Opening Family Secrets: Stigma, Shame, Stress, and Strength - Paperback

by Abbie E. Goldberg (Editor), Katherine R. Allen (Editor)

Featuring contributions from diverse scholars and practitioners, Opening Family Secrets: Stigma, Shame, Stress, and Strength explores how families manage secrecy, vulnerability, and stigma across a range of experiences. The book addresses privacy, disclosure, and the dynamics that shape decisions about sharing or concealing challenging family truths. The authors reveal with stunning insight how agency, autonomy, and responsibility operate within family contexts. Opening Family Secrets foregrounds intersectionality, privilege, and the social conditions influencing family secrecy and disclosure.

The book is structured into five sections: marginalized family contexts (poverty, religion, and reproductive choice); marginalized family structures (including singlehood, multigenerational, and transracial families); marginalized family statuses (neurodiversity, invisible disability, substance use, eating disorders); marginalized queer identities (asexuality, bisexuality, nonbinary and trans identities, ethical non-monogamy); and marginalized family losses (suicide, friend loss, parental infidelity). This groundbreaking approach integrates reflexive narratives, empirical research, and clinical insights. Each section includes expert commentary that connects key themes across chapters and considers implications for theory, policy, and practice.

Opening Family Secrets is designed for undergraduate and graduate courses in psychology, family science, human development, social work, sociology, counseling, communication, women's and gender studies, nursing, and queer studies.

Chapters and Contributors:

Introduction - Abbie E. Goldberg & Katherine R. Allen

Part I. Marginalized Family Contexts

Chapter 1. The Family Secret of Poverty and the Societal Consequence of Not Having Enough - Reihonna Frost

Chapter 2. Secrets, Shame, and Purity Culture: Faith Deconstruction in Evangelical Christianity - Katie Gabriele-Black

Chapter 3. Privacy, Secrecy, and The Right to Choose: Navigating Abortion Storytelling - Sarah Buttenwieser

Chapter 4. Stories of Resistance: A Commentary on Marginalized Family Contexts - Maureen Perry-Jenkins

Part II. Marginalized Family Structures

Chapter 5. Selfish and Lonely: Challenging Stereotypes and Stigmas of Singlehood - Erin S. Lavender-Stott

Chapter 6. Harmony and Hazards in a Bicultural and Multigenerational Household - Luke T. Russell and Chang Su-Russell

Chapter 7. Secrecy in Transracial Adoptive Families: Negotiating the Invisibility and Visibility of Adoption and Race over the Life Course - Hollee A. McGinnis

Chapter 8. From Secrets to Strengths: A Commentary on Marginalized Family Structures - Todd M. Jensen

Part III. Marginalized Family Statuses

Chapter 9. Mothering Neurodiverse Children: All-Terrain Parenting - Anisa M. Zvonkovic and Christine M. Hargrove