Erin K. Willer

Constructing family: A typology of voluntary kin:

This study explored how participants discursively rendered voluntary kin relationships sensical and legitimate. Interpretive analyses of 110 interviews revealed four main types of voluntary kin: (i) substitute family, (ii) supplemental family, (iii) convenience family, and (iv) extended family. These types were rendered sensical and legitimated by drawing on the discourse of the traditional family. Except for the extended family, three of four voluntary kin family types were justified by an attributed deficit in the blood and legal family. Because voluntary kin relationships are not based on the traditional criteria of association by blood or law, members experience them as potentially challenging, requiring discursive work to render them sensical and legitimate to others.

The Benefits and Risks of Telling and Listening to Stories of Difficulty Over Time: Experimentally Testing the Expressive Writing Paradigm in the Context of Interpersonal Communication Between Friends

The overarching goal of the current study was to determine the impact of talking interpersonally over time on emerging adults’ individual and relational health. Using an expressive writing study design (see Frattaroli, 2006), we assessed the degree to which psychological health improved over time for college students who told and listened to stories about friends’ current difficulties in comparison with tellers in control conditions. We also investigated the effects on tellers’ and listeners’ perceptions of each other’s communication competence, communicated perspective-taking, and the degree to which each threatened the other’s face during the interaction over time to better understand the interpersonal communication complexities associated with talking about difficulty over time. After completing prestudy questionnaires, 49 friend pairs engaged in three interpersonal interactions over the course of 1 week wherein one talked about and one listened to a story of difficulty (treatment) or daily events (control). All participants completed a poststudy questionnaire 3 weeks later. Tellers’ negative affect decreased over time for participants exposed to the treatment group, although life satisfaction increased and positive affect decreased across time for participants regardless of condition. Perceptions of friends’ communication abilities decreased significantly over time for tellers. The current study contributes to the literature on expressive writing and social support by shedding light on the interpersonal implications of talking about difficulty, the often-overlooked effects of disclosure on listeners, and the health effects of talking about problems on college students’ health.

Health-care Provider Compassionate Love and Women's Infertility Stressors

The purpose of the present study was to examine relationships between doctor compassionate love and treatment, relational, and psychological stressors, as well as to identify effective health-care provider compassionate messages. Participants were 233 women who had been treated for infertility in the past 12 months. Doctor compassionate love was directly associated with positive affect during treatment, perceived treatment stress, and self-esteem. Additionally, perceived treatment stress mediated the relationship between doctor compassionate love and social and marital stress, as well as self-esteem and depression. Participants identified five categories of memorable compassionate messages sent by health-care providers, including offering hope, privileging the patient ahead of the self, practicing patient-centeredness, empathizing, and nonverbally communicating. Messages that constituted privileging the patient ahead of the self and nonverbally communicating were significantly more compassionate than those of offering hope. The study provides implications for the clinical treatment of infertile women and a practical tool for doing so compassionately.

Difficulties in Regulating Emotions as Moderators of Interparental Conflict and Young Adult Children’s Mental Well-Being

This study investigated the degree to which emotion regulation difficulties moderate the negative association between interparental conflict (i.e., parents’ demand/withdraw patterns and symbolic aggression) and young adults’ mental well-being. Participants included 171 young adults (18–28 years old) from intact families who completed an online survey. Using confirmatory factor analysis and SEM, results indicated when young adults have great difficulty in regulating emotions, perceptions of interparental conflict do not significantly predict mental health symptoms. However, fewer difficulties in regulating emotions actually magnify the negative effects of witnessing interparental conflict on young adults’ mental well-being. Hence, while successful emotion management is important for everyday functioning, heightened regulation abilities may simultaneously contribute to young adults’ awareness of the harmful impact of family discord.

A visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings

ABSTRACT Children experiencing the death of baby brother or sister have reported individual, familial, and communicative challenges. Siblings also have indicated that the loss of a baby in their family enriched their lives despite their pain. The present study extends this work by focusing not only on siblings but also other children enmeshed in the family system. Additionally, we heed the call for the use of arts-based methods in family communication by performing a visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings. This analysis of 131 drawings completed by children ages zero to 18 yielded three main themes, including narration of identity, narration of life and death, and narration of growing sense-making. Two continua capture these themes, including the subject of narrativization and the mode of narrativization. In presenting these findings, we provide a unique (means of) understanding children’s experience of baby loss in the family.

The Hea/r/tist Part: Turning the Point of Mothering Toward 100%

ABSTRACT In this Defining Moments essay, I story the a/r/tographical practice of coming to understand who I am as a mother, artist, researcher, and teacher in the face of my experiences with infertility, pregnancy loss, and the death of my son Milo. Through living inquiry and artistically capturing the turning points that have defined me over time, I make sense of what it means to do hea/r/t work as I engage compassionate love alongside those I mother.