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When Caroline Kitchener joined The New York Times this year to cover the American family, she knew it would involve asking personal questions of sources.
She didn’t expect, however, that they would also be posed to her.
“I’ve been surprised by how personal the conversations are,” said Ms. Kitchener, 34, who recently conducted an interview with a mother who brought her baby along in a carrier. “That’s something I’ve actually really appreciated, and that has deepened a lot of the conversations and source relationships that I’ve been able to build.”
Ms. Kitchener has spent her career covering issues related to women and families, including six years at The Washington Post, where she won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for her coverage of the fall of Roe v. Wade.
Recently she has written about insurance coverage of in vitro fertilization; how the Trump administration is brainstorming ideas to raise the birthrate in America; and an Ohio farm community that has become a mecca for followers of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s skepticism of food and health care systems.
“It’s really important to be not just writing about the players of D.C., but to be finding the people that could be impacted by a policy,” said Ms. Kitchener, who grew up in Hong Kong, Germany and the United Kingdom and is now based in Washington.
In an interview, she shared her approach to conversations about impartiality, what draws her to covering women and gender issues, and the story she is most proud of having written for The Times. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You have such a unique and interesting beat. How did you start covering it?
I had been hearing more and more from my sources within the anti-abortion movement about how they were really hoping that the Trump administration would focus on how to create more families. There’s a lot of concern in these circles about how the birthrate had been steadily declining in the United States.
I reached out to The Times and had some wonderful conversations with editors about a new beat — an extension of my coverage on abortion but based on some of the things that I was hearing from people close to the Trump administration about what they wanted to prioritize, which was family- and fertility-related issues.
Are you a mother yourself?
I’m married, but I don’t have kids yet.
So you’re in a place where these are issues that you’re thinking about going forward, even if you haven’t encountered them yourself yet.
Absolutely. The sources that I’m talking to are interested in some of the most personal and intimate questions that people are dealing with in their lives.
You’ve spent your career covering women and gender issues. What draws you to this beat?
I’ve always been drawn to the questions and issues that might be difficult or emotional to talk about. That’s one of the reasons I enjoyed covering abortion: For many of the women I talked to, the topic of abortion brought out some of the most emotionally fraught questions and experiences that they had ever wrestled with. Being trusted with those things as a reporter is the best part of the job for me, earning that trust, keeping that trust, giving people a space in which they can share things that they’ve never shared with anybody before.
There is a long-held belief in some sectors that The Times has a liberal bias. How do you put sources at ease who might be wary of this?
The absolute best thing you can do is show your work. When I’m reaching out to somebody, I almost always send links to stories that I’ve done, as well as links to social media posts from conservative advocates or activists who are sharing my work in a positive way, to show they trusted me and they liked the results.
I also find it really helpful to talk openly about people’s concerns. Like, OK, you’re inclined not to trust The Times. Why? Let’s work through it together. In today’s environment, it’s very easy to understand why people are nervous. And the best way to confront that nervousness is to wrestle with it.
Are you comfortable getting personal with sources?
I’m happy to talk about what I’ve experienced in my own life. That’s just always how I’ve approached journalism, to not be a reporter automaton. We’re not. We’re people who are experiencing some of the things that we cover.
Which article are you most proud of having written at The Times thus far?
I was really happy with the story that I did about the farm community in Ohio. By the time I did that story, I had spent many months talking with advocates and politicians in D.C. about how they think we should go about strengthening the American family. So it was good to talk to families who were trying to figure all this stuff out for themselves, and who, for the most part, were really, really happy with the unique community that they had been able to build there.
What is on your story wish list?
I’m really interested in the field of genetic testing. I’m curious how people are wrestling with the ethical questions around some of the companies, like Orchid, that we’re seeing come out of Silicon Valley. I would love to write a story that takes on some of those questions.
Sarah Bahr writes about culture and style for The Times.
The post A Reporter on the Modern, and Evolving, American Family appeared first on New York Times.
