Welcome to Family Stuff

A weekly round-up of research on the shifting patterns of modern family life. Along with some mini-takes by Yours Truly.

The Big Idea

Hello! Just in case you don’t know who I am, my name is Stephanie H. Murray. I am a freelance journalist and contributing writer at The Atlantic. I write about a lot of things but I really liked the way

Leah Libresco Sargeant

summed up the focus of my work in a recent interview we did together: “parenting and, more broadly, what we owe to one another.”

Anyway, I am starting a newsletter! I will probably not be publishing many essays or reported pieces here. Instead, I will be publishing a weekly round-up of research on demographic trends/family policy/other family stuff (hence the name). In each post, I will briefly explain the findings, contextualize it for those who might not understand why it’s interesting or how it fits into the broader research landscape, and then tack on my two cents for good measure.

Why am I starting this newsletter?

Well, like a lot of freelancers, I’m trying to figure out how to write in a more financially sustainable way. I hacked my way into journalism through brute force and persistence (i.e. relentless cold-pitching), and it worked, in the sense that I now have fairly reliable outlets for my work. But it’s a pretty inefficient set up. Even having talked up my rates quite a bit, there is a ton of work that goes into following the shifts in American family life that freelancing rates just don’t cover. I’ve reached a weird juncture where I have to either find a way to monetize all this other work I’m doing, or stop doing it altogether. Fixing the financial weirdness of my work has taken on heightened importance of late because *drum roll* I am pregnant again! Baby Murray No. 3 due in May. I have unfortunately never been the sort of freelancer who could write without some amount of reliable child care and, well, child care is expensive.

More about the actual newsletter

Basically, I already follow a bunch of research on fertility/family policy/gender relations weirdly closely. This is actually a big part of how I succeeded in breaking into journalism in the first place: a ton of the pieces I have written over the years came about because I read, like, The Vienna Yearbook of Population Research in my spare time. But of course, the vast majority of the research I follow doesn’t end up in any of my pieces, largely because there is just so much of it. In fact, a ton of it doesn’t end up getting covered anywhere, whether in the news or by think tanks and advocacy organizations, in part because it is simply overlooked (like I said, there’s a lot of it) but also (I suspect) because much of it is more… intriguing than strictly newsworthy, and doesn’t necessarily fit squarely within a particular advocacy group’s interests. 

So, yeah, that’s it: a round-up of new research that I find interesting. It’s a bit hard to pinpoint exactly what sort of research that includes, but I can say it will probably not include much in the way of parenting advice. That’s mainly because a. There are already a lot of great newsletters devoted to breaking down research on parenting techniques. And b. it’s just not the sort of journalism I typically do. (Or, to be frank, the sort of parenting I do. For better or worse, I mostly parent with my gut).

^what I got when I asked ChatGPT for an image of “the family of the future.” Relatedly, if you want to see some of my reporting on the state of so-called “care robots,” here’s a gift link.

Who should subscribe to this?

Well, maybe no one. I’m not totally sure I am well-suited to do this sort of thing. I’m going to do what I did when I started freelancing, which is to unthinkingly commit for a year and reassess after that. If there isn’t much interest or it’s just not an effective use of my time then I’ll give up!

But I think the people most likely to benefit from subscribing would be anyone who:

• Is specifically interested in my thoughts on modern family life.

• Wants to stay on top of trends in American family life or ongoing debates about family policy but doesn’t have the time or desire to pore through dozens of studies every week. (Maybe you write about these topics yourself and would like to bolster your own research-tracking efforts… In which case, I am happy to oblige).

• Enjoys the work I am doing as a journalist and would like to see me continue to do it!

I’m enabling paid subscriptions, just in case there is anyone out there dying to give me their money. But for now, I’m going to keep it free for everyone to read, just so everyone can kinda see what I’m doing here. Eventually, depending on how things go, the round-up will almost certainly go at least partially behind a paywall—I’m not totally sure how that will look yet. First post goes up next Tuesday (November 26th), so please do subscribe if any of this sounds interesting to you!

Thanks!

Stephanie H. Murray