Military Wives’ Stressful Disclosures to their Deployed Husbands: The Role of Protective Buffering

• In Event: Top Four Papers in Family Communication

Abstract

The communal coping framework and the disclosure literature were used to examine when individuals disclose their stressors or engage in protective buffering. Military wives whose husbands were deployed completed a survey about how they talk to their husbands about their stressors while they are away. The results revealed that there were several factors related to military wives' decisions to protectively buffer or disclose to their husbands. These findings and implications for future research are discussed.

Authors

• Andrea Joseph, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Tamara Afifi, University of California, Santa Barbara