Survey Question 2: Disclosure of Marital Status

FINAL UPDATE: Sept. 3, 2005

(NOTE: This is part of a series of postings in which I published the results of my new survey on people’s comfort zones regarding the overlap of professional and personal information online. More about this survey. Overview of numerical responses.)

SURVEY QUESTION 2: On a weblog you read mainly for business reasons, the author mentions in the context of a posting that she’s married. Your reaction is:

The big news here so far is no surprise: Marital status is generally a pretty easy and safe personal disclosure to make, even in a business setting. However, it’s important to realize that this disclosure does reveal something about one’s sexual preference, sexual activity (at least that you probably have or have had sex), and relationship structure – which does put it on a par with mentioning that you’re gay, bisexual, polyamorous, etc.

Of course, since heterosexual marriage is the norm in Western society, this particular personal disclosure generally is not considered shocking or controversial. Nor does saying you’re married generally get perceived as “flag waving” or proselytizing on behalf of marriage, heterosexuality, or monogamy.

Here are the numerical responses so far for this question, and my initial observations about them…

Of the 176 respondents so far:

• 79 (45%) said: POSITIVE: I like hearing a bit of personal context for a weblog I read regularly.
• 64 (36%) said: NEUTRAL: I have no reaction to that disclosure
• 16 (9%) said: DISINTERESTED. (However, the first 30 responses were gathered before I added this option to this question. So this answer may be slightly under-represented.)
• 14 (8%) said: Other
• 3 (2%) said: EMBARRASSED: I’m not repelled, but it feels slightly inappropriate.
• 1 (1%) said: REPELLED: I did not come here to read personal info and am offended that it was provided.

WRITE-IN “OTHER” RESPONSES

Here’s what some respondents had to say on this question. I’ll add new write-in responses to the top of this list in periodic updates.

• A person’s web site/weblog is their creation. If I don’t like reading what they are writing, I don’t have to read it!
• How the relationship is mentioned would have more impact than the simple fact that the woman is married. It tells me a little about her, but does not make me think she is more or less competent or interesting because of it.
• If it’s in context – e.g. the post is about tax matters for single versus married filers & she provides a personal anecdote – it’s OK. Otherwise, keep it for the personal blog.
• It depends entirely on the context. Does it feel relevent, manipulative, bragging? Is it just funny? Why has it been mentioned? That’s what determines my reaction. If it’s just a link between two parts of the post then I’m pretty neutral about it.
• It depends. Context is everything.
• Mostly neutral, though I might pause, think “interesting,” and continue reading.
• If it is relevant, I like to know more about the person behind the blog otherwise I’m disinterested.
• Whilst broadly neutral it helps me put the person’s comments within an predictive expectation framework.
• Depends on the context. If it was something like “my wife brought over the fresh supplies for the business” I wouldn’t think anything of it. On the other hand, if the posting was deliberately trying to push the information of being married at the blog reader, then I’d be uncomfortable. It’s not that sort of a blog.
• It depends if it’s relevant to the topic being discussed, or if the author’s life is being used as an example to illustrate a point.
• If it serves to illustrate a point, or matters in the course of the business, then it’s fine…
• [It] has nothing to do with their job performance.
• If it’s relevant to the rest of the post, then it’s appropriate. If not, I can’t see why it would be mentioned.

AMY’S OBSERVATIONS ON THESE RESPONSES:

• Marriage is a fairly safe personal disclosure to make. In our society, marriage is mainstream and uncontroversial. Even though marriage is a deeply personal (and even “tangentially sexual”) aspect of life, 45% of respondents so far declared a positive reaction to such a disclosure – and an additional 36% declared a neutral reaction. Plus, 9% said they’d be “disinterested” in such a disclosure – which, while not exactly positive, probably wouldn’t stop them from reading and enjoying the rest of the blog.
• Relevence is key. A general theme for all personal disclosures that’s emerging through this survey is that if you wish to disclose anything personal in a business context, keep it relevent. Usually that’s not too much of a stretch – life and work often resonate on many levels.
• Marriage requires no explanation or elaboration. One thing that makes marriage a fairly easy disclosure to make, especially in a business context, is that everyone knows basically what it means. Save for occasional exceptional marriages, the concept of being married generally doesn’t cause confusion or require justification. I’m guessing that divorce, separation, or widowhood probably are more difficult to mention.
• In my own experience, This particular disclosure was no big deal. I’ve mentioned my husband, Tom Vilot on CONTENTIOUS several times. As far as I know, no one reacted to this in any way, positively or negatively. I’ve heard many other married bloggers – male and female – say the same.
• The widespread familiarity and acceptance of marriage is useful baseline context. As we start to explore more controversial types of personal disclosures in this series of survey results, keep in mind the comparative ease and acceptance of disclosing that you’re married. Don’t just write it off as social “background noise.”
• Few people admitted to having problem with this disclosure. Only 3% of respondents declared being embarrassed or repelled by a disclosure of marriage on a professional site or blog. Furthermore, none of the “other” responses (above) were noticably negative. This is also important context for this survey: Some of the “other” responses for different types of personal disclosures (notably religion) were very negative indeed.

Overview of numerical results
About this survey.