Musick studies contemporary family patterns with an emphasis on how they relate to social inequality and the well-being of family members. Her work has been supported by a K01 Mentored Scientist Award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and it has been published in leading journals in sociology and population studies. She has taught classes in family demography, inequality, social statistics, and research methods at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Musick won a teaching award from the University of Southern California for integrating hands-on community experience into her coursework, and she continues to use service-learning in her teaching at Cornell.