Using CPM to Understand (Im)Permeable Boundaries: Stories of Adult Children of Alcoholics

Abstract

The present case study examines how adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) communicate about living and growing up in an alcoholic home. A decidedly complex communication issue for families, this case utilizes communication privacy management theory (CPM; Petronio, 2002) to understand the experiences of ACOAs. To expose readers to the complex nature of families managing addiction and to elucidate CPM’s constructs of privacy boundaries, rules, and co-ownership, a composite case of a teenager who witnesses parental behaviors of an alcoholic father and must make sense of the familial experience and how to communicate about it within and outside the home is presented. After briefly presenting the prevalence of alcoholic homes and describing key constructs of CPM, the case begins with an illustration of how ACOAs learn about family privacy rules associated with disclosing about their alcoholic parent. Largely kept to family members who live in the alcoholic home, ACOAs alter their impermeable boundaries with those outside the family. Described as “standby stories,” ACOAs share either (a) stories that are powerfully negative or (b) more tame, light-hearted, even humorous stories about their alcoholic father to develop hemophilic relationships.