanc and Sydney O’Shay's Casing the Family: Theoretical and Applied Approaches to Understanding Family Communication fuses case studies with communication theories to examine various family types and scenarios that US families encounter. By examining the family and the scenario from each case study, students are able to critically analyze and discuss a “safe” family.

Featuring 28 expertly written case studies, Casing the Family, is divided into six comprehensive sections:

• Health Tensions examines diet culture and body image, family health literacy, tensions around invisible illness in parent-adult child relationships, and more.
• Theory Based Studies features readings on using stigma management communication theory to understand the impact of opioid use on the family, social support and privacy management, the superhero power of working moms, among a plethora of other topics.
• Work, Military Life, and Families discusses military sexual trauma and the family, uncertainty and information management within a military family during and after a deployment, the impact of identity and agency on structuration, and more.
• Taboo Topics presents parent-child sexual communication within discourse dependent families, menstrual communication in the family, making politics taboo, and intergenerational family communication about sexual activity and health.
• Unique Issues within Family Communication includes readings on in-law relationships and relational turbulence theory, communication (non) accommodation in interfaith family relationships, language convergence and meaning divergence in an intercultural family, among others.
• Difficulties in Communication that Strike Families discusses negotiating complicated family relationships and estrangement, discourse dependency in foster families, using facework to examine complicated conversations in mother-daughter relationships, post-divorce coparenting during a global pandemic, and more.