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.
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
- 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).
- 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.
- Name the gap precisely. Not "little is known" — say what is contested, mismeasured, under-theorized, confounded by selection, or untested across groups/time/context.
- 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."
- 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-psychological | the demographic and life-course context (who partners, when, how long) |
| parenting / child-wellbeing | family-structure, economic, and policy literatures |
| work–family / gender | the 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 locationrows, 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.mdhas 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
../../resources/external_tools.md— family-science data sources to ground the literature../../resources/official-source-map.md— JMF scope and interdisciplinary remit