A New Chapter

Today, as Family Story re-launches our website, I’ve also entered a new chapter in my family’s own story.  I recently had a baby. In the 3 months since her birth, so many of the issues that had long been of professional interest to me have taken on a far more personal feel: Navigating my new identity as a mother; balancing work and family; the inadequacy of parental leave and lack of support for families.  I’ve also become one of the stories behind the changing demographic trends I’ve long studied. I’m among a growing number of cohabitating but unmarried women having babies, and one of the increasing share of births to women over 35 (I’m 40).

All the decisions (and obstacles, and circumstances beyond our control)  that make up how we form family are immensely personal. There is simply nothing about partnering, marrying, having or raising children – or doing none of these things – that is “one-size-fits-all” or without challenges. There is joy, shame, liberation, disappointment, excitement, frustration and love down any number of paths. That’s why attempts to prescribe one normative path to family, and policies that seek to control the circumstances under which people make these types of choices, are so infuriating, oppressive, and ultimately, futile.

I started Family Story in what felt to me like the midst of a culture shift period in history for family formation (and the demographics back me up here): One in which mainstream cultural conversations mostly focus on the breakdown of family, rarely acknowledging breakthroughs in how many people are thinking about and forming family today. Everyone benefits when things like the choice to marry or to have children don’t feel compulsory (as they did only a few decades ago), when we are encouraged to ask which expectations about family have outlived their utility, and when we are able to reimagine “family” in a way that includes all of us. Unfortunately, the Make America Great Again era has ushered in renewed public pining for a time, and idealized vision of family life, that never really was.

Three years into the Family Story journey I believe even more strongly in the importance of our work. The culture war over “family values” has expanded far beyond the religious right, and often operates under the radar in new, nefarious ways that much of the social justice community is just catching up to: the dubious “marriage consensus,” the success sequence as policy agenda, stoking concerns about child well-being to further marginalize and shame single mothers. We see daily in the news how an apparent reverence for “intact” (ugh, a terrible word I’ll address at another time) families disappears if those families are brown and seeking help at our borders. And we know that concerns about a sinking fertility rate are oftentimes really coded fears about who is having babies, and who isn’t.

Moving forward, I plan to address these types of timely issues, questions, new research, cultural movements, and more on the pages of this blog. Family Story aims to be a place where our research and analysis feels fresh and challenging, and where we are always aware that behind the data is real people, often navigating circumstances out of their control, and generally making the best choices they can. I hope you’ll join me.