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jmf-literature-positioning

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Use when positioning a Journal of Marriage and Family (JMF) manuscript against the literature so it reads as a family-science contribution. JMF readers span sociology, psychology, demography, and family studies, so the paper must engage the family literatures they expect across disciplines. Stakes the contribution; it does not write the literature review.

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Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills/blob/HEAD/Journal-of-Marriage-and-Family-Skills/skills/jmf-literature-positioning/SKILL.md

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Literature Positioning (jmf-literature-positioning)

JMF is interdisciplinary, so a paper that engages only one discipline's family literature reads as under-positioned. The goal is to place the work where a family-science audience — demographers, family sociologists, relationship and developmental psychologists — can see the gap and the move.

When to trigger

  • Drafting or revising the introduction and the "contribution" paragraph
  • A reviewer said you "missed obvious family-science work" or "don't engage the debate"
  • Your home-discipline literature is solid but the paper doesn't connect across family science
  • You need to distinguish your contribution from the closest prior family studies

How JMF wants the literature engaged

  1. Engage the family-science conversation, not a citation pile. Identify the live question in the field your paper speaks to (e.g., does cohabitation function like marriage; how family structure shapes child outcomes; selection vs. causation in union effects).
  2. Cross disciplines deliberately. A demographic paper on divorce should engage the psychological literature on relationship quality where relevant, and vice versa. JMF readers expect the paper to know the family-science frontier, not just its own subfield.
  3. Name the gap precisely. Not "little is known" — say what is contested, mismeasured, under-theorized, confounded by selection, or untested across groups/time/context.
  4. Position the contribution as a move. "Prior work shows association A; we show it is conditional on family structure C / disappears net of selection / operates through process M."
  5. Pre-empt the obvious rival. JMF reviewers are expert; name the strongest alternative account (especially selection) and say how the design adjudicates it (hand off to jmf-research-design).

Cross-discipline engagement (a distinctive JMF demand)

If your paper is…also engage…
family-demographic (rates, transitions)the relationship-process and child-outcome literatures it bears on
couple/dyadic-psychologicalthe demographic and life-course context (who partners, when, how long)
parenting / child-wellbeingfamily-structure, economic, and policy literatures
work–family / genderthe inequality and household-division literatures across disciplines

Anti-patterns

  • A "literature dump" with no organizing family-science question
  • Engaging only your home discipline (a common JMF positioning weakness)
  • Ignoring selection as the leading rival explanation in observational family research
  • Self-citation that breaks anonymity (JMF is double-blind — see jmf-submission)
  • Claiming "first to study" when the contribution is incremental

Positioning pass for Journal of Marriage and Family

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the family process, population/sample frame, measurement validity, and longitudinal or comparative leverage; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: family scholars who inspect measurement, household process, longitudinal design, and implications for family theory.

  • Do the pass: Build a three-column map: incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, and this manuscript's delta; include one sibling-venue omission that would make a referee doubt the fit.
  • Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
  • Sibling guard: compare against Demography for population-process emphasis, Social Forces for general sociology, Child Development for child-centered outcomes; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
  • Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Question】the live family-science debate / open question
【Key works】the 4-6 that define it (incl. cross-discipline)
【Gap】what is contested / mismeasured / confounded / untested
【Move】how this paper changes the conversation
【Strongest rival】(often selection) and how the design will adjudicate it
【Next】jmf-theory-and-conceptual-framework

Supplementary resources