Elizabeth Suter | University of Denver (original) (raw)

Papers by Elizabeth Suter

Journal of Family Communication, 2022

Parents (N = 166) in transracial, international adoptive (TIA) families with children from China ... more Parents (N = 166) in transracial, international adoptive (TIA) families with children from China or Vietnam were surveyed to investigate their experiences with privacy turbulence surrounding the family's private, adoptionrelated information. About half described at least one instance of privacy turbulence, with a total of 98 instances. The instances included examples of all six types of privacy turbulence described in Communication Privacy Management theory, but two of those types, namely boundary rule mistakes and boundary definition predicaments, accounted for 90% of the instances of turbulence. Evidence of explicit rules and catalyst criteria for rule formation in the turbulence descriptions suggest ways that TIA parents might be able to avoid or manage privacy turbulence.

Journal of Family Communication, 2022

We conducted a relational dialectics analysis of 259 Chinese birth planning policy propaganda. We... more We conducted a relational dialectics analysis of 259 Chinese birth planning policy propaganda. We identified a coalition of five discourses animating the texts. We found the coalition created conditions of monologic wholeness, characterized by simultaneous dialogic expansion and dialogic contraction. Dialogic expansion promised a utopic, future China in exchange for birth parents' childbirth sacrifices and creation of a generation of superior-quality singleton Chinese children. Dialogic contraction reified superior-quality singletons as irrefutable antecedent for China's modernization. This study holds both academic and practical significance. Academically, this study accelerates family communication's critical theoretical turn, highlights complexities of studying monologue, expands the area's dataset boundaries, and furthers diversity efforts. Practically, this study promises transformation of acontextual Western perspectives on China's birth planning program. The study's non-Western perspective is timely, given increasing momentum within the Chinese transnational adoption birth family search and reunion movement.

Communication Quarterly, 2021

Communication Privacy Management theory (CPM) was applied in a qualitative analysis of survey res... more Communication Privacy Management theory (CPM) was applied in a qualitative analysis of survey responses from parents in transracial, internationally adoptive families concerning their management of private, adoption-related information. Participants were 166 parents of at least one child adopted from China or Vietnam who responded to an open-ended online questionnaire. Most parents described at least one change in coordination of their child’s private, adoption-related information over time. Of the catalysts that prompted these changes, 43% were due to the child’s development, 30% to the parent’s lived experiences, and 15% to privacy turbulence. Parents reported a variety of motivations for privacy management before and after these changes. Expressive need represented 64% of the pre- change motivations. Control (45%) and preventing hurt (36%) represented the predominant post-change motivations. Significant to CPM, these accounts show parents acting as proxy owners for their young children and demonstrate developmental changes in privacy management within families.

This article argues that contrapuntal analysis and intersectional analysis are particularly germa... more This article argues that contrapuntal analysis and intersectional analysis are particularly germane for realizing the emergent critical turn in interpersonal and family communication studies. Contrapuntal analysis is apropos for examining the multiple discourses and intersectional analysis for examining the embodied vectors of difference at play in contemporary interpersonal and familial communicative life. I organize my discussion of the promise of contrapuntal and intersectional methods around the four shifts espoused in the Critical Interpersonal and Family Communication (CIFC) framework. The CIFC framework calls for attention to power, bidirectionality between private and public realms, critique/resistance/transformation of the status quo in the service of social-justice ends, and author reflexivity.

Communication Theory, Mar 11, 2017

Despite modest growth in interpretive research, the study of family communication remains predomi... more Despite modest growth in interpretive research, the study of family communication remains predominantly situated within postpositivism to the relative neglect of critical approaches. We argue that this inattention derives partly from the limited number of critically inflected family communication theories. In this article, we seek to encourage critical family communication theorizing. We do so by explicating the critical underpinnings of the recent rearticulation of relational dialectics theory, RDT version 2.0 (Baxter, 2011). We frame our (re)reading in terms of critical family communication considerations of power; connection of private familial spheres to larger public discourses and structures; and inherent openness to critique, resistance, and transformation of the status quo (Suter, 2016).

This essay examines the interrelationship between naming practices in the People's Republic of Ch... more This essay examines the interrelationship between naming practices in the People's Republic of China and changes to Chinese population control policies and laws. Scholarship continues to reveal naming as a gendered phenomenon laced with issues of identity and power. Family naming practices in China seemingly fit with this pattern. Our study simultaneously considers micro-processes, specifically naming practices, and macro-contexts, namely China's One Child Policy (now the Law on Population and Family Planning). The Chinese government's challenge of patronymic practices is one micro-level strategy in their latest macro-level campaign to encourage couples to have (and keep) girl babies. We provide examples of billboard propaganda of past Chinese ideology promoting one child families. In addition, we focus on the most recent billboards and the accompanying ideological shift that now tells Chinese audiences that it is okay to have a girl pass on the family name. Through the method of visual textual analysis we consider the billboards and provide various "readings" of the latest campaign and conclude that further research is warranted.

Journal of Family Issues, Jan 1, 2008

Framed by relational dialectics theory (Baxter), this investigation considered the meaning(s) of ... more Framed by relational dialectics theory (Baxter), this investigation considered the meaning(s) of motherhood in female–female co-motherhood. Analysis identified two competing discourses: (1) discourse of essential motherhood (DEM) and (2) discourse of queer motherhood (DQM). Speakers' invocation of the DEM reinscribes the mainstream US cultural discourse that children can have only one authentic (i.e., biological) mother, whereas invocation of the DQM denaturalizes the DEM's presumptions of authentic motherhood as biological, interrupts monomaternalism, destabilizes the patriarch, and troubles the equation of biological with moral motherhood. Whereas interpenetrations of the DEM and DQM were typically sites of adversarial discursive struggle, in a few instances, the DEM and DQM rose above their antagonistic relationship, combining to create new meanings of motherhood.

One hundred online narratives of foster adoption were analyzed qualitatively with the goal of ide... more One hundred online narratives of foster adoption were analyzed qualitatively with the goal of identifying what, if any, competing discourses animated the meaning of “adoption” constructed by adoptive parents. Framed in relational dialectics theory, two discourses were identified: (1) the Discourse of Utilitarian Acquisition, in which adoption was constructed as a second-best pathway to parenting, after biological reproduction had failed, and (2) the Discourse of Redemptive Care, in which adoption was constructed as a way to provide care for children in need so that they could overcome early-life adversity. These two discourses interpenetrated largely through the discursive practice of negating, functioning to refute one another’s legitimacy. A subset of the narratives moved beyond polemic struggle to construct a hybrid meaning of adoption.

Communication Monographs, 2014

Discursive Constructions of the Meaning of “Family” in Online Narratives of Foster Adoptive Par... more Discursive Constructions of the Meaning
of “Family” in Online Narratives of
Foster Adoptive Parents

Communication Monographs, 2012

Although lesbian mothers are often called to justify their family’s legitimacy, we know little a... more Although lesbian mothers are often called to justify their family’s legitimacy, we know
little about these interactions. The current study included 44 female coparents across 10
focus groups discussing the interactive process of discursive legitimacy challenges. Using
the theoretical framework of remedial accounts (Scho¨nbach, 1990), inductive and
deductive coding revealed several existing and new types of challenges, accounting
strategies, and evaluations relevant to interactions of lesbian mothers. Communicative
processes unique to the interactions of female coparents included challenges emerging
from societal master narratives (e.g., health care, education, politics, religion);
accounting strategies such as leading by example; and evaluations related to the ways
in which children render the family acceptable. Findings offer strategies for coping with
the discursive challenges lesbian mothers encounter.

Journal of Family Communication, 2012

The current study advances the extant literature on how internal boundary management processes (... more The current study advances the extant literature on how internal boundary management processes
(naming, discussing, narrating, ritualizing) impact identity by demonstrating how naming fosters
identity in the context of international adoption. The study examined: (a) parental treatment of their
children’s birth country names in the naming process and (b) parental motives for various naming
forms (i.e., placement of the child’s birth culture name within the full name). Focus groups were
conducted with 32 U.S. White American parents with an adopted child from either China or Vietnam.
Results present a catalog of four international adoptee naming forms, with parents choosing to retain,
alter, create a new, or exclude the birth culture name. Parents were found to appeal to two primary
motivations—identity and pragmatism—to justify and explain these differing naming forms. This
study found that naming promoted three identity source domains: family identity, ethnic identity, and
individual identity.

Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 2011

Extending previous research (e.g., Baxter et al., 2009) by examining adoptive parents’ sense-mak... more Extending previous research (e.g., Baxter et al., 2009) by examining adoptive parents’
sense-making of laypersons’ conceptions of family, and following Owen (1985), we conducted
a metaphoric analysis of twelve focus groups—69 parents with adopted children from either
Vietnam or China. Adoptive family as battleground emerged as the primary metaphorical
frame that adoptive parents use to make sense of laypersons’ remarks about their families.
A battlefield with lines drawn between dueling ideologies about family comprises this battleground.
Demographers’ and scholars’ plural views oppose laypersons’ narrow conceptions of
how families ‘‘should be.’’ Parents understood laypersons’ remarks as saying (directly or
indirectly) that their adoptive families violated the traditional view of family in terms of:
racial dissimilarity between members, construction of family via adoption, and adoption
of a child born outside the United States. Laypersons’ traditional view is both reinforced
and constituted by racist, biologically normative, and nationalist beliefs, which, when instantiated
in talk (e.g., racist remarks), represent assaults on transracial, international adoptive
families. Our results suggest racism, biological normativity, and nationalism remain dominant
in U.S. family ideology. As an implication, we suggest changes to pre-adoptive
education to help adoptive families discursively cope with their stigmatized social position.

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2011

This interpretive study utilized Owen’s ((1985) Thematic metaphors in relational communication: ... more This interpretive study utilized Owen’s ((1985) Thematic metaphors in relational
communication: A conceptual framework, The Western Journal of Speech Communication,
49, 1–13) metaphoric approach to identify and understand the cognitive structures
undergirding transracial, international adoptive parents’ sense-making and management
of familial and personal identities during interactions that challenge familial and personal
identities. Twelve focus groups with 69 parents with adopted children from either
Vietnam or China were examined inductively. The results found the metaphors of
adoptive parent as protector and adoptive parent as educator manifest in parental discourse.
Protectors aim to guard identity, enacting defensive, somewhat reactive discourse,
meeting invasive remarks straight-on, using confrontational, strategic, and toughening
discourse. Seeking to build identity, educators enact less reactive and more intentional
discourse through discourses of preparation, modeling, and debriefing. Based on these
findings, we suggest improvements to pre-adoptive training.

Kentucky Journal of Communication, 2009

The veracity of qualitatively-derived social scientific findings continues to be challenged. In r... more The veracity of qualitatively-derived social scientific findings continues to be challenged. In response, researchers continue to develop validity processes for qualitative research. To ascertain whether qualitative personal relationships scholars employ these validity processes and if so, how, I studied the qualitative articles published in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and Personal Relationships from 1984 to 2008. My review found multiple and divergent validity processes. The bulk of my report defines and discusses the use of each validity process across the articles reviewed. Additionally, I briefly discuss the range of paradigmatic sensibilities these varying validity processes represent as well as examine possible explanations for and implications of my unexpected finding that qualitative research is underrepresented in both journals reviewed.

This essay examines the interrelationship between naming practices in the People's Republic of Ch... more This essay examines the interrelationship
between naming practices in the People's Republic of
China and changes to Chinese population control policies
and laws. Scholarship continues to reveal naming as a
gendered phenomenon laced with issues of identity and
power. Family naming practices in China seemingly fit
with this pattern. Our study simultaneously considers
micro-processes, specifically naming practices, and
macro-contexts, namely China's One Child Policy (now
the Law on Population and Family Planning). The
Chinese government's challenge of patronymic practices
is one micro-level strategy in their latest macro-level
campaign to encourage couples to have (and keep) girl
babies. We provide examples of billboard propaganda of
past Chinese ideology promoting one child families. In
addition, we focus on the most recent billboards and the
accompanying ideological shift that now tells Chinese
audiences that it is okay to have a girl pass on the family
name. Through the method of visual textual analysis we
consider the billboards and provide various "readings"
of the latest campaign and conclude that further research
is warranted.

Journal of Family Communication, 2009

Previous research finds that parents in transracial, international adoptive families experience ... more Previous research finds that parents in transracial, international adoptive families experience
outsider remarks as challenging to family identity. Yet, research also finds that in the face of these
identity-disconfirming remarks, parents manage to produce identity-affirming responses. In the
current study, we extend these findings by examining the decision-making criteria underlying parental
responses and by ascertaining how these criteria change across time. Framed by the concept of
discourse dependency, we report on the results from a written survey completed by a volunteer
national sample of 245 parents with children adopted from China. Parents were from 38 states,
tended to be female (84.1%), White (95.0%), ranging in age from 31 to 65 years. We found that
parental decisions about how (and whether) to respond were relationally and interactionally contingent.
Decision making criteria changed across time, with experience, and as children developed.
Most often, parents made changes to better manage the adopted child’s privacy boundaries. Applying
Social Constructionism, we discuss our results in terms of the positionality of the family implied by
outsider remarks, and the identity-work accomplished via changes to parental responses. We conclude
with practical implications for improving family communication and directions for future
research.

Journal of Family Communication, 2008

Research suggests that social interactions may challenge the identity of families with adopted c... more Research suggests that social interactions may challenge the identity of families
with adopted children from China. Yet, both the extent of challenge experienced,
and how families negotiate these interactions remains unknown. Thus, this project
investigates the degree to which questions or comments from others either support
or challenge family identity, as well as the degree to which response strategies
used by parents either support or challenge family identity. A volunteer national
sample of 245 parents with adopted children from China completed a survey
with both closed- and open-ended questions. This study found that the majority
of comments and questions were experienced as challenging. Simultaneously,
language functioned as a resource for parents to respond in ways that validated the
family as a construct and the relations between members as familial.

Western Journal of Communication, 2007

This study explores how lesbian couples negotiate public–private tensions in their display of rel... more This study explores how lesbian couples negotiate public–private tensions in their display of relationally significant symbols. Interviews were conducted with 20 lesbian couples. The majority identified rings and homes (85% and 90%, respectively) as symbols that nonverbally communicate their commitment. Relational dialectics frames our explanation
of couples’ negotiation of the public–private tensions of these symbols. Couples
dealt with tensions by choosing to display symbols either privately or publicly. Couples
who displayed symbols publicly sometimes upheld and other times challenged heteronormativity.
Couples who challenged heteronormativity were required to do more discursive
work to call into question heteronormative standards.

Journal of Family Communication, 2022

Parents (N = 166) in transracial, international adoptive (TIA) families with children from China ... more Parents (N = 166) in transracial, international adoptive (TIA) families with children from China or Vietnam were surveyed to investigate their experiences with privacy turbulence surrounding the family's private, adoptionrelated information. About half described at least one instance of privacy turbulence, with a total of 98 instances. The instances included examples of all six types of privacy turbulence described in Communication Privacy Management theory, but two of those types, namely boundary rule mistakes and boundary definition predicaments, accounted for 90% of the instances of turbulence. Evidence of explicit rules and catalyst criteria for rule formation in the turbulence descriptions suggest ways that TIA parents might be able to avoid or manage privacy turbulence.

Journal of Family Communication, 2022

We conducted a relational dialectics analysis of 259 Chinese birth planning policy propaganda. We... more We conducted a relational dialectics analysis of 259 Chinese birth planning policy propaganda. We identified a coalition of five discourses animating the texts. We found the coalition created conditions of monologic wholeness, characterized by simultaneous dialogic expansion and dialogic contraction. Dialogic expansion promised a utopic, future China in exchange for birth parents' childbirth sacrifices and creation of a generation of superior-quality singleton Chinese children. Dialogic contraction reified superior-quality singletons as irrefutable antecedent for China's modernization. This study holds both academic and practical significance. Academically, this study accelerates family communication's critical theoretical turn, highlights complexities of studying monologue, expands the area's dataset boundaries, and furthers diversity efforts. Practically, this study promises transformation of acontextual Western perspectives on China's birth planning program. The study's non-Western perspective is timely, given increasing momentum within the Chinese transnational adoption birth family search and reunion movement.

Communication Quarterly, 2021

Communication Privacy Management theory (CPM) was applied in a qualitative analysis of survey res... more Communication Privacy Management theory (CPM) was applied in a qualitative analysis of survey responses from parents in transracial, internationally adoptive families concerning their management of private, adoption-related information. Participants were 166 parents of at least one child adopted from China or Vietnam who responded to an open-ended online questionnaire. Most parents described at least one change in coordination of their child’s private, adoption-related information over time. Of the catalysts that prompted these changes, 43% were due to the child’s development, 30% to the parent’s lived experiences, and 15% to privacy turbulence. Parents reported a variety of motivations for privacy management before and after these changes. Expressive need represented 64% of the pre- change motivations. Control (45%) and preventing hurt (36%) represented the predominant post-change motivations. Significant to CPM, these accounts show parents acting as proxy owners for their young children and demonstrate developmental changes in privacy management within families.

This article argues that contrapuntal analysis and intersectional analysis are particularly germa... more This article argues that contrapuntal analysis and intersectional analysis are particularly germane for realizing the emergent critical turn in interpersonal and family communication studies. Contrapuntal analysis is apropos for examining the multiple discourses and intersectional analysis for examining the embodied vectors of difference at play in contemporary interpersonal and familial communicative life. I organize my discussion of the promise of contrapuntal and intersectional methods around the four shifts espoused in the Critical Interpersonal and Family Communication (CIFC) framework. The CIFC framework calls for attention to power, bidirectionality between private and public realms, critique/resistance/transformation of the status quo in the service of social-justice ends, and author reflexivity.

Communication Theory, Mar 11, 2017

Despite modest growth in interpretive research, the study of family communication remains predomi... more Despite modest growth in interpretive research, the study of family communication remains predominantly situated within postpositivism to the relative neglect of critical approaches. We argue that this inattention derives partly from the limited number of critically inflected family communication theories. In this article, we seek to encourage critical family communication theorizing. We do so by explicating the critical underpinnings of the recent rearticulation of relational dialectics theory, RDT version 2.0 (Baxter, 2011). We frame our (re)reading in terms of critical family communication considerations of power; connection of private familial spheres to larger public discourses and structures; and inherent openness to critique, resistance, and transformation of the status quo (Suter, 2016).

This essay examines the interrelationship between naming practices in the People's Republic of Ch... more This essay examines the interrelationship between naming practices in the People's Republic of China and changes to Chinese population control policies and laws. Scholarship continues to reveal naming as a gendered phenomenon laced with issues of identity and power. Family naming practices in China seemingly fit with this pattern. Our study simultaneously considers micro-processes, specifically naming practices, and macro-contexts, namely China's One Child Policy (now the Law on Population and Family Planning). The Chinese government's challenge of patronymic practices is one micro-level strategy in their latest macro-level campaign to encourage couples to have (and keep) girl babies. We provide examples of billboard propaganda of past Chinese ideology promoting one child families. In addition, we focus on the most recent billboards and the accompanying ideological shift that now tells Chinese audiences that it is okay to have a girl pass on the family name. Through the method of visual textual analysis we consider the billboards and provide various "readings" of the latest campaign and conclude that further research is warranted.

Journal of Family Issues, Jan 1, 2008

Framed by relational dialectics theory (Baxter), this investigation considered the meaning(s) of ... more Framed by relational dialectics theory (Baxter), this investigation considered the meaning(s) of motherhood in female–female co-motherhood. Analysis identified two competing discourses: (1) discourse of essential motherhood (DEM) and (2) discourse of queer motherhood (DQM). Speakers' invocation of the DEM reinscribes the mainstream US cultural discourse that children can have only one authentic (i.e., biological) mother, whereas invocation of the DQM denaturalizes the DEM's presumptions of authentic motherhood as biological, interrupts monomaternalism, destabilizes the patriarch, and troubles the equation of biological with moral motherhood. Whereas interpenetrations of the DEM and DQM were typically sites of adversarial discursive struggle, in a few instances, the DEM and DQM rose above their antagonistic relationship, combining to create new meanings of motherhood.

One hundred online narratives of foster adoption were analyzed qualitatively with the goal of ide... more One hundred online narratives of foster adoption were analyzed qualitatively with the goal of identifying what, if any, competing discourses animated the meaning of “adoption” constructed by adoptive parents. Framed in relational dialectics theory, two discourses were identified: (1) the Discourse of Utilitarian Acquisition, in which adoption was constructed as a second-best pathway to parenting, after biological reproduction had failed, and (2) the Discourse of Redemptive Care, in which adoption was constructed as a way to provide care for children in need so that they could overcome early-life adversity. These two discourses interpenetrated largely through the discursive practice of negating, functioning to refute one another’s legitimacy. A subset of the narratives moved beyond polemic struggle to construct a hybrid meaning of adoption.

Communication Monographs, 2014

Discursive Constructions of the Meaning of “Family” in Online Narratives of Foster Adoptive Par... more Discursive Constructions of the Meaning
of “Family” in Online Narratives of
Foster Adoptive Parents

Communication Monographs, 2012

Although lesbian mothers are often called to justify their family’s legitimacy, we know little a... more Although lesbian mothers are often called to justify their family’s legitimacy, we know
little about these interactions. The current study included 44 female coparents across 10
focus groups discussing the interactive process of discursive legitimacy challenges. Using
the theoretical framework of remedial accounts (Scho¨nbach, 1990), inductive and
deductive coding revealed several existing and new types of challenges, accounting
strategies, and evaluations relevant to interactions of lesbian mothers. Communicative
processes unique to the interactions of female coparents included challenges emerging
from societal master narratives (e.g., health care, education, politics, religion);
accounting strategies such as leading by example; and evaluations related to the ways
in which children render the family acceptable. Findings offer strategies for coping with
the discursive challenges lesbian mothers encounter.

Journal of Family Communication, 2012

The current study advances the extant literature on how internal boundary management processes (... more The current study advances the extant literature on how internal boundary management processes
(naming, discussing, narrating, ritualizing) impact identity by demonstrating how naming fosters
identity in the context of international adoption. The study examined: (a) parental treatment of their
children’s birth country names in the naming process and (b) parental motives for various naming
forms (i.e., placement of the child’s birth culture name within the full name). Focus groups were
conducted with 32 U.S. White American parents with an adopted child from either China or Vietnam.
Results present a catalog of four international adoptee naming forms, with parents choosing to retain,
alter, create a new, or exclude the birth culture name. Parents were found to appeal to two primary
motivations—identity and pragmatism—to justify and explain these differing naming forms. This
study found that naming promoted three identity source domains: family identity, ethnic identity, and
individual identity.

Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 2011

Extending previous research (e.g., Baxter et al., 2009) by examining adoptive parents’ sense-mak... more Extending previous research (e.g., Baxter et al., 2009) by examining adoptive parents’
sense-making of laypersons’ conceptions of family, and following Owen (1985), we conducted
a metaphoric analysis of twelve focus groups—69 parents with adopted children from either
Vietnam or China. Adoptive family as battleground emerged as the primary metaphorical
frame that adoptive parents use to make sense of laypersons’ remarks about their families.
A battlefield with lines drawn between dueling ideologies about family comprises this battleground.
Demographers’ and scholars’ plural views oppose laypersons’ narrow conceptions of
how families ‘‘should be.’’ Parents understood laypersons’ remarks as saying (directly or
indirectly) that their adoptive families violated the traditional view of family in terms of:
racial dissimilarity between members, construction of family via adoption, and adoption
of a child born outside the United States. Laypersons’ traditional view is both reinforced
and constituted by racist, biologically normative, and nationalist beliefs, which, when instantiated
in talk (e.g., racist remarks), represent assaults on transracial, international adoptive
families. Our results suggest racism, biological normativity, and nationalism remain dominant
in U.S. family ideology. As an implication, we suggest changes to pre-adoptive
education to help adoptive families discursively cope with their stigmatized social position.

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2011

This interpretive study utilized Owen’s ((1985) Thematic metaphors in relational communication: ... more This interpretive study utilized Owen’s ((1985) Thematic metaphors in relational
communication: A conceptual framework, The Western Journal of Speech Communication,
49, 1–13) metaphoric approach to identify and understand the cognitive structures
undergirding transracial, international adoptive parents’ sense-making and management
of familial and personal identities during interactions that challenge familial and personal
identities. Twelve focus groups with 69 parents with adopted children from either
Vietnam or China were examined inductively. The results found the metaphors of
adoptive parent as protector and adoptive parent as educator manifest in parental discourse.
Protectors aim to guard identity, enacting defensive, somewhat reactive discourse,
meeting invasive remarks straight-on, using confrontational, strategic, and toughening
discourse. Seeking to build identity, educators enact less reactive and more intentional
discourse through discourses of preparation, modeling, and debriefing. Based on these
findings, we suggest improvements to pre-adoptive training.

Kentucky Journal of Communication, 2009

The veracity of qualitatively-derived social scientific findings continues to be challenged. In r... more The veracity of qualitatively-derived social scientific findings continues to be challenged. In response, researchers continue to develop validity processes for qualitative research. To ascertain whether qualitative personal relationships scholars employ these validity processes and if so, how, I studied the qualitative articles published in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and Personal Relationships from 1984 to 2008. My review found multiple and divergent validity processes. The bulk of my report defines and discusses the use of each validity process across the articles reviewed. Additionally, I briefly discuss the range of paradigmatic sensibilities these varying validity processes represent as well as examine possible explanations for and implications of my unexpected finding that qualitative research is underrepresented in both journals reviewed.

This essay examines the interrelationship between naming practices in the People's Republic of Ch... more This essay examines the interrelationship
between naming practices in the People's Republic of
China and changes to Chinese population control policies
and laws. Scholarship continues to reveal naming as a
gendered phenomenon laced with issues of identity and
power. Family naming practices in China seemingly fit
with this pattern. Our study simultaneously considers
micro-processes, specifically naming practices, and
macro-contexts, namely China's One Child Policy (now
the Law on Population and Family Planning). The
Chinese government's challenge of patronymic practices
is one micro-level strategy in their latest macro-level
campaign to encourage couples to have (and keep) girl
babies. We provide examples of billboard propaganda of
past Chinese ideology promoting one child families. In
addition, we focus on the most recent billboards and the
accompanying ideological shift that now tells Chinese
audiences that it is okay to have a girl pass on the family
name. Through the method of visual textual analysis we
consider the billboards and provide various "readings"
of the latest campaign and conclude that further research
is warranted.

Journal of Family Communication, 2009

Previous research finds that parents in transracial, international adoptive families experience ... more Previous research finds that parents in transracial, international adoptive families experience
outsider remarks as challenging to family identity. Yet, research also finds that in the face of these
identity-disconfirming remarks, parents manage to produce identity-affirming responses. In the
current study, we extend these findings by examining the decision-making criteria underlying parental
responses and by ascertaining how these criteria change across time. Framed by the concept of
discourse dependency, we report on the results from a written survey completed by a volunteer
national sample of 245 parents with children adopted from China. Parents were from 38 states,
tended to be female (84.1%), White (95.0%), ranging in age from 31 to 65 years. We found that
parental decisions about how (and whether) to respond were relationally and interactionally contingent.
Decision making criteria changed across time, with experience, and as children developed.
Most often, parents made changes to better manage the adopted child’s privacy boundaries. Applying
Social Constructionism, we discuss our results in terms of the positionality of the family implied by
outsider remarks, and the identity-work accomplished via changes to parental responses. We conclude
with practical implications for improving family communication and directions for future
research.

Journal of Family Communication, 2008

Research suggests that social interactions may challenge the identity of families with adopted c... more Research suggests that social interactions may challenge the identity of families
with adopted children from China. Yet, both the extent of challenge experienced,
and how families negotiate these interactions remains unknown. Thus, this project
investigates the degree to which questions or comments from others either support
or challenge family identity, as well as the degree to which response strategies
used by parents either support or challenge family identity. A volunteer national
sample of 245 parents with adopted children from China completed a survey
with both closed- and open-ended questions. This study found that the majority
of comments and questions were experienced as challenging. Simultaneously,
language functioned as a resource for parents to respond in ways that validated the
family as a construct and the relations between members as familial.

Western Journal of Communication, 2007

This study explores how lesbian couples negotiate public–private tensions in their display of rel... more This study explores how lesbian couples negotiate public–private tensions in their display of relationally significant symbols. Interviews were conducted with 20 lesbian couples. The majority identified rings and homes (85% and 90%, respectively) as symbols that nonverbally communicate their commitment. Relational dialectics frames our explanation
of couples’ negotiation of the public–private tensions of these symbols. Couples
dealt with tensions by choosing to display symbols either privately or publicly. Couples
who displayed symbols publicly sometimes upheld and other times challenged heteronormativity.
Couples who challenged heteronormativity were required to do more discursive
work to call into question heteronormative standards.

Braithwaite, D. O., Suter, E. A, & Floyd, K. (2018). Introduction: The landscape of meta-theory ... more Braithwaite, D. O., Suter, E. A, & Floyd, K. (2018). Introduction: The landscape of meta-theory and theory in family communication research. In D. O. Braithwaite, E. A. Suter, & K. Floyd (Eds.), Engaging theories in family communication: Multiple perspectives (2nd ed., pp. 1-16). New York, NY” Routledge.

Suter, E. A., & Seurer, L. M. (2018). Relational dialectics theory: Realizing the dialogic potent... more Suter, E. A., & Seurer, L. M. (2018). Relational dialectics theory: Realizing the dialogic potential of family communication. In D. O. Braithwaite, E. A. Suter, & K. Floyd (Eds.), Engaging theories in family communication: Multiple perspectives (2nd ed., pp. 244-254). New York, NY: Routledge.

Suter, E. A. (2015). Traversing racial and national boundaries: Adopting transracially and intern... more Suter, E. A. (2015). Traversing racial and national boundaries: Adopting transracially and internationally. In D. O. Braithwaite & J. T. Wood (Eds.), Interpersonal communication: Case studies in personal and social relationships, 2nd edition (pp. 55-60). Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt.

Suter, E. A. (2014). Communication in lesbian and gay families. In L. H. Turner & R. West (Eds.),... more Suter, E. A. (2014). Communication in lesbian and gay families. In L. H. Turner & R. West (Eds.), The Sage handbook of family communication (pp. 235-247). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Suter, E. A. (2014). The adopted family. In L. A. Baxter (Ed.), Remaking “family” communicatively... more Suter, E. A. (2014). The adopted family. In L. A. Baxter (Ed.), Remaking “family” communicatively (pp. 137-155). New York: Peter Lang.

Braithwaite, D. O., Suter, E. A., & Floyd, K. (Eds.) (2018). Engaging theories in family communic... more Braithwaite, D. O., Suter, E. A., & Floyd, K. (Eds.) (2018). Engaging theories in family communication: Multiple perspectives (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.