This Is Us is a Tv show that follows the Pearson family across different periods and stages of their lives. The story centers on Jack and Rebecca and their three children, Kevin, Kate, and Randall, often referred to as “The Big Three.” The show shifts between childhood and adulthood, showing how early family communication and experiences shape who they become later in life. Throughout the six-season series, the show focuses on themes like family bonds, loss, identity, personal growth, and conflict. Ultimately, This Is Us explores how family relationships, communication patterns, and privacy management of information sharing continue to influence parents and siblings over time. 

What is interesting in This Is Us is that while the show highlights conflicts and negative qualities of the father, Jack, his children and wife speak of him in such strong and endearing ways, rarely faulting him. However, Jack had his own problems, such as alcoholism, shown in earlier seasons of the show, which his wife, Rebecca, reprimanded and set boundaries for. Within this boundary, Rebecca does not discuss this addiction with her children, despite all her children struggling with some form of addictive behavior. For Kate, this is depicted as food, Kevin as opioids and alcohol, and Randall, while not biological, often shows symptoms of OCD, depicted as perfectionism and control. 

Communication Privacy Management (CPM) Theory helps understand this dynamic more clearly. Developed by Petronio (2002), CPM argues that individuals “own” their private information and therefore have the right to control how, when, and with whom it is shared. When private information is shared, co-owners must then negotiate privacy boundaries and establish ground rules for managing that information. Problems tend to arise when boundaries are unclear or when privacy rules are not mutually upheld, often resulting in what Petronio refers to as boundary turbulence (p. 33). 

In This Is Us, Rebecca perceives ownership over the narrative of Jack’s alcohol addiction. Although his addiction affected the entire family system, she chooses to manage that information privately, deciding that her children are not co-owners of that part of their father’s story and memory. Her justification, shared during the therapy session in Season 2, Episode 11, is that she does not want to “taint” her children’s memory of their father (0:22:10). This reflects a protective privacy rule that prioritizes preserving Jack’s image over transparency, despite his actions influencing the whole family. From a CPM perspective, Rebecca establishes a rigid privacy boundary around this information without negotiating that boundary with her children, in turn influencing her other children’s perceptions of their father and his addiction. As Petronio (2010) explains, “The claim of ownership is perceptual and often held with conviction” (p.179). While throughout the show, it seems as though the family works to operate and communicate as a system, it is clear that parental power and conviction ultimately shape privacy rules and boundaries set within a family system.

The long-term impact of that decision becomes visible when the therapist introduces Jack’s addiction into the conversation, disrupting the family's previously shared narrative. This moment represents boundary turbulence (Petronio, 2002). The adult children react with surprise and frustration, indicating that they assumed they had the full truth about their father’s history and that he was not an addict. Kevin’s struggles with substance abuse further complicate this dynamic and, in turn, lead to further boundary turbulence within the family. This comes into play with questions of childhood memories and interpretation, also highlighting the sensitivity of opinion and ownership of memory, and how they are shared with their family. This moment highlights how privacy management decisions made in childhood can resurface later and reshape how family members interpret their past. Kevin’s own struggles with substance abuse make this even more complex, as he now has to reconcile his father’s hidden addiction with his own experiences.

Through this depiction of CPM, This Is Us challenges the cultural expectation that parental protection through secrecy preserves family stability. Instead, the series suggests that managing private information unilaterally may maintain short-term harmony but can produce long-term communicative strain. Even in a family that appears emotionally expressive and connected, privacy boundaries significantly influence how identity, memory, and relational closeness are constructed.

References

Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of privacy: Dialectics of disclosure. Suny Press.

Petronio, S. (2010). Communication privacy management theory: What do we know about family privacy regulation?. Journal of family theory & review, 2(3), 175-196.