“I Feel Like it’s Almost Deeper than Family in a Way”: Creation and Maintenance of Voluntary Kin Relationships

This study explores the creation and maintenance of voluntary kin relationships. Through purposeful and snowball sampling 24 participants took part in two phases of data collection; the first being an online questionnaire, followed by an interview. The online open-ended questionnaire asked the participants to provide the story of their voluntary kin relationships, and the follow-up interviews were unstructured with the goal of expanding on the information proved in their open-ended questionnaire. An iterative approach was taken to identify how the participants created their voluntary kin relationships, and once these relationships were created, how these relationships were maintained using relational maintenance behaviors. The largest portion of the participants created their voluntary kin through time, which was either how long they have known their voluntary kin or how much time they have spent with their voluntary kin. Followed by being born into a previously established voluntary kin relationship and traumatic events that served as positive turning points in their relationship. The most common way that the participants maintained their voluntary kin relationships was through declaration of family, or using biological and legal family titles to identify their voluntary kin; the second being through shared activities together. The goal of this study was to add to the research on how individuals create their families outside of biological and legal means, furthering the research in relational maintenance, while in addition provide a glimpse into how two different relational communication phenomena come together and affect each other.