17 May 2019
‘Emily Oster is the non-judgemental girlfriend holding our hand and guiding us through pregnancy and motherhood. She has done the work to get us the hard facts in a soft, understandable way’ AMY SCHUMER
Parenting is full of decisions, nearly all of which can be agonized over. There is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and strangers on the internet. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the trade-offs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision?
With her previous book (and now parenting classic) Expecting Better award-winning US economist Emily Oster showed us – by digging into the data – that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In Cribsheet, she now tackles an even greater challenge: decision-making in the early years of parenting. Armed with the data, Oster debunks myths around breastfeeding (not a panacea), sleep training (not so bad!), potty training (wait until they’re ready or possibly bribe with M&Ms), language acquisition (early talkers aren’t necessarily geniuses), vaccines (there is no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism, and much evidence to refute such a link), and many other topics. She also shows parents how to think through freighted questions like if and how to go back to work, how to think about toddler discipline, and how to have a relationship and parent at the same time.
Economics is the science of decision-making, and Cribsheet is a thinking parent’s guide to the chaos and frequent misinformation of the early years. Oster is a trained expert – and mother of two – who can empower parents to make better, less fraught decisions and stay sane in the years before preschool.
Emily Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University and the author of Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong – and What You Really Need to Know. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Esquire. Oster is married to economist Jesse Shapiro and is also the daughter of two economists. She has two children.
Find out more about Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool
Watch Emily Oster discuss Cribsheet on Good Morning America: