Welcome (back) to The Daminger Dispatch! I’ve been cooking up some cool stuff—weekly dispatches! real-time updates on my next big project! paid subs and bonus content!—and figured it was a good time to reintroduce myself and my mission before telling you what to expect of TDD from here on out.
Why I’m making these changes now
I’m at a bit of an inflection point. Or rather, I’m at two inflection points simultaneously. It’s the kind of transition moment that, thank goodness for change-phobic folks like me, doesn’t come all that often. One where you have to—or, more positively, get to—make choices with long-lasting ramifications about who you want to be and what you want to do going forward.
Inflection #1: Earlier this summer I finished the book I’ve been writing in some form or another for the past eight years. (It’s called What’s on Her Mind, and it’ll be out in September 2025!) After being in the middle for so long, it’s been disorienting to suddenly find myself in between. I’m happiest, I’ve learned, when I’m slowly chipping away on something big. Fortunately, the next Big Thing is starting to take shape in my mind. Much more to come, but for now I’ll just say that it’s a project about the changing relationship between gender and parenting.
Inflection #2: I’m expecting my first child early next year. (No idea yet what they’re called, but they’ll be out in March 2025!) After being a childfree person who studies parenting for so long, it’s been disorienting to contemplate the transition to parent who studies parenting. Years ago, when I went from single person studying relationships to coupled person studying relationships, I experienced an analogous outsider-to-insider transformation. Ultimately, that shift deepened and complicated my thinking about my research, and particularly about the challenges involved in living out one’s romantic ideals. I suspect becoming a parent will ultimately mean something similar.1
I’d like to bring you along on both of these journeys—toward new book and toward new parenthood—from (close to) the start.
What this newsletter is all about
Before I tell you what’s about to change, let me explain what will stay the same. The TDD tagline has long been “a sociologist’s take on gender, family, and parenting.” I’m still a sociologist, and I’m still going to be mostly writing about the intersection between gender and family life!
More specifically, I aim to operate at the intersection between two genres you might be more familiar with: service journalism (Think: ‘here are three research-backed ways to cultivate a more equitable relationship’) and social/cultural criticism (Think: ‘here’s an analysis of this new legislation and why it’s terrible for families’). Because everybody (myself included) appreciates some concrete suggestions now and then, I won’t shy away from sharing practical tips. Nor will I avoid telling you about the many and growing ways our society screws certain groups of people over.
But my primary goal lies somewhere in between. I aim to help readers connect the dots between their own personal experiences with gender and family and the broader social and cultural forces shaping those experiences. If you’ve ever taken a sociology class, you’ve probably heard this dot-connecting process described as the “sociological imagination.” C. Wright Mills, who coined the term, wrote that “neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” In other words, the micro and the macro only make sense when you put them together.
And, in somewhat lofty terms, that’s what I hope to do in this space. Less telling you what to do, and more offering tools to help you think differently about the choices you face and the experiences you have in the relationships-and-family realm. Why are these choices the only ones available? Do other people have similar experiences? How are the decisions you make likely to ripple out and impact others?
A secondary—but I think related—goal is to demystify the knowledge production process. Most of the research conducted by scholars like me is locked behind journal paywalls. Fortunately, there are many excellent journalists who specialize in extracting actionable insights and writing about them for mainstream audiences. I love their work! So, why do you need me?
I like to think there’s additional, complementary value in hearing news straight from the horse’s mouth, to quote the old (and admittedly odd) saying. For one, researchers like me usually have a finely-honed instinct for assessing the quality of any given research finding, as well as situating it within a much broader body of work. For another, we’re well-positioned to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how research—both our own and others’—happens. Not just what gets reported in the end, but how decisions made along the way end up shaping the kind of information you can collect in the first place.
What’s changing going forward
While the vision for TDD remains broadly the same as ever, I’m shifting some of the tactics I use to enact that vision:
I’m moving to a weekly publication cadence (or as close to that as I can reasonably get…life will undoubtedly get in the way from time to time)
To make that cadence possible, I’m going to experiment with depressurizing this space and writing a bit less formally, at least some of the time. I’ll still feature the essays you’re familiar with, but they’ll be interspersed with interviews, off-the-cuff reflections on what I’ve been reading and thinking about, and answers to subscriber questions.
I’m going to share the processes of designing and conducting a new book project and becoming a parent in close to real time, rather than tell you about what I did and what I learned well after the fact.2
I’m adding a paid subscription option (more on this below)
On the decision to add paid subscriptions
I’ve long resisted the idea of enabling payments. I have a stable job; asking for money feels crass; everyone is subscriptioned out; etc. I changed my mind for a couple of reasons. In no particular order, here are the biggest:
I used to invite comments on posts, but when I started getting trolled I turned them off. That was a bummer, as I really appreciated hearing from readers. Adding a paid tier and restricting commenting privileges to that tier offers a bit more protection from the trolls – who, as you may have heard, have lots of thoughts about gender.
I will admit that sharing more of my unpolished, in-process thoughts and research scares me a bit, as does writing about the incredibly personal experience of my own parenthood. I suspect that with time I will find the right balance (raw-but-not-too raw; personal-but-not-too personal). I also suspect that putting some of the stuff I’m less sure about behind the paywall will make me feel a bit better about the whole thing.
Adding paid subscriptions is the ultimate accountability mechanism. Part of the reason I’ve historically posted so sporadically is that it’s been hard for me to justify taking the time away from my “real” job. I will outsmart this part of my brain by adding paying customers and thus effectively making TDD part of my real job.
On a similar note, I’ve had lots of ideas over the years about ways to make this space better; some of them are easy for me to do on my own, while others (e.g., design work) I would really rather outsource. I haven’t been able to justify the expenditure, but once this becomes a source of income I get to “reinvest my profits” in the newsletter, hooray!
It feels a bit hypocritical to write so much about the way society undervalues women’s work and yet continue to undervalue my own.
All that said, if you choose to stick with the free tier, I will not hold it against you. I am a free-tier subscriber for many of the Substacks I read! If you would like to upgrade to paid but are facing some sort of financial hardship, I’m also happy to offer comped subscriptions. Just email me, and we’ll make it happen. Finally, if you pledged support before I turned on the paid option and now regret the decisions Past You made, no worries! Again, drop me a line, and I’ll offer a refund.
What you’ll get with a paid subscription
In full transparency, I am still figuring this out and expect the precise benefits to shift over time—in the direction of more benefits, not fewer!—as I experiment and collect feedback from all of you.
Here’s what I can offer paid subscribers right now:
Commenting privileges on all posts
One post each month for paid subscribers only
Portions of regular posts that are particularly raw/experimental/personal
To help me refine and expand this list of incentives, I’d love to hear from you. If you upgrade, what are you hoping to get? If you’re on the fence, what sort of perks might entice you to make the leap? Tell me all about it here.
Though it’s common for authors to add “my gratitude” to the list of paid perks, subscribers of all levels get my sincere thanks. Seriously, it’s an immense privilege to have a spot in your inbox. I’ll continue doing my utmost to make that space worthy of your time and attention.
A lil preview of what’s coming up
An attempt to make sense of the outsized role gender and family issues are playing in the election cycle: did J.D. Vance convince me to have children? Will he convince anyone? (Spoiler: No, and Probably not.)
An interview with an influencer who specializes in teaching men to do more cognitive and emotional labor for their households
Early reflections on that next Big Thing I teased above
Subscribe to ensure you don’t miss a thing, and don’t forget to take the reader survey!
To be absolutely clear, I don’t believe it’s better to be an insider to study a particular group of people. There’s immense value in the distanced perspective more typical of outsiders. But there are differences, and the transition from one vantage point to another is an unusual and exciting time in which to reflect on the relationship between social science research and the researcher’s own life.
While I don’t agree with everything Jon Haidt says, on this point I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from the way he used his own Substack to facilitate his writing of The Anxious Generation. Haidt writes: “[I realized] I could make this Substack an adjunct to my writing, where I could share findings, theories, and questions while inviting the kind of criticism that I’d rather get before I submit the manuscripts than after each book is published.” I hope to do something similar.