← On Purpose with Jay Shetty
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Parenting Expert Emily Oster: The #1 Parenting Mistake That Causes Unnecessary Stress (Use THIS Data-Backed Framework to Debunk the Biggest Parenting Myths!)
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Jay Shetty
This is the iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great way to keep your mind clear. That's why a State Farm agent is there to help you choose a coverage option that's right for you as you go through life getting that new house, car, boat, motorcycle or even rv. Helping Protect it is always a good idea. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone or on the award winning app. State Farm is there to help protect what's important to you. And with so many coverage options, it's nice having help to find what fits for you like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. You ever show up late to the game and your friend's already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate that's looking out, that's having your back and and that's exactly what AT&T does with the ATT guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on or they'll proactively make it right. Just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.comguarantee for details. Navigating social media and tech with teens can feel tricky, but if you feel they're ready, there are tools to help. Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections by default. Things like content settings, contact limits and daily time limits or sleep mode to help teens build healthy habits. Teens under 16 need a parent's permission to adjust these settings. Instagram keeps adding features to make experiences more age appropriate and supportive for families. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online@instagram.com teenaccounts One of my favorite things about what
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you do is using data to bust myths.
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Emily Oster
Manicures and pedicures are safe during pregnancy. Is sex okay? Can I exercise? Can you eat spicy food? Can you drink wine?
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Jay Shetty
We created a debunking myths game.
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Emily Oster
Oh great.
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Jay Shetty
Pregnant women shouldn't drink coffee.
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Emily Oster
That is a.
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Jay Shetty
You can't eat sushi while pregnant.
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Also, natural birth is better.
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Emily Oster
I hate the phrase natural birth.
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Jay Shetty
Breast milk or formula?
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Emily Oster
People will tell you breastfeeding is free. It's like, I'm sorry, does my time have no value?
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Jay Shetty
Hey everyone.
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Welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier and more healed. And today's topic is one that you are always asking for. And today's guest is someone that has been in high demand. So I'm so excited she's here. Parenting has never come with more information or potentially more anxiety. And today we're joined by bestselling author and economist Emily Oster, whose books Expecting Better and Crib Sheet sparked a global conversation about what the data actually says.
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If you've ever wondered whether all this
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advice is helping or just making parenting more complicated, this is the conversation we've all been waiting for. Emily Uster, welcome to On Purpose.
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Emily Oster
Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here.
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Jay Shetty
This is such an important subject matter
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that I feel deserves to have time, energy, effort put into. It's gonna transform our lives, the lives of the children you love the most. And I'm so grateful that you've dedicated so much of your life to doing this work so impactfully.
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Emily Oster
No, I'm so delighted to be here. I mean, I think parenting is hard, but also incredibly fun, and I feel really lucky to get to be part of people's journey even. Even a little bit.
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Jay Shetty
Absolutely. We've. We've probably never had this much data on parenting.
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Emily Oster
That's right.
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Jay Shetty
Has that made parenting better, or are we still just overwhelmed?
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Emily Oster
I think. Yes, I know. I don't think there's a simple answer to that question. There are clearly places where we have gotten data, and we can talk about specific examples where we've learned, you know, something from the data that has improved survival or the experience of parenting or something that makes everyone happier. And I think there are really good examples of that in. In the evidence. It is also true that living in an environment where one is constantly fed, you know, the data says, the data says, the data says. Or where people are constantly looking for, you know, well, what is the evidence that's going to tell me that I'm doing this right? I think that's actually quite stressful and sometimes makes parenting much harder. So some of the time, I wish I could sort of help people think more about, you know, here are the pieces of data that are going to kind of help help you craft your approach. And here is the stuff that really. It doesn't matter what you do, and stop trying to look for the right answer, because anything is fine.
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Jay Shetty
Data is really useful, but it is really overwhelming. How do you approach it differently in a way that's actually helping people?
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Emily Oster
Yeah. So I think there's really two sort of core pieces of what I'm trying to do for people. So one is trying to help them understand which of the pieces of data they're seeing are real and which are not. So there's a lot of Confusion of correlation and causation. You know, people told, well, if you do this for your kid, they'll be better in this way. But if you dive into the data, you find that link is not causal. And then the second piece is trying to help people prioritize and say, you know, here are some things that are really important. And then here are some things which even if they mattered a little bit, they can't matter a lot. And so recognizing that parents have a limited capacity, that we all have a limited capacity to focus on a million different things at once, our goal should be to figure out, you know, what really matters and then what really matters enough that it should be sort of top priority. And then we kind of do the pieces that we. That we can do in the constraints that we have.
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Jay Shetty
What.
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What's the most shocking piece of data that you've come across? Looking at parenting resets, that really struck you.
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Emily Oster
So when I was working on Expecting better, I. One of the things I looked at was bed rest, which, you know, is actually prescribed to a fairly large share of people for a lot of different complications. So people are just told, you know, and. And you can sort of see logically where that might. You might feel like, well, if you're at risk of preterm birth, maybe if you lay down, like, I don't know, the baby will stay in, or like, there's some kind of logic that connects there. But when you actually look at the data, there's almost no condition for which bed rest is helpful and many conditions for which it's, in many ways in which it's actually harmful. This is something where it's so obvious in the data that what we're doing is not the right thing. And it was one of the things that galvanized me to think, okay, we actually really need to show people what the evidence says so they can make better choices.
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Jay Shetty
Absolutely. I want to talk about today, like, lots of different kind of phases of the journey of parenting. And I wanted to start with getting pregnant. From what I'm hearing from people who are trying to get pregnant, it's all about thinking, like, getting everything right, having some control. What's your take on how much we can control when you're trying to get pregnant?
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Emily Oster
It's a lot more limited than people think. You know, people get. Getting pregnant is very stressful for many people, and particularly in an environment where, you know, the environment, I think a lot of my readers come in where you've waited, like, a long. You're. You're a little older, which does, you know, we know fertility declines with age. It doesn't drop off a cliff, but it goes down. And also, people have, like, waited and made a lot of investments and thought, you know, okay, this is the right time in my life. And, like, now they want to be pregnant. Now it's like, I waited, I decided the right month, like, this is my month. And then it, like, doesn't happen that month. And you're like, wait, but this was my month. And so I think there's a. There's a kind of tension that. That comes with that. And that unfortunately makes people who are trying to get pregnant quite vulnerable to being told all kinds of stuff that they could do that is not based on evidence, but often costs quite a lot of money to improve their chances. For example, buy these really expensive prenatal vitamins. For me, that's like the most. You know, it is important to take a prenatal vitamin. The. The one at CVS that costs, you know, 10 cents a pill is fine. It has the things that you need. People are buying these prenatal vitamins that. Costing me $150 a month. You know, this is. Don't you want to give your baby the best? Start with the best is like, vitamins are all the same. You know, you don't need to spend. So that's like just one sort of small example. And so much that marketing is preying on this feeling of like, well, I gotta get this right, I gotta get this right. The reality is, when you think about, you know, what. What matters for getting pregnant, there's a. There's a few things. So one is having sex at the right time. So it's pretty clear there's only a small number of days in the cycle where you can get pregnant. And so some cycle tracking and knowing when you're ovulating is important. And then you need sperm that is working. So I think the piece of this that maybe. I think people are almost underinvesting in is we spend so much time with women thinking about all the things that we need to do. And it is true that that is half of the equation, but you also need good sperm. And I actually think we're probably underinvesting in having men do some, like, preconception sperm testing. It's not that hard to do, not really very hard at all. And there are a bunch of things that men can do to improve their qual quality of the sperm if it turns out you have a sperm issue. So people said to me, like, what should I do? I Would say, track your cycle so you can figure out when you're ovulating, make sure you have sex at the right time, and get your partner's sperm tested. And then, you know, don't binge drink and quit smoking. That's kind of it.
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Jay Shetty
Those are the things within your control.
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Emily Oster
Those are the main things within your control.
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Jay Shetty
Yeah. And what were some of the recommendations for men who wanted to improve their sperm count, improve their sperm quality as well?
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Emily Oster
So a lot of the isabet's, there's sort of like a category of substances. So, so smoking, cigarettes or marijuana, heavy drinking, these are all known to affect sperm mobility. You need enough of them. They need to be good at swimming, they need to have the right shape. And smoking and drinking affect all of those parameters. The other thing is heat. So sperm don't like to be hot. Testicles don't make good sperm when they're hot. And so sometimes people, your testicle's too hot. If you're doing a lot of hot tub or a lot of sauna or you're wearing like very tight underwear, that can affect sperm count. So sometimes loosening up the underwear, quitting the sauna can be helpful.
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Jay Shetty
I like how you've already simplified it to a few things that we can control.
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Emily Oster
I think that that's both very helpful and often for many people, very frustrating. Because actually, you know, I think the way if you want to get this done, you want to be doing something about it every day. Like, that's at least for many of the people. Like, for, for myself, when I was in this position, like, like we were trying to get pregnant, I wanted to be investing. You know, like, every day I want something to do that's gonna move me forward. And the, the advice of sort of like, well, okay, if as long as you've done these things, you pretty much just like, it's just a dice roll. Like, you know, if you get it exactly right, Maybe there's a 30% chance in a given month that you will get pregnant and get another try the, the next month. And that's sort of all there is. I think that can feel like, well, I wanted to be like, but what can I do? And I think that is where we get into people feeling willing to do a variety of other things that feel more like investment. I'll often tell people, like, you can track, you know, you, you want to like, track your cycle. Like, you set yourself up spreadsheet, like enter something in an app every day. If that's the thing that, you know, makes you feel like you're moving, you're moving forward.
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Jay Shetty
What are some of the mistakes people can make during pregnancy that have post pregnancy complications?
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Emily Oster
So there are certainly some behaviors during pregnancy that have, you know, potential very long term impacts. So you binge drink, heavy alcohol consumption during pregnancy, smoking cigarettes during pregnancy also you know, not good. And there of course are some medications that are very counterindicated during pregnancy. Those are kind of the, the big like behavioral issues that we would point to in terms of contributing to birth defects. I get an awful lot of questions from people that are worry, very, very worried about extremely unlikely exposures are very minimal concerns. And I think the reality is there are some of these big concerns but there isn't a bunch of other stuff that you shouldn't be doing that matters a tremendous amount. There just isn't.
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Jay Shetty
And there is research. We just saying that the research doesn't show anything having that bigger.
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Like we have studied these things deeply
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enough and looked at them.
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Emily Oster
Yes. And, and of course we can always do more research but I would say there's a sort of a couple of pieces how we might think about evidence in that case. So one is, you know, there are places where we've studied this and can see, you know, there's no correlation in some of those cases you say well what if there's a very tiny effect, you know, we don't have an infinite amount of data. And I'd say yeah, there are almost anything you could say, well couldn't there be a very tiny effect? But those effects are going to be so tiny that we probably shouldn't care about them. They are in the rounding error of everything else that, that you're going to do. And so, so in some sense getting back to something I said at the beginning, I think a lot of this is about thinking about prioritizing and understanding that we want to make choices about things that are important and not obsess about every tiny thing. Even if, you know, maybe doing this one thing could on average cost your kid 000001 IQ points. Like that's not important. You shouldn't be worried about that. So I think that's one. It's kind of one reason we don't know this. And then there are many things where it's mechanistically it's impossible. You know, the other day somebody asked me, you know, my lawn was treated with pesticides and then I went outside and I touched it. I washed my hands really carefully. But now I'm really worri no mechanism whereby touching a lawn even recently treated with pesticides and then washing your hands would actually impact your pregnancy. Like literally no mechanism. And so it's not an interesting thing to study, but it is impossible.
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Jay Shetty
Yeah. Yeah. What. What's a study that hasn't been done that you would love to see happen?
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Emily Oster
There are almost an infinite number of things like that. I mean, I think what would be a top three? The one I would really, really like to see is a large randomized trial about ssri. So. So a lot of women come into pregnancy using antidepressants. Antidepressants are really important for a lot of people's daily functioning. Our evidence on the safety of antidepressants a little more complicated. So there are some evidence suggesting they may raise the risk of postpartum hemorrhage. So not much in the direction of affecting the baby, but some things about health. And just in general, that evidence isn't perfect. We don't have a randomized. We don't have like large randomized trials. I would like to see large randomized trials because I think many people are avoiding these medications because they are worried about the quality of the evidence, but they are avoiding them when they would be very helpful. And I suspect that those trials would give us a much better platform from which to make decisions about this thing where there is just a very clear trade off between some potential risks we don't know that much about and the very real benefits. So SSRI trial is what I like.
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Jay Shetty
That would be so fascinating, I feel, because with the amount of rise in people needing mental health medications, antidepressants, whatever it may be in that space, only going up, knowing how that really correlates would make for very, very insight. What does it take to get something like that done? Like, do you.
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Emily Oster
It's hard.
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Jay Shetty
Probably already happening.
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Is it?
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Emily Oster
That's definitely not happening. Okay. I think it's. It's very hard to do a study like that for like a bunch of different reasons. So one is even the design. You worry a little about ethics. So, you know, we wouldn't. You couldn't do a study where you force some people to be antidepressants. Now that's something you could get around. I think you could say we have a bunch of people who are on antidepressants. With some of them. We're going to encourage them to go off some. We're going to. We're going to not encourage them. Again, that has some ethical issues. But you probably could get it. You probably get that through. I think the other issue is I'm not Sure. Who's going to fund that? So if you think about, like, how science works, like, a lot of what gets. Drug companies fund a lot of trials. All these drugs are on generic at this point, so. Or like a large share of them. So the drug companies are not gonna be interested in funding those. Those trials. And it isn't clear that, like, the NIH is interested in funding that trial either. And so I think we're sort of up against some ethics and also some real sort of funding limitations. And it's. People don't like to experiment on pregnant women. That's.
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Jay Shetty
Which is for good.
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For some reasons.
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Yeah.
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Emily Oster
Good reasons. But it has some costs.
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Jay Shetty
Yeah. I was gonna ask you, what's one thing that pregnant women worry about that you'd like them to stop worrying about and start focusing on something else?
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Emily Oster
One thing is people worry a tremendous amount about what they eat. I think that that's overblown. Actually. Most of the food restrictions that people are told about don't make any.
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Jay Shetty
Really.
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Emily Oster
Don't really make any sense, really. People worry a lot about exercise. There. There are a lot that people are told, you know, don't. Don't exercise in this way. And actually most of those, again, are totally overblown restrictions, and people should be encouraged to kind of keep what they are already doing. And I think people should. If you sort of said, like, what should you replace that with? I think people could. Could do more to prepare their marriage and home life for the arrival of another person that requires all of your time and money.
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Jay Shetty
What would you recommend? How would you go about thinking about that?
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Emily Oster
If you think about what happens when you have a kid to your. To your marriage, you are introducing a new person, somebody who you. There's a new project. There's a new group project. And you care more about this group project than you have ever cared about anything in your entire life. But you have no idea how to do it. And you're working with another person who also has no idea how to do it, but really, really cares. And you might not agree. And also, you're extremely tired because you haven't slept and you don't have as much money or time as you did before. It's a terrible guru project environment. And so I think one of. So I think during the pregnancy is a good opportunity to prepare for, like, how can we make this group project as good as possible, knowing that it. It comes with some, you know, some. Some challenges? Uh, and so one thing I tell people all the time and I think everyone should do is put Meetings on your calendar for after the baby is born, that there should be a like bi weekly check in meeting with your partner where you sit down and you talk about like, what's going well, what's not going well, what could we do differently? This is sort of comes a little bit out of some of what we know about kind of marital satisfaction, which is people like a marital checkup. It's an opportunity to say, here's the things I'm doing, here's what I'm feeling resentful about, you know, an opportunity to connect in a kind of low, sort of in a cool state rather than in a hot state. But I think early on in people's life you need this much more. And if you don't put those meetings on the calendar before you have the baby, you will never have them because you will, will not. Once you, once the group project starts, you're not going to schedule meetings because of all the other stuff he said.
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Jay Shetty
Yeah, I mean, that sounds like really wise advice, especially when you explain it like a group project that the environment isn't really set up for.
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Emily Oster
A lot of parenting is about, you know, if you're parenting with another person is about managing that, that relationship. We assume that it's all going to be great because we love the other person. And I think there's a little bit of saying, like you could love someone but still running a business with them is different. And this is a little bit more like running a business than I think most people think.
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Jay Shetty
Yeah, yeah. We almost think that love is good enough when you're having a baby because it's a byproduct of your love. But the project is still a project.
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Emily Oster
The project is still there. And love is like so important. It's the most, it is such an important thing and. But the project is still, you know, things still have to happen in the project.
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Jay Shetty
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I was going to ask you what,
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you mentioned this a bit earlier.
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What are the key differences between trying to get pregnant in your 20s and in your 30s and what should people be considering both ways?
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Emily Oster
So, you know, our, our fertility is very high when we're in our late teens, which is not a convenient time for many people to have kids. And then it sort of slowly declines kind of through, sort of slowly through the 20s, maybe getting a little faster through the 30s and sort of eventually kind of falling off towards, towards menopause. So I think one thing for people to understand is just, you know, this is a real factor in infertility. So there are plenty of Opportunities to extend the life of fertility. IVF is very effective. Egg freezing can be an interesting option. But the reality is that it is harder to get pregnant when you're older than when you're younger. And that is something that I think people should know and at least understand that there is some trade off there. It's not impossible, but it is harder. And then you have to trade that off with the fact that you may or may not be ready to have a kid when you're 20. You may not have the partner you want. This may not be the right time. And so I think just, just being realistic about the existence of those trade offs is kind of all you can do in terms of making decisions is. The other piece I would often remind people is that your kid doesn't go away after like the first six months to, to a year. And so there is a little bit, sometimes I'll sort of hear people be like, well, this year is a really good, like this is a good year for me because like, it's a down year at work and it's like, well, after this year, like there still going to be, it's still going to be around. And so I think just sort of understanding that your life is going to, no matter when this happens, aspects of other parts of your life are going to change and evolve as your kids get older. They're going to get easier, but also in other ways harder. And this is going to be part of your life forever. And so I, I would almost never tell people, like, like find the best year. It's like that's the best. You need the best 18 years. It's like if you have a, do you have a good solid 18 years? Yeah, possibly more.
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Jay Shetty
Yeah. Yeah. I used to, I, I have, I have a mentor that used to tell me when you have kids, you've got to write off. He used to say, and he's, you know, raised three kids and they're all adults now and has a great relations. And he was like, Jay, just write off seven years of your life per kid. Like that was his, his advice. And I was like, yeah, that's interesting. I don't have kids. But that same point as in like it wasn't just a one year thing or a two year thing, but, but
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I appreciate what you're saying because I think, and this isn't just about kids,
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it applies to so many things, but to parenting as well. I think the question we often ask as humans is is this the right time? And it's almost like the better question is do we know how this is going to change our life?
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Emily Oster
Right, right.
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Jay Shetty
Do we know how to adapt? Do we know how to build the environment for the group project? Like, do we know what that's going to require?
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Emily Oster
Yeah.
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Jay Shetty
Is more of an important question than is this the right time? Because time is kind of undefined as to what it's valuable for.
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Emily Oster
Yeah. And I think it's very, very hard to ask is this the right time? And, and be confident about that over the period that we're talking about, you know, it's just like you just can't know. And so I think it is really much more, as you say, about kind of crafting. Like, is this that how can we make this for this project that we are embarking on?
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Jay Shetty
Hey, it's me, Jay. And I just wanted to share this one phone call I had with a friend. It was when I just made one of the biggest decisions in my career and I was nervous about how it would be received. Then my friend called me out of the blue just to check in. And hearing their voice, their encouragement, completely changed my perspective. That moment reminded me how powerful a simple connection can be. And did you know that 2026 will mark 150 years since the first phone call? March 10, 1876. From that one call, it all grew. The first long distance lines, the first call across America, the first across the Atlantic, the first commercial cell service, even the first 911 system. AT&T has been connecting people in so many ways for 150 years. I can't help but wonder how many lives were changed, how many important conversations happened, even how many lives were saved, all because people could reach each other. 150 years of connecting. That's not just history. That's a reminder. When technology brings people together, we can do incredible things.
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Emily Oster
Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
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Jay Shetty
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One of my favorite things about what you do is using data to bust myths and also bust these things that we get stressed about and overwhelm us. So what we created for you was a debunking myths game for pregnancy and childcare.
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So what I'm going to do is
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I'm going to read a bunch of
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myths, cliches, things that we've all heard
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and then you can give us the data driven answer and the insight behind it. So the first one is it's okay to drink one glass of wine when you're pregnant.
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Emily Oster
Yes, especially in a later trimesters. I mean if you look at the, if you look at the data, it's very clear that drinking a lot of alcohol is bad and binge drinking at any time of pregnancy is very dangerous. But if you look at the data that looks at occasional drinking during pregnancy, it just doesn't show those, it doesn't show those kind of effects. And we actually do have a lot of data on this because in many places outside the U.S. this kind of alcohol consumption is much more common and we have, you know, reasonably good approaches to sort of figuring out causality there. And so that doesn't mean everyone should is is going to choose to do this. But I think that, that it is, it is something that looking at the evidence, many people are comfortable with the occasional drink.
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Jay Shetty
Got it. Okay. I was not expecting that. I didn't know that.
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Next one.
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Pregnant women shouldn't drink coffee that is a myth.
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Emily Oster
That is a myth. So there is some discussion about links between caffeine in the first trimester and miscarriage. It turns out that those links don't show up pretty much at all until about four to six cups of coffee. So if you are consuming a sort of typical person amount of coffee a day, you know, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, that is, there's no evidence of downsides there. But even when we look at people who consume like a tremendous amount of coffee, it's like data from Sweden. Or if people are consuming like eight cups of coffee a day, it's probably the case that any links with pregnancy loss are just driven by nausea. So people who are really nauseous don't drink coffee. And that's also correlated with lower risks of miscarriage. There's a lot of stuff going on in the data, but the bottom line is that some coffee is totally fine.
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Jay Shetty
Well, okay. You can't eat sushi while pregnant.
- [28:07]
Emily Oster
Also not true.
- [28:09]
Jay Shetty
How do people.
- [28:09]
How do people come up with this stuff then?
- [28:11]
Emily Oster
So sushi is, you know, you can get foodborne illness from sushi. Uncooked fish is more dangerous than cooked fish is just like. But that's always true and it is not more true during pregnancies. This is something I sort of talk a lot about is. Is thinking about. Okay. You should generally think about trying to avoid the norovirus from your. From your sushi. And you should be thinking about that when you're not pregnant. And when you're pregnant, there's no particular risk to sushi during pregnancy.
- [28:36]
Jay Shetty
Okay. You can't get Botox while pregnant or breastfeeding.
- [28:40]
Emily Oster
Okay. Botox. You know, this is the number one question people ask me.
- [28:44]
Jay Shetty
Really?
- [28:44]
Emily Oster
On Instagram? Yes. This is like the, like the number one question, which is amazing.
- [28:48]
Jay Shetty
That's fascinating.
- [28:50]
Emily Oster
I know. It's only. It's only started like in the last five. You know, I've been doing.
- [28:53]
Jay Shetty
Was it before that something really?
- [28:55]
Emily Oster
It was much more like coffee. No, it was. It's always lifestyle stuff. But like Botox. Like really? People are really into Botox. Yeah. So you're not going to be able to find someone to get you to do your Botox when you are pregnant. Although there is no evidence that it would be dangerous. It's just like no one's going to do that during breastfeeding. It is. It is fine. The Botox doesn't go into your milk and you can do it if you want to have your Botox. I always tell people that your face Looks great. You don't need Botox. People are like, oh my God, thank you. So then, then they're like, oh, but what about GLP1s? That's their next question.
- [29:25]
Jay Shetty
Oh, and, and what's, what's the take on that?
- [29:27]
Emily Oster
So you shouldn't be on a GLP1 when you're pregnant because that's not a time for weight loss. But during breastfeeding, you know, generally if you're, if you're sort of early on in breastfeeding and the supply is still being established, being on a GLB one can lower your breast milk supply. And so that is, is probably a reason to avoid it. But if you're later in breastfeeding, there's actually good evidence that they don't pass through to the milk. So if people want to go back on their GLP1, it should be fine.
- [29:54]
Jay Shetty
I think this one's a big one.
- [29:56]
Emily Oster
Okay, okay, we have some milk to share.
- [29:58]
Jay Shetty
So you have breast milk or formula. Does it make a difference?
- [30:03]
Emily Oster
Both are great options. There are some small short term benefits to breastfeeding. Lower risk of gastrointestinal illness, some slightly lower risk of eczema. But a lot of these like, long term things people are told like, like breast milk makes your kids smarter or thinner, they can fly or whatever. That stuff is all correlation, not causation. So both of these options are very good ones.
- [30:27]
Jay Shetty
Are there any negatives for formula?
- [30:30]
Emily Oster
I mean, I guess you could sort of say, well, if breast milk lowers the risk of gastrointestinal infections, formula raises. It depends what you're thinking about as your baseline. But I think in that sort of, in that comparison, there are some of these things where breast milk shows up, shows up as positive. But I think it's just much, much, much smaller. The data shows it is much, much, much smaller than what a lot of people are told.
- [30:52]
Jay Shetty
Right. And the socioeconomic conversation is interesting there as well, isn't it?
- [30:55]
Emily Oster
Yeah. So one of the reasons why I think we are so frequently hearing, you know, breast is best, breast milk is, has all these positive benefits is because the people who are breastfeeding are very differently selected than the people who are who are not. So breastfeeding tends to be associated with higher maternal education, higher come other resources. And those things themselves are associated with higher performance on IQ tests. And so one of the things that's really interesting in something like the breast milk IQ linkage is you can see if you just compare kids who are breastfed to kids who are not, you see big differences in iq. If you Control for you, adjust for some differences across the moms, those effects get a little smaller if you adjust for more differences. If you adjust for, say, mom's IQ test, they get even smaller. Then if you compare siblings. So one kid's breastfed, one's not, but it's the same mom, you see no effect. And that sort of tells me that these initial effects we're seeing are really about differences across who's breastfeeding and who's not, as opposed to the effect of the breast milk itself.
- [32:02]
Jay Shetty
Right. And then I've spoken to moms as well, who are like, also, formula is really expensive, too. So it's like, well, both things are very.
- [32:09]
Emily Oster
I mean, both things are very expensive. You know, people will tell you, you know, oh, breastfeeding's free. It's like, I'm sorry, does my time have no value? Actually, these things are both expensive. Formula costs money, Breastfeed time.
- [32:20]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [32:20]
Emily Oster
And I think it's not. It's not obvious that one of these is. Is cheaper. I mean, I will say, like, I. You know, in my mother, when I was writing all these books about pregnancy, I read both the set of pregnancy books that my grandmother had in, like, then, you know, 1940, 40s, and the ones that my mom had in, like, the early 1980s. And there's a. There's Dr. Spock. Spock was like, the core to the 19, early 1980s. And in his book, from the time that I. When I was born, he's got this discussion of breastfeeding. And this is a time which people were sort of still coming back to breastfeeding after a long period of, like, formula is the best. And he says something that's like, you know, like, breastfeeding a lot. You might try breastfeeding. A lot of people, like, like it. A lot of people think it's good, you know, enjoy it. And that's sort of how he puts it. Like, this is something that you should. You should try because it might end up working for you. And I think, like, that message I think is really good. Like, you should try this, and we should help people figure out how to breastfeed, which is not that easy. And we should be supportive of it because it may work for a lot of people, which is different from saying, we should be telling people that if you don't do this, your kid's gonna suck, which is how a lot of people are hearing that messaging. And that is not a healthy message and is not true, and it is not helpful to anything.
- [33:40]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it's. It's a. It's a lot of pressure.
- [33:42]
Emily Oster
It's a lot of pressure and not
- [33:43]
Jay Shetty
taking into account what people do for work, how much time they have, how much income they have. Like it. Not taking into account all of that.
- [33:50]
Emily Oster
Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons. So I had written Expecting Better, which is a book about. But pregnancy. And then I was not sure if I was gonna write a second book. It was like a long time between the two books. I had to have a second kid and all kinds of other stuff. But I think the thing that ultimately pushed me over into writing Crib Sheet, which talks all about breastfeeding, among many other things, is the emails that I kept getting from dads. And I remember this one very vividly that was like, my wife is so, like. Is like killing herself over breastfeeding, and she's depressed and she is all she. Like this is. She said, you know, she thinks she has to do this and really, like, I want to help her, like, think she would listen to you. Can you tell me how important is this really? Like, what does the data say? And I think that moment of someone being like this is really harming my family. And I think that it would make. It would make people feel better to know what the data really says. That was kind of. I think that's just really important.
- [34:43]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. And I think we underestimate. And this applies to other areas of life as well, where stress about something you care about totally doesn't end up having a good impact on it. Or, for example, staying healthy is important, but stressing about staying healthy is kind of working counterintuitively against you as well.
- [35:00]
Emily Oster
Yeah.
- [35:00]
Jay Shetty
And it doesn't really help. And so similarly, if we. It's. It's a hard thing with children, I can imagine, because you care and you. It's. It's a different level of dedication and devotion to a child than it is even to your own health. But stress is always going to be reflected poorly as well. That's more likely to have a bad impulse.
- [35:19]
Emily Oster
Yeah. And I think we also have to recognize, like, some of what we're like. Like, the reason we're having kids and we're doing this is, like, because it's fun and because we want our family to be functioning in a nice way. And if somebody is very unhappy, if mom is very unhappy, that is negatively affecting how the family is functioning. And sometimes I'll say parents are people too, because I think we often forget that they are an important part of the family.
- [35:41]
Jay Shetty
What do you wish men knew about pregnancy? That maybe they Don't. Because they don't experience it and they don't really understand what's going on.
- [35:50]
Emily Oster
I think it is very hard to really understand the experience of pregnancy. And these various things I tell men, you know, like, you know, fun fact, like, you get a pee on. Women pee on themselves a lot because there's a lot of pressure. There's, like, things like that, which I think it's good. Just good to know the stuff that is. That is going on. But I think much more important is sort of understanding, like, how can I engage when the baby arrives like that? You know, that's the time when we often get this sort of bifurcation of. Of mom and dad, where the woman ends up doing more of the work and sort of just learning more, and then she knows more, and then he doesn't know and think. There's like, a real opportunity in that moment to kind of both lean in to learning how to do everything at. At the same time. I would worry much more about that than about kind of understanding all of the nuances of. Of pregnancy, which are just. It's hard to explain.
- [36:50]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, got it. Yeah. No, I'm just asking for myself.
- [36:53]
Emily Oster
Right?
- [36:53]
Jay Shetty
Yes. Yeah.
- [36:54]
Emily Oster
Yeah. I mean, people would be like, oh, you know, you should understand. Uncomfortable. Yeah, it's pretty. Like, it's pretty uncomfortable.
- [36:58]
Jay Shetty
Not even that. I think it's.
- [37:00]
What you're saying makes sense to me. It's. It's almost like it's the preparation piece. I think it's. You can never fully empathize with how painful it is, how difficult.
- [37:09]
Like, you never. That.
- [37:10]
That isn't even it, but it's. Yeah. How can men better prepare? For example, I had a lot of people that I know whose partners went through, like, postpartum, like, afterwards, and a lot of men I knew just didn't understand what was going on, and they were just like, she's gone crazy. She's just depressed all the time. Like, you know, those kind of things. And it's almost like I think we're learning a bit more now, I hope. And conversations like this are all to help raise awareness, to have the right conversations, to prepare for the project, to set up homes in a. Better. To know what may come next, you know? And so I think there's all of that where it's like, you don't. You don't know what that person's going through. And if. Is pregnancy brain a real thing, for example? Like, is that real?
- [37:49]
Emily Oster
Not. Not really, no. I think it's just that you're tired.
- [37:52]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [37:52]
Emily Oster
Yeah, But I think fatigue.
- [37:53]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [37:54]
Emily Oster
Something to come back to like the pre pregnancy. Something I would say is, you know, for, for people who are going through like ivf, which can be very like time consuming and huge amount of work. I think that is a place where women will often take. Take the vast brunt of this experience and where actually there's way more that could be shared because there's a lot of logistics. There's a lot of like paying attention to when are we doing this and what. And just keeping up to date. And that is a place where I think men could lean in far more. You know, you can't take the shots. You're not going to be, you know, having your eggs harvested. But fundamentally, like, there's a lot of logistics.
- [38:31]
Jay Shetty
One of these high end diaper.
- [38:33]
Emily Oster
Yeah.
- [38:33]
Jay Shetty
Versus everyday diaper, affordable diaper. Does it make a difference?
- [38:38]
Emily Oster
I wish I could tell you the answer to this. My kids are 10 and 14 and we use that diaper and it was fine. I will say people swear by the coterie diapers, but I haven't seen anything outside of the anecdote on that.
- [38:55]
Jay Shetty
So this.
- [38:56]
Emily Oster
Yeah, this was, I mean those worked great. Like, you know, no, no complaints about the, the like, no complaints about the big brand diapers on my side.
- [39:04]
Jay Shetty
Okay. Amazing. Good to know.
- [39:05]
Emily Oster
Know.
- [39:05]
Jay Shetty
Talk to me about the difference between wooden toys and plastic toys.
- [39:09]
Emily Oster
Plastic toys that make noise are super, super annoying. Your kid will love that and it will drive you out of your mind.
- [39:15]
Jay Shetty
I love it. Right.
- [39:16]
Emily Oster
It's so great you like it. But we had this. So to look at, at the data, you know, people will say, oh, your kid has to have wooden toys. It, you know, it fundamentally there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that some toys are, you know, toys can be developmentally appropriate. Right. And so some of these, making sure that your kid has some things to do that are kind of matching their developmental phase is good. You know, stacking blocks are good for certain ages. Sorting things are good for some stuff like that. But does it need to be made of wood or, you know, carved in some particular way? No. And kids do like the electronic stuff. Super annoying.
- [39:55]
Jay Shetty
I. I've definitely talked to parents who believe in like Montessori techniques or all of that, which is all about wood and all. But there's no data behind that.
- [40:03]
Emily Oster
There's no, no, there's no data on that. May. I think that's fine. If that's something like. There's nothing wrong with that.
- [40:08]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [40:08]
Emily Oster
Um, and I think some of this stuff in parenting is a little as much about kind of shaping an experience that you feel good about as it is about, you know, optimizing your kid in. In some way. And I think that's so. Some of it. You tell people, like, that if that's something you enjoy, like, that's great. I'm gonna be over here with my, like, pull, ladybug. Pull toy that sings the same song.
- [40:33]
Jay Shetty
Like, yeah, it's. It's so hard because is.
- [40:36]
It's so hard to think about it. Like, I. My mom was extremely loving but extremely disciplined. And so I had a very clear schedule after school. But a lot of love in my life. I look back on it and feel very grateful. I have a very disciplined life. I have. You know, and it's like. But who's to say that that was the thing that. I don't have no idea. Right. It's. It's so hard to point to where some of those great qualities come from and the challenges come from.
- [40:58]
Emily Oster
And also to separate out genetics. You know, your mom was very disciplined. You're very disciplined. Well, is that because she gave you discipline? Is that because you were always going to be a discipline person? You could have grown up in any environment. Like, we, you know, we know genetics matters a lot.
- [41:11]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [41:11]
Emily Oster
And so does environment.
- [41:12]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Okay, back to the myths.
- [41:15]
Emily Oster
Yeah.
- [41:15]
Jay Shetty
Breastfeeding will help you lose all the weight quickly.
- [41:18]
Emily Oster
No, sorry, it will not. There's the. I think the data shows that you breastfeeding women lose an average over, like, the first year, like, 15 more pounds. So. No, because you eat more. You breastfeed. It's calories. And then you consume more calories just like anything else. Else.
- [41:35]
Jay Shetty
Okay.
- [41:35]
Emily Oster
It's not magical.
- [41:36]
Jay Shetty
And there's no magic pill for that either.
- [41:38]
Emily Oster
There is a magic pill. It's called. It's called oic.
- [41:40]
Jay Shetty
Oh, yeah, Right.
- [41:41]
Emily Oster
Not that.
- [41:42]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. You can't dye your hair while pregnant.
- [41:45]
Emily Oster
That is a myth. There was some discussion of hairdressers having some, but turned up, there's really no data on that. Hair dye is fine.
- [41:53]
Jay Shetty
Okay. You can't sleep on your back while you're pregnant.
- [41:57]
Emily Oster
This is also a myth. So people for a long time were told not to sleep on their back because of concerns about compressing a vein. And it is true that that can happen, but it turns out, you know, if that's happening to you, like, you'll be uncomfortable and you will move. And when we got better data to look at, some of the things people were concerned about, the risk of stillbirth, actually, it turns out sleep position has Nothing to do with that. So if you should sleep in is very hard to sleep when you are pregnant. And if you are comfortable on your back, you should try eventually that is likely to become uncomfortable. Comfortable.
- [42:30]
Jay Shetty
Got it. You can control whether or not you're going to have a boy or girl.
- [42:35]
Emily Oster
You cannot control this outside of like if you have embryos, you can implant embryos of particular, particular sex. But a lot of people have this idea that like male sperm swims fast and doesn't live as long. And so if you have sex close to ovul. No, just no, that doesn't work.
- [42:52]
Jay Shetty
Natural birth is better.
- [42:54]
Emily Oster
I hate the phrase natural birth, but it is not better. There is. Epidurals are very and different kinds of pain relief are very safe and effective and there's no better there.
- [43:08]
Jay Shetty
Taking Tylenol during pregnancy is not safe.
- [43:11]
Emily Oster
That is a myth. There is many people heard the president NRFK say that Tylenol causes autism. But when you look at the best data on this, we do not see that link.
- [43:21]
Jay Shetty
Okay. You can't use retinol during pregnancy, so
- [43:25]
Emily Oster
you cannot use Accutane during pregnancy. So the sort of oral form of vitamin A is linked. Accutane is one of the small number of things that are very, very clearly linked to very extreme birth defects.
- [43:38]
Jay Shetty
Like what?
- [43:40]
Emily Oster
Missing limbs, a lot of stillbirth. Like, I mean they, they. So actually the restrictions on pregnancy, if you are on Accutane, you have to be on multiple kinds of birth control. There's like, this is like a very, is a category X which is, means like you cannot have that in pregnancy. Retinol is a form of vitamin A. And so there's people will sort of say okay, well is this the same here? But turns out the, the absorption through your skin is so, so, so, so, so so much less than, than taking something in an oral form. And so most people will say like out of an abundance of caution, don't take this. But there's nothing in the data that would suggest it's risky. And a lot of people use retinol tunnel throughout pregnancy, sometimes by accident. We don't see much of a negative effect. So I always tell people like you fine to quit this, but if you were taking, if you were using this early in pregnancy, you shouldn't freak out.
- [44:30]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, going back to the Tylenol example and, and what you said earlier, it's so hard. Some data is so hard to trust. When you said like you were like, you know, the big drug companies, for example, are funding a lot of the research. So it's like, who would almost go against Tylenol, for example? And that may not be the best one to pick on. But I'm just looking at it from that perspective of that's one that's like, is it just because the drug companies would do the research and then who else would pay for research against that?
- [44:56]
Emily Oster
Yeah. So I think in the case of something like, people talk a lot about these issues of sort of funding, funding conflicts. And in the case of something like Tylenol, most of the data we have on this is not from, I mean, Tylenol is a generic drug that the company that makes Tylenol is not, you know, is not doing these kind of trials. These are studies done on very large data sets that are collected, you know, by the Danish government on everybody in Denmark. And they have, whether they took Tylenol and then things about their kids and they follow them over time. So this is all sort of like large scale, government funded data set databases. When we look at drugs in, in general, yeah, A lot of the studies of drugs are run by pharmaceutical companies, but in a very heavily regulated way. Like, the pharma company doesn't just get to decide like what to do whatever. They have to do a study to get their drug approved that is itself approved by the fda. And I think that those kind of conflicts are more complicated than many people think.
- [45:56]
Jay Shetty
Got it understood. You should not do screen time before age two.
- [46:01]
Emily Oster
Okay. Screen time is perhaps the best example of correlation is not causation in parenting. And so people, you know, send me these studies that say, you know, screen time before the age of one is linked with, you know, all of these terrible outcomes. Look at the study and you'll have one group of kids watching more than four hours of screens a day before the age of one, and then another group that never watches screens before the age of one and then they, they compare them later. The thing I always want to ask people is like, imagine those two households. Do you think there's anything else different other than the screen exposure? Like, of course those are really different households. There's many things that are different. It turns out you can see some of those in the data, but there are just all kinds of pieces of the differences that we're not going to be able to see in the data. And it is not surprising that we would find different outcomes for those, those kids. But that's just a correlation, is not a causal link. And so then we're left in a place with screens where people have to make a choice about how much to expose their kids to screens at different ages without very good data. So all the data we have is very crummy, but it is a set of choices you have to, you have to make. I don't think there's anything we would see in the data would suggest, you know, your kid watching a half an hour, Ms. Rachel, you know, few times a week would be problematic. It's very difficult to imagine how that could be bad. And actually what's interesting is the AAP has recently kind of dialed back their screen time restrictions to a set of guidelines that more or less say, just kind of think about it a bit more, like, give it some thought. Um, and I think this is not a terrible piece of advice that you should think about where screens fit in your day. If your kid's watching eight hours of screens, they're not doing other things that they should be doing. If they're watching a half an hour of screens so you can get dinner ready so you guys can all sit down together like that's probably a good thing. And it's ultimately about making a plan that works for your family for when these screens will fit into your day, as opposed to saying like, no screens, all screens, which isn't very helpful.
- [48:06]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, is, is there any data to suggest that a mother's anxiety affects the child when pregnant?
- [48:12]
Emily Oster
Not anything that you would think of as good. So there's, there's a little bit of evidence that very, very, very stressful events during pregnancy. And we're talking here not like, you know, this was a bad week at work, but like your spouse died. That can show up in some small, like long term effects on kids, but general anxiety, stress during pregnancy, not so much. Very hard to study that because of course maternal anxiety and child anxiety are linked, but probably for both genetic and other environmental reasons having nothing to do with pregnancy.
- [48:52]
Jay Shetty
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- [49:10]
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- [51:52]
One of the questions that we got when we announced that you'd be coming on the show and we're trying to get questions in from our audience was how do you deal with mum guilt? Because that seems to be such a widely held challenge that everyone feels guilty, anxious, stressed that they're doing it wrong and everything they see online makes them feel like they're doing it Wrong. And even the myths we just covered would make you feel like you're doing it wrong.
- [52:15]
Emily Oster
Yeah. So I think there's the biggest problem for a lot of people is you make a choice, you do something, and then someone is like, why would you make that choice? And then you feel like crap. I mean, that's like a very. That happens all the time.
- [52:28]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [52:29]
Emily Oster
I think our best defense against that is to make our choices thoughtfully is to say, I thought about whether, you know, breastfeeding was right for me or whether sleep training was right for me or whatever is your, like, topic of choice. Like, sit down. Actually make those decisions deliberately. Like, these are important decisions. They're going to shape your life. They're going to shape. Even if they don't matter for your kid, they're going to shape how your. How your life is like, what your experience is like. You should make them deliberately and decide what's the right choice for you and then recognize that that can't be the right choice for everyone else, but that you thought about this choice. I think if we kind of come into these conversations feeling like, I know that I made the right choice for me and I thought about it and this was the right choice. And I can never be sure if it was ultimately the right choice, but it was the right choice. Ex ante. I think that's a little bit protective. I think people could spend less time online. That would probably be helpful for some of this. But I, you know, I mean, it's very. Mom, guilt is a topic that I experience, and I think, you know, some of it is. Is kind of just trying to recognize you're doing a good job some of the time.
- [53:35]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. No, thank you for saying. Thank you for sharing that. And it's. Again, I'm. I can only reflect on it in other areas of life, but it's almost like it's the human trait of needing our choices to be validated and wanting other people to agree with our way of doing and thinking.
- [53:52]
Emily Oster
Totally.
- [53:53]
Jay Shetty
And also how uncomfortable it is when everyone does tell you you're doing something wrong because they did it another way. So even if you're very happy with your choice, you get triggered by someone else who says, well, my kids got this IQ level at this age and whatever, and all of a sudden you're triggered by it. Or someone actually comes to you and says, can't believe you did that. Like, you know, know, my kids are doing great, and I never did that. And so I think there's partly us crowdsourcing and outsourcing and being overexposed to lots of other people and how they do it, then you have some frustrating people in your life who are telling you how to do it, to be honest.
- [54:25]
Emily Oster
And.
- [54:25]
Jay Shetty
And then there's just that coming back to what you kind of said, which I really appreciate, which is know why you're making the choices you make and be really clear about it in your group project again.
- [54:34]
Emily Oster
Yeah.
- [54:35]
Jay Shetty
And have some conviction and confidence that based on you, your set of beliefs, backgrounds, socioeconomic status, you're making the best decisions you can.
- [54:44]
Emily Oster
Yeah. And I think that the point of recognizing that, like, your best decisions may not be other people's best decisions is so crucial, because I think in these moments, we are. We want our decisions to be right, and we sort of want them to be so right that they're right for everyone else. And so when you make a different choice for me, it's. It's, like, hard for me not to read that as. As. Like, you think my choice is bad.
- [55:06]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [55:06]
Emily Oster
Or like, well, you. You know, I failed or I failed as. As opp. Just being like, yeah, this person had a different set of constraints and, you know, they made a different choice and, you know, different set of preferences, different set of constraints. And like, the. Both choices could be right. We could adopt that approach a bit more. Some of this discourse would be, like, a little less the way it is.
- [55:27]
Jay Shetty
What does the data say about raising confident kids?
- [55:30]
Emily Oster
Not too much. It's really hard to look at that kind of data. You know, we have pieces of data about, you know, raising kids who are sort of willing to take risks. So there's a lot. It's like a. There's a literature about, like, grit and sort of how to develop grit in kids. And some of this is things like, you know, like, the growth mindset stuff. Right. Like, you sort of want your kid to understand that sometimes things are hard and you have to, you know, push. Like you can get better at something. Just because you are not good at it now doesn't mean you couldn't eventually be good at. And I think that's. That's kind of part of this. It's not exactly the same as confidence, but it's something people are often trying to. To develop. What I will say is, I think people take pieces of advice like that which are very good and are based on data that, like, we shouldn't discourage kids from having a growth mindset. And they. They kind of get. They. It ends up being. Getting distilled into advice that is ridiculous. Right. So people end up. We Go from, you know, a growth mindset is good. So it's good for kids to understand that, like, it's the, the values in the effort and it's, you know, worth trying. And, and they get to parents as, never tell your kid good job.
- [56:44]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [56:44]
Emily Oster
And it's like, well, what do you mean? Like, where's the. And he's like, there's no evidence that telling your kid good job is, you know, is. Is a problem. We could develop a growth mindset while occasionally saying a good job. You know, so you have these conversations for a while. We're having these conversations where my kids would come home, my kids are a bit older and they would come home, they be like, you know, this is a score. I got on this, on this test, and we were reacting, being like, you know, well, how do you feel about that? And finally my daughter was like, stop saying that. Like, that's super annoying. And it was like, okay, fine. You know, we're like, it's okay to. It's okay to say good job.
- [57:20]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, that's so funny. That's amazing.
- [57:23]
Emily Oster
I think this is just like, there are many things like this where it gets. Parents are sort of looking so hard for these. Like, here's, here's a, here's something you can just do. It's like super concrete, super concrete piece of advice. And we distill things that are very complicated into something very simple, which is often wrong.
- [57:38]
Jay Shetty
Well, I think it's hard because it goes back to the point I asked you earlier about when I was talking about my mom and my qualities and things like that. I was like, we, we almost. Our mind, for some reason, likes to think that there's a point to point connection of every action, choice and decision that impacts something. So if a kid is struggling at
- [57:58]
school, we're like, oh, it's because I did this.
- [58:00]
Or, you know, if they struggle later
- [58:02]
in life in a relationship, it's like, oh, because me and your dad did this. Right?
- [58:06]
It's.
- [58:06]
Emily Oster
Yeah.
- [58:06]
Jay Shetty
We make connections feel very linear, even
- [58:10]
though they feel extremely cyclical, random, disconnected and connected and complicated. Quite frankly, it's just too complicated for any of us to know why or how that ended up happening.
- [58:21]
Emily Oster
Absolutely. And I think we have. Somehow this kind of idea has translated, I think, for a lot of people into feeling almost that every moment with your child is an opportunity to mess them up forever. And I think that's, you know, so there was an, an episode of maybe a year ago where people were very worried about hurrying. We. We got this idea of hurried Child syndrome.
- [58:44]
Jay Shetty
Okay. You are.
- [58:45]
Emily Oster
Yes.
- [58:45]
Jay Shetty
I missed it.
- [58:46]
Emily Oster
You did. That's so lucky for you. So there was all of a sudden all this stuff on social media about hurried child syndrome, which was conveyed to people as if you're hurrying your child out the door in the morning and being like, get your shoes on. We have to go. That. That's gonna lead them. Them to have terrible problems with anxiety later. And again, this name. And people were like, oh my gosh. Like, but then it sort of. For parents, they were like, oh my God. But like, sometimes they do need them to get their shoes. We have to go to. Because we have to go to school. Like, what am I doing? You know? But every. And it again had this feeling of like, every moment, every morning when you get out of the house is an opportunity to screw it all up. Like, you could be doing everything perfectly. And then there's that one day where you're like, get your shoes on. And then that's it. Then later, when they're an unsuccessful failure adult, it's because of that time that you said the thing about the shoes. Right. And that. That is how.
- [59:33]
Jay Shetty
Sorry, I'm laughing.
- [59:34]
Emily Oster
It's like, no, but I mean, I think it's. It's sort of ridiculous when you put it like that, but I. I think it is how people were.
- [59:40]
Jay Shetty
It's how we were feeling. How we feel. Yeah.
- [59:41]
Emily Oster
And in the end, actually, hurried child syndrome is a totally different thing completely. Not at all like this. Which is.
- [59:47]
Jay Shetty
What is it?
- [59:47]
Emily Oster
Actually, it's an idea coined by some guys in the 1970s, that if we push kids to do sort of too much like pre professional, like sports and like just sort of grow up too quick, that they miss out on some of the fun of childhood. But actually very interesting set of issues related to some of the stuff John Hyde has talked about. Like, interesting set of issues to discuss completely unrelated to getting your shoes on. There's no evidence that pushing your kid out the door, you know, So I think it was just an. An example of something that kind of got into the. Into the zeitgeist. But is. Is the stuff parents are hearing every day. And I think if we could just dial down a little bit, you'd be like, hey, there are some ways you could mess up your kid. But. But like, they're much bigger than this, than these kind of tiny daily choices that you're. That you're making.
- [60:33]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, definitely. I. And again, it's like, I often think about growing up because that's my only experience of parenting in that sense. Of being parented. And it's like both my parents worked. I don't think I got a lot of time in the weekdays with my parents, although we did on the weekends. But the great parts of the parenting were not. I never felt left alone or abandoned when I was at daycare or picked up and then my mom went back out to work like that. And if I ever felt lonely, I would just go to work with her in the evenings and lie by her foot and fall asleep while she did work. And then we'd come home again. And so it's like there was not a long term, you know. And again, I'm not saying that my experience is everyone's experience. All I can say is that, yeah, it's just. That isn't as causal as we believe
- [61:16]
Emily Oster
it is, is people often say, you know, they're like, the first three years is really important. And that's true. Like, it's, it's true. But when, when we sort of look at that, like, what, what does that mean in the population? Well, what it means is that it's really important for kids to have, you know, a safe place to sleep, enough to eat, you know, someone who loves them, maybe some books, like some pretty basic things, which unfortunately, at least in America, a lot of kids actually don't have that. That's something we could work on. But many of the things that, things that at least the kinds of parents I talked to are worried about are kind of like, you're already doing like 95% and now you're telling me like, you're spending all your time obsessing about, like, you know, the, the 0.3% over here, like, you're, you're good.
- [61:59]
Jay Shetty
What's your take on that coming from people's own unhealed stress, pressure, trauma, childhood, like, how much of that is coming from their own? Is there any data to suggest that we.
- [62:09]
Emily Oster
I don't think there's a lot of data to suggest that. I, I actually have always read this as something completely different, which is. It's of the demographic shift and when kid, when people are having kids. So we, you know, it used to be you had kids, you know, you kind of graduated from college, whatever. You, maybe you didn't go to college and you had some kids like in, in your 20s. We're now in a demographic space where a lot of people have kind of thought about, like, okay, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to work hard, I'm going to get into college. I Want to. I'm going to get into college. I'm going to go to college. I'm going to get the job I want. I'm going to get them going to make partner. I'm going to go to graduate. Like, did I have like sort of been climbing a ladder of like professional, personal and professional things? And I've gotten to this point and it's like, okay, like all of these things, I put a lot of effort in and I got it. And now I'm gonna have a kid and I'm gonna put a lot of effort in to win. Right. Like kid, like sort of the children become the thing you're gonna win next.
- [63:02]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [63:02]
Emily Oster
And I think that generates an enormous amount of pressure because if you think of your child as like a thing to achieve, it's difficult because it's not like going to. It's not like getting into college. You know, it's not like if you work harder, like, like it goes better, it goes much worse. Yeah, but I think that's. That's part of it is this feeling of kind of like this is a. This is something that I could, that I could win. Much more so than some of this unhealed. I mean, that's hard to know. I'm sure people do have unhealed traumas, but I would guess the demographic shifting is more.
- [63:32]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it's. It's the hard toggle between saying it is a group project, but it isn't because it's. It's what you said earlier. I agree with you. There has to be a business plan almost. But then it's not a business in that it, it's. So it's this.
- [63:43]
Emily Oster
It's un. Yeah, it's. There's like a limit to what you can control. Yeah, you can control. There are things you can do to set up to make the, the experience of doing this easier, but that is different from being able to control the outcome. And I think that's sort of the core, the core distinction.
- [63:58]
Jay Shetty
Wanted to talk about one of the other big debates around sleep training.
- [64:02]
Emily Oster
Yes.
- [64:02]
Jay Shetty
This is probably what your day is filled with because there's no parent who's not struggling with sleep and some shape or form. Is there an ideal way to sleep train? One size fits all model?
- [64:14]
Emily Oster
Definitely not. I think so. So first of all, there are. Yeah, there, there is definitely not a good one size fits all. Sleep training is not going to be the right choice for many parents. I think the. But it is going to be the right choice for some parents. So when we talk about Sleep training. One thing people worry about is, you know, is this going to cause long term terrible attachment problems for my kidney? And can we back up and say like, what do we mean by sleep training?
- [64:40]
Jay Shetty
Yes, please, yeah. Can you define sleep training?
- [64:41]
Emily Oster
When we talk about sleep training, usually people mean some form of like encouraging independent sleep, which usually involves some crying. There's a wide range of things. So it ranges from kind of the sort of Ferber extinction method, where you kind of do a nice bedtime routine, put your kid in the bed, close the door and you know, decide we're not gonna come back for some amount of time. And the kid will often cry for a long time. Usually it's a few nights of that and then they, they sleep. And then there's versions of this where you're sitting in the room with them, where you're coming in. So there's a lot of variations, but it almost always is in the service of trying to encourage a kid to fall asleep independently and to sleep, to sort of connect sleep cycles. So when we sleep, all people, including kids, we wake up every, about every 90 minutes between sleep cycles. And so good quality sleep for kids and for their parents means sort of the kids need to conn the sleep cycles in some way and so then they are sleeping through the night. When you say baby's sleeping through the night, you don't mean that they're literally asleep the entire time. You mean that they are going back to sleep on their own after they, they wake up. Okay. So sleep training usually involves some kind of crying. Sometimes people worry that this will cause long term attachments. We have a lot of data on this that suggests that that's not true, including some randomized data, some community based data. There's a lot of evidence that sleep training is not damaging to children and also a fair amount of evidence that it improves sleep for parents and that it sort of causes improved sleeps for kids in the sense of allowing them to connect these sleep cycles. Having said all that, I think that means for me, based on the data that this should be in people's toolbox, that when you think about, like what am I going to do about the fact that we need to sleep my kidneys to sleep? Sleep is really important. We have to decide this should be one of the things in the toolbox. It's not going to be the thing every parent pulls out of their toolbox. Often find this a little bit of a hard conversation that people kind of end up in sort of doing one of two things. Like one of two things is sustainable. One is some kind of sleep training where the kid's going to sleep independently and they're going to sleep for extended periods of time and the other is co sleeping. These can work really well for different families. The thing that actually is very hard is like I'm not sleeping in the room with my kid, but they're waking up every 90 minutes and I have to go put them back to sleep. That's really unsustainable for almost every family. They tend to find that people kind of come into one of these two, these two options. But that really means that you want to ask yourself like, which of you know, where are we trying to go? Like, are we hoping to all be sleeping together in the bed, which can work for a lot of people, or are we hoping to be sleeping independently and from there to kind of back out? You know, how are we going to, how are we going to get there?
- [67:27]
Jay Shetty
Is there a right age to start sleep training if that's the choice you made?
- [67:30]
Emily Oster
Probably not. So not before four or five months. And at that point you are not looking for your kid to sleep all the way through the night. So many of these sort of sleep training approaches there are kind of about learning some independent sleep, then sort of putting together a schedule where you think, okay, at some point they will need to eat in the middle of the night and then as they get older and they need to eat less, they'll kind of connect more of those things and eventually have bit a little longer sleep.
- [67:57]
Jay Shetty
Right, got it. Are there any. I mean, I guess it's just painful for a parent to go to sleep thinking that their child's crying and takes a second to, you know.
- [68:07]
Emily Oster
Yeah, I think so. One of the things we see in the data is that sleep training doesn't work well if you are not ready to do it. So the people who are ambivalent about this, who think like I'm not comfortable with this, I don't, this doesn't feel right to me. This isn't going to work so well because like you're not, you're not. Consistency is important and it's just like that's not going to work as well for that group. So I think a lot of it is about being sort of deciding that this is something that is safe, something that is effective, something that's going to work for a family and deliver at the other side of it, which is often, you know, just a few days kind of going to deliver a better environment for, for your family.
- [68:42]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Anything else on sleep training that we've missed that. We haven't talked about things that you get asked the most about it.
- [68:47]
Emily Oster
So I think one thing that people really struggle with is actually sleep training for little kids is it can be a hard for, like, babies need, like, a hard decision, but, like, it's not that hard to implement. Like, if you're committed to doing. It's not that hard to implement because your kid's in the crib and they can't move. I think it becomes really hard is when people have toddlers and their kids are coming out of the room and we sort of. There's often another period where people are spending a lot of time, a lot of complicated bedtime stuff. And that's actually a very different problem. It's not. It's more of a kind of a need for behavioral modification than it is a sort of sleep training. And so. So there. I think the point for many people is just you got to decide where you're trying to go and then, like, decide a moment that you're going to consistently implement it. Kids tend to respond really well to consistency.
- [69:36]
Jay Shetty
Where did the theory or belief come from that if kids are left crying that they'll end up feeling abandoned? Where did that come from?
- [69:43]
Emily Oster
So it's based on this sort of psychology of attachment theory, a lot of which was developed out of observations of kids who had very, very, very problematic attachment, like, childhood. So one. One place this. We saw this was in Romanian orphanages. So there was a period of time in Romania in which there were a lot of children who were unwanted, and they ended up in these orphanages where they were, like, basically just left alone for, you know, with very, very minimal care. There was a lot of abuse. And when researchers came to, like, observe these kids, they found the babies really didn't cry because they sort of had learned to. Nobody would come. And then these kids had problems for very long periods of time. The difference between a baby that is left, you know, alone for days at a. At a time with not enough food and, you know, not. And sexual and physical abuse, and also the difference between that and kind of crying for even a pretty long period of time for a few nights in the context of an otherwise, like, loving and stable and happy household, like, those are really different things. And. And I think that. That they sort of know that, but there's kind of a porting of porting across this, which I just don't think is. Is appropriate, but that's where it comes from.
- [71:00]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, got it. I didn't know that. That's fascinating.
- [71:02]
Emily Oster
Yeah.
- [71:03]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it's, it's incredible what connections we make when they're not really that connected.
- [71:08]
Emily Oster
Yeah, I mean, I, I think this, this space is a very, the space is a, is a tough one because it is hard to hear your kid cry and it's hard to think about sleep training for a lot of people. Um, it is also so incredibly helpful for many families and I think that's worth noting.
- [71:27]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Are there any data driven techniques to help babies stop crying quickly?
- [71:33]
Emily Oster
Just consistently implement this multiple, you know, over time. I think that's, that there's no, like this trick. I mean, doesn't work for every baby, but it really does work on average.
- [71:52]
Jay Shetty
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- [72:11]
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- [74:18]
Wanted to revisit screen time from the point of view of like, as kids are growing up and not looking at you, you could advise whether it's valuable to look at specific ages or not. But is there any connection? Now I know earlier you said, well, it was really not about causality or causation. It was just the fact that it's just a different socioeconomic condition and different opportunities and different education level of parents and availability of funds and resources and time and energy and everything else. If that's all it is, is there any data to suggest it matters on any level?
- [74:51]
Emily Oster
Yeah, I mean, I think the answer is probably yes. This is a space, it's really where data is really new. So, you know, if you wanted to ask, you know, what's the, what's the impact of being exposed to an iPad at the age of 2 on like high school graduation or college graduation? Like, we don't know because the kids who are exposed at the age of two haven't graduated yet. So we're really in a data poor environment. You know, we look at younger kids. A lot of the, the sort of questions we would ask are about displacement of other activities. So asking, you know, as kids do more and more of these, these are, is that kind of displacing things that they should be doing? Like that, that has sort of active positive value like spending time with their family, going outside, like what, you know, what are we replacing? Is kind of the question I would ask as opposed to thinking about the screens per se as like good or bad. They are an activity which must be displacing something else. And so if they are displacing sleep, for example, that's really bad. We know kids don't sleep enough and they need a lot of, a lot of sleep. There's in a second question as kids get older about kind of the social media, the sort of social media part of screens where again, we're in a very data poor environment. But I think there's, you know, reasonable people have reasonable concerns about girls in particular and the kinds of exposures that we get. And then you're layering on top of this like a whole other AI thing which like I don't. That that's new.
- [76:16]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [76:17]
Emily Oster
And so we just, there's a lot of choices that parents are having to make that are hard because we have no context for them and, and also our kids are much better at screens than we are. So a lot of the tools people would put, you know, people that add this tool to my kids iPad to do this and that, it's like they. Are you kidding? Are you kidding me? You know, it's like, you know these like your kids school is putting up like these restrictions like you know, they can't play this game and they're like oh, I just went to the website that's like called like my school blocked blah blah blah. And that's where you get the games total tilting a windmills on this, on this stuff. Given the, the you know, demographic, given the, the generational shifts.
- [77:02]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, I'm a, I'm a, I'm at least a supporter of most of or all of Jonathan Haidt's considerations around that as at an older age. Like I just feel like there's no need to be on social media before a certain age. Yeah, like there's no need for schools to have phones. Like I just don't, you know, we all went to schools without phones and
- [77:21]
Emily Oster
yes, I think there's a few of these things which are like, these things all have like little sort of different pieces I think like phones in schools, like yeah, that' distracting. You don't need to distract. No need for that. I think the social media stuff I also agree like there should be some sort of thought about age. It's maybe going to be different for different kids. I think there should also be a fair amount of, of kind of scaffolding by parents once your kid gets these social media tools. Like you don't, you know it's like a car, right. You don't just hand them the keys and say enjoy. You like teach them. And I think this is kind of like a car. Like you gotta be willing to take the keys away, you gotta be willing to like help them learn. You know, what's the reasonable way to, to interact with this? I will say I think that the. Relative to the kids who are now like 18, 19, the kids who are now 13, 14, at least in some cases I think are actually much less into this. There was sort of a period of time when everyone had Instagram when they were 12. I think this is actually dialed down a bit which maybe is just reflecting my kids school, but I don't know.
- [78:21]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it's different between just having screen time and then being on social media and being exposed to other People's lives and messaging. And I think they're two totally different conversations. And I, I like the way you just said it, that if you looked at getting a phone, like getting a car, and if we were able to start helping society think that way, then it becomes a point of. I remember wanting a car and being like, excited, nervous that I had to pass a test, preparing for the test, you know, all the levels that you go through to get there, and then you have your first accident and, you know, like, that's scary.
- [78:54]
Emily Oster
First take it. Ye.
- [78:55]
Jay Shetty
You get first ticket.
- [78:56]
It's like, you know, it's, it's.
- [78:58]
But it, it feels like a whole
- [78:59]
journey to get it rather than now. A phone's almost like this expected.
- [79:03]
Emily Oster
Yeah.
- [79:03]
Jay Shetty
Piece of life that you have no idea what it's exposing you to or your kids to. And. And it's a tough conversation with parents.
- [79:10]
I love the scaffolding idea, but I
- [79:12]
do think that it's hard when it's like, oh, well, your friend's parents, I gave them a phone at 12. And then, but I'm waiting to you till 14.
- [79:19]
And they're like, but wait a minute.
- [79:20]
Everyone at school had one at 10. And whereas if there's just rules that are not parents.
- [79:25]
Emily Oster
Yes. I think parents could use help on this for sure. And, you know, ultimately there's like, no substitute for knowing your kid on these things. And every kid is going to be different and is going to be exposed, be differentially affected by these things and, you know, need different things, which is part of what makes parenting so difficult.
- [79:44]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's tough. It's tough.
- [79:47]
A couple more things I wanted to
- [79:48]
talk to you about. This one was about vaccination vaccines.
- [79:52]
Emily Oster
Oh, yes.
- [79:52]
Jay Shetty
Because I know there's a lot of conversation about that. So vaccines and CDC guidelines change over time, of course. How would you consider parents think about navigating that?
- [80:02]
Emily Oster
I think parents should vaccinate their. Their children on the whole. I mean, I think that, you know, the AAP has a set of guidelines. For many years, the aap, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the CDC had the same vaccine guidelines. And they are the sort of primary childhood vaccine series are. Have been enforced for decades and have been. Are really safe and effective and et cetera, et cetera. And over the past year, with the current administration, we have dialed way back the number of vaccines that the CDC has recommended. I think there's a fair amount of holdover from COVID where people were uncomfortable with some of the way that the COVID vaccine was pushed on people. And I think some of that is actually fair. Fair. Probably we do not currently need all healthy children to get a Covid booster. Europe doesn't do that. I mean, I think that's a perfectly reasonable position. What is not a reasonable position is people shouldn't get the measles vaccine. And so I think for parents, it's kind of thinking about what is the. If you want to think about what the evidence says about these vaccines, these vaccines are really good at preventing disease and they are really safe and have been in use for a decade. So I find the current vaccine conversation really, really difficult to engage with because it feels like, what are you kidding me? Like kids are gonna die of the measles. Like kids are gonna die of the me. Two kids died of the measles last year. More kids are gonna die of the measles this year. In a single week in January 2026, there were more measles cases in the US than all but a small handful of years over the past two decades.
- [81:40]
Jay Shetty
Because people chose not to.
- [81:42]
Emily Oster
Yeah. So if you look at the graph, basically we had like 260 cases of measles in a week in almost all fully years. In the past two decades, we had like far fewer than that. So all because people stop vaccinating and then measles is super, super contagious. And so if you get a small amount of outbreaks and the outbreak grows and we had a lot of cases, and I just think, you know, that means kids are going to die of measles who didn't need to die of measles. And that just feels terrible.
- [82:08]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Do you think kids are being over medicated in general?
- [82:11]
Emily Oster
I mean, I think it's a totally different question.
- [82:14]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, totally different.
- [82:15]
Emily Oster
Um, it's interesting. I mean, I think there's a lot of. Probably to some extent, I think there, if we look at the data on something like ADHD and we look at, you know, what's happened to those kind of prescriptions over time, they've gone up a lot. And we do see some evidence that those are increasing. Those are higher for, say, kids who are younger when they are first in kindergarten. And I think that's reflecting our expectation of kids in schools, which is totally different than it once was, particularly, probably poorly suited, especially for, for boys. And so if we sort of think like, okay, we're gonna bring a bunch of kids in who kind of aren't that great at sitting still and when they're not that great at sitting still, which is totally age Appropriate behavior. We're then gonna give them something that makes them sit still. I think it's a good argument that we've been overusing that, that approach.
- [83:07]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, no, no. And totally two different.
- [83:09]
Emily Oster
Which is a totally different.
- [83:10]
Jay Shetty
Totally two different conversations. Yeah.
- [83:12]
I think it's become a whole hard.
- [83:13]
It's, it's almost hard for. There's some people who never question it at all. And then there, I think some people who question it because there's a lack of trust or there's, for example, like you see the over medication, you see the rise and then you go, wait a minute, there's so many updates in what's happening here and is it really helping and where's it, you know, So
- [83:29]
I think there's a lack of trust,
- [83:31]
there's curiosity, there's, you know, there's, there's all sorts of versions of it on the spectrum of why and why we disagree or where they said.
- [83:39]
Emily Oster
Yeah. And I think the other, I mean, the other thing about vaccines is like, we haven't done a great job of helping parents understand, you know, and like which vaccines are most important. I basically think everybody should get all of the vaccines on the schedule because they're all safe. But I, I'm curious whether we should be having more of the conversation of. Okay, look, if you were only going to do, you know, there's a real hesitancy for good reason to have a conversation that's like, look, if you were only going to do three, these are your three. And I see why we don't want to have that of kind conversation because it implies that, you know, maybe there's some risk to these other things, which there are not, but it could encourage people to get some subset of the vaccines. It feels like such a complicated messaging, messaging play. You know, if we really think the most important thing is for people to get like the measles vaccine and the TDAP vaccine and the flu vaccine, like maybe we should be like pushing the rotavirus vaccine last, even though that is a very good vaccine. I don't know. This is very complicated. I wish people would just get all the vaccines.
- [84:40]
Jay Shetty
Got it Understood. You have written, Emily, four books on parenting. I believe if you had three messages for parents that you felt they really needed to hear, what would they be?
- [84:52]
Emily Oster
One is that there are a lot of right ways to do it. I think that's probably the core message of my second book, which is, you know, here are some data on stuff. But in almost every choice going to make, there are a lot of different good Options, and you just got to find the one that. That works for you. So I think that's one pretty core message. I think a second key insight in everything I write is that correlation is not causality. And you should be really, really skeptical of a lot of the evidence that people tell you, because a lot of it is. Is correlation. I guess the third insight is I think people spend too little time. Time thinking in advance about their plans and too much time in, therefore, in sort of reactive reacting to things that. That happen. And we're very reluctant to put time in up front because we're busy. But there are many situations in parenting in which putting some time in upfront thinking about how you want to approach something is going to save you a lot of time and conflict later.
- [86:00]
Jay Shetty
I love that. Yeah, I love all three of those. And that last one especially. I just think we think, like, I always hear the advice of, you're never ready to have kids, which I agree with. Like, that makes full sense. But at the same time, you're definitely not ready. If you never thought about it like.
- [86:16]
Emily Oster
Like that you could be more ready.
- [86:18]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, you could be more ready.
- [86:20]
Exactly.
- [86:20]
Which applies to everything. Right.
- [86:22]
It's just that mindset of, oh, you never know what it's going to be like. And it's like, you're right. Yeah, I definitely, like, as someone who doesn't have kids, I have no idea what it's going to be like to be a parent. I fully hold my hands up.
- [86:31]
I lose.
- [86:31]
I, you know, I get it. But I can think, I can prepare, I can try. And. And I probably will still fail and make mistakes. And I think that's.
- [86:39]
I think that's the problem.
- [86:40]
We think planning means perfection.
- [86:42]
Emily Oster
As opposed to.
- [86:43]
Jay Shetty
As opposed to planning just means planning.
- [86:44]
Emily Oster
Planning. Yeah.
- [86:45]
Jay Shetty
And. And that's all it is. And it doesn't mean it's going to be perfectly executed.
- [86:49]
Emily Oster
Absolutely.
- [86:50]
Jay Shetty
Emily, last two segments, we have a this or that.
- [86:53]
Emily Oster
Okay.
- [86:53]
Jay Shetty
And then our final five, which we do with every guest on the show. So this or that parenting, but version gentle parenting or helicopter parenting?
- [87:01]
Emily Oster
I don't like either of these.
- [87:03]
Jay Shetty
Explain why.
- [87:04]
Emily Oster
I mean, I think gentle parenting, as a lot of people have interpreted it, is kind of permissive parenting is sort of like, I'm not going to put any boundaries, and I think that's really problematic.
- [87:15]
Jay Shetty
So what is good gentle parenting or what is the version?
- [87:17]
Emily Oster
I think there's a good version of kind of punishment parenting without rules and without consequences, which is much more about just setting boundaries. It ends up looking really similar to parenting with rules and consequences. But you know, the kind of like saying what the boundary is following through on the boundary. That's a very clear part of almost any evidence based parenting approach. But gentle parenting, as many people seem to interpret it, I think does not, does not work. So I think I'm going to go with helicopter parenting, which is being over involved, which I also think can be quite problematic, but perhaps less so.
- [87:57]
Jay Shetty
What is a proven approach to parenting?
- [87:59]
Emily Oster
So I think the best set of evidence based approaches we have to like behavior modification are things where you have a clear set of expectations. Where you know when you. There's a behavior kind of a behavioral issue, there's a clear set of kind of expectations, consequences and, and rewards. That's often what we see supported best in the, in the data. So something like 1, 2, 3 magic or one of these.
- [88:25]
Jay Shetty
What's 1, 2, 3 magic?
- [88:26]
Emily Oster
So 1, 2, 3 magic is a, is one of sort of evidence based parenting approaches which is just. It's a particular way to kind of scaffold. Like when somebody, your kid does something bad, you give them like three warnings and then there's a timeout. It's very effective, right?
- [88:40]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. I mean it seems to follow the common sense of what life looks like.
- [88:44]
Emily Oster
Yes.
- [88:44]
Jay Shetty
A life is choices and actions. They have consequences and then they see the like. That's kind of what, that's what it
- [88:50]
Emily Oster
works as an adult. Yeah.
- [88:51]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, exactly.
- [88:52]
As an adult. That is life. Yep. Yeah, got it. Natural remedies or medicated products?
- [88:58]
Emily Oster
Generally medicated products. I think that there's a lot that we have learned over time about say antibiotics, which are the reason that many people are not dead. So I'm gonna go with medicine. Although there are certainly places where we sort of overuse antibiotics and we'd be better off just like not using them because people don't have a bacterial infection. But overall, medication, dedicated products, strict schedule
- [89:25]
Jay Shetty
or flexibility can both work.
- [89:29]
Emily Oster
Personally. Yeah, so personally, like my family has a very rigid schedule. One might say too rigid because that is. No, actually much more because of. I mean yes, it's a combination of me and my husband, but I think that he is even worse than I am. But like that is what works for us. Like for us and our kids. Like, we really, we like to know what's expected. Like on the weekends, like we know what we're gonna do. There are calendar invites. Like if we're going on a hike, my husband puts a calendar invite with the drive time in it because he's insane. And like. But that's for us, that's really great. I think for other people, like, flexibility can totally work. This is one of the core things I think you need to figure out about your family, which is like, what version of this is gonna make us feel confident and happy? There is not a right answer, but there probably is a right answer for you.
- [90:17]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [90:18]
Emily Oster
You know, if you're a person who just wants to like wake up on Sunday morning and be like, let's whatever, you're going to be really annoyed when your spouse is like, why didn't you put the calendar invite in for the drive time? But if you're a person who like really wants to have the calendar invite, you know, it can be frustrating to be like, well, let's just deal where the wind takes us. Well, how long will it take to get there?
- [90:34]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [90:35]
Emily Oster
So I think you just got to find. You got to find what works.
- [90:39]
Jay Shetty
Absolutely. Two under two or waiting.
- [90:43]
Emily Oster
Oof. Two under two is tough. Again, I would say for me, I wanted to wait. I like the four year age gap. Worked real well for me. One kid carry their backpack while the other kid is. You're carrying the other kids. The hunter gatherer birth spacing.
- [90:58]
Jay Shetty
Is there data to that?
- [90:59]
Emily Oster
So this was the common hunter gatherer birth spacing, I think, we think because one kid can kind of walk on their own when you're carrying the. The other one.
- [91:09]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. My sister and I have a four and a half years, so.
- [91:12]
Emily Oster
Great. But I think, you know, if you're, if you're like a little older or there's sort of some other reason why you want to. You to get them, get them in close. That is very tiring. It is very, very tiring to have two, two little babies at the same time. You need good scaffolding.
- [91:28]
Jay Shetty
Got it. Plastic bottle or glass bottles.
- [91:32]
Emily Oster
People are so worried about microplastics. This is not an important source of microplastic exposure relative to the other sources of microplastic exposure. We don't know that much about microplastics. That's like a whole other episode. You could do it with somebody else. I think people should avoid glass bottles because. Because they shatter.
- [91:47]
Jay Shetty
That's it. Yeah. And then glass will be everywhere and hurt the kid.
- [91:51]
Emily Oster
And hurt the kid. Or you.
- [91:52]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Timeouts or time ins.
- [91:55]
Emily Oster
I even know what a time in is. I'm a fan of. I'm a fan of timeouts. I think timeouts work well. I think that they can.
- [92:01]
Jay Shetty
How does a good timeout work?
- [92:02]
Emily Oster
The good timeout works when your kid knows that the timeout is the punishment. They know that we're gonna have a, a set of like, you know, they know they're at risk for the timeout and they have an opportunity to fix their behavior. This is why something like accounting approach or warning approach is you follow through on the timeout when you say that you are going to. When the timeout is appropriately timed for the age of the kid, shorter if they're younger, longer if they're older. And then when after the timeout, you don't discuss it anymore. It's not like there's no shaming. There's no. It's just like you're in a timeout, you're calm, you put them in the timeout, they have a chance to cool down. You have a chance to cool down. Nobody is yelling. I think that can work extremely well.
- [92:40]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. I was going to ask you, are there any more strategies like that in parenting once the kids are growing older, where that are you found extreme. Extremely useful. You have a 10 year old and a 14 year old.
- [92:50]
Emily Oster
Yes. When the kids were little, we found timeouts very. That to be a very helpful approach. I think in general, we found consistency is very good. I will say now a lot of my considerations are how can I get my children to continue to speak with me? And I have found that my very best approach with older kids is to be available. And so I spend a lot of time after dinner when they're sort of in their rooms doing homework or whatever. Sitting. Sitting in the den of our house, which is like kind of near their rooms, just like sitting. I'm like working on my computer, whatever. And then if they happen to want to come out and talk, I like immediately close the computer and can talk to them. And that, that sort of like just being there when your kids are ready to talk to you, I think is a strategy that works pretty well. The only other strategy, really like deeply seated strategy that we have is don't lie. Try not to lie to my kids. That's why they knew about Santa Claus before everyone else. There was like one time I said son was like. Was like, mom, is the tooth fairy real? And I was like, do you want to know? He was pretty old. He was like. I was like, do. Do you want to know the truth? He's like, yeah. I was like, no, it's not. He was like, I don't think so because other fairies aren't real. I was like, yep, you got it.
- [94:02]
Jay Shetty
That's so funny.
- [94:03]
Emily Oster
Now when he loses a tooth, he's just like, can you put it. And put money in my allowance? Yeah, absolutely.
- [94:09]
Jay Shetty
That's so funny. That's so funny. So even. Even the fun white lies, the.
- [94:13]
Emily Oster
Yeah, you know, I. It's interesting. I think this Santa thing comes up all the time. People, should I lie? Should I? It's like, I don't know. I think my husband is Jewish, and he was just like, I'm gonna tell our kids Santa's real. Does that for me.
- [94:24]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Emily, this has been so useful.
- [94:28]
Thank you for busting all the myths.
- [94:29]
Thank you for providing all the data and being so open and honest about so much that we're still figuring it out, and we're still researching and still trying to find good data to back. So we end every episode of On Purpose with a final five. These questions have to be answered in one sentence maximum. And so, Emily, this is your final five. The first question is, what is. Is the best parenting advice you ever heard or received?
- [94:50]
Emily Oster
Try not to think about it.
- [94:52]
Jay Shetty
Question number two. What is the worst parenting advice you've ever heard or received?
- [94:55]
Emily Oster
Don't put mittens on your child because she'll never learn to use her hands.
- [95:01]
Jay Shetty
That's brilliant.
- [95:02]
Emily Oster
It was. My mom said my mom was so great, but that was bad advice. That was bad advice.
- [95:06]
Jay Shetty
That's so funny. Did you ever follow that?
- [95:09]
Emily Oster
No. That's ridiculous. I did look it up. I went so far as to research it.
- [95:14]
Jay Shetty
That's good.
- [95:14]
Emily Oster
Good. That's what it's like to have a baby.
- [95:17]
Jay Shetty
Question number three. Something you used to believe was true about parenting, but now you disagree with that.
- [95:23]
Emily Oster
If you do the same thing for two kids, you get the same outcome. No.
- [95:27]
Jay Shetty
Fascinating. Yeah. You have to adapt. You have to.
- [95:30]
Emily Oster
Kids are. It's so easy to think you did a great job on the first one, and then. Yeah. And then. And then they're just different. Kids need different things.
- [95:38]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Question number before. Is there a list of three qualities you try and instill in your kids? Like three things you think are universally
- [95:47]
Emily Oster
important in my own kids? Yes. I think respect for others, following through on your commitments and you trying to pursue excellence. And the things that you choose to do.
- [96:01]
Jay Shetty
How do you do that as they get older? Like, what's your approach to that?
- [96:04]
Emily Oster
Some of it is that we say that some of these are our core values. So following through on our commitments is something that we will tell the kids are. It's a core value. And some of it is how you. Is like what you try to. The things that I try to do in my own life. And model and. Yeah, those. I mean, I think sort of modeling and. And then some explicit. Like this is how we operate.
- [96:27]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, it's like express and then be the example. You've got to explain it, make sure they get it, but then they've got to see it through you. Fifth and final question. We ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
- [96:42]
Emily Oster
I'm gonna go with comprehensive fertility education for people at multiple times of their
- [96:48]
Jay Shetty
lives, ideally through the education system or it's a law.
- [96:52]
Emily Oster
We could. Sure. I'm gonna be able to implement it in whatever way I want. But yeah, I think through. We spend a lot of time telling people like how not to have kids when they're in, like they're younger. And then we never tell people how to have kids when they're older. And I think there's a piece of that that's about parenting, but there's another piece which is just like, I think that people don't understand their own bodies very well and I would like them to understand them better.
- [97:20]
Jay Shetty
I love the answer. I couldn't agree with you more.
- [97:23]
Do you think that's even.
- [97:24]
Do you think that's even realistic?
- [97:25]
It feels like it needs to be
- [97:27]
realistic to get to. Feels ridiculous that we have like, it's like ridiculous.
- [97:31]
Like you saying that. I'm like, yeah, this is the thing
- [97:33]
that every human, not, not every human,
- [97:34]
but, you know, human humanity is going
- [97:36]
to need to do for a long, long time. And the fact that you literally walk home out of a hospital with a baby and they're just.
- [97:42]
And you know nothing about. Yeah, it's.
- [97:44]
And you have to self educate and read a book.
- [97:47]
Emily Oster
It's ridiculous.
- [97:48]
Jay Shetty
Like it's. Listen to podcasts. I'm like, it's insane.
- [97:51]
Emily Oster
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, part of it is we used to like live in, in a, in a society, you know, we used to live in, in larger groups where like, you didn't have to know this. You're like, everyone was having babies all the time. And also like the older people were. Were doing this. And I think as we have moved away from. As we have moved like away from our families, it does feel a little bit more like there's missing both some of the. I mean there's, there's like basic fertility stuff, but then also just sort of like shared. There is a need for. Somehow the parenting advice is filling this gap. But I'm not sure we're filling in quite the way we need to.
- [98:24]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, no, I love that. I think that'd be so powerful. And, and I also think that even though we did get away with it in the past because of bigger communities and bigger groups of people, and I don't think that was really solving the problem either. It was just covering.
- [98:36]
Emily Oster
Just a different way to cover it up.
- [98:38]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, exactly. Emily, it's been such a joy talking to you today. Thank you so much. Where would you like our audience to find you? Of course they can follow you across social media.
- [98:46]
We've mentioned your books.
- [98:47]
We'll put the links in the comments
- [98:48]
Emily Oster
and you can find me at parentdata.org, which is where I have links to all of these things and then many, many resources to help you make it easier.
- [98:57]
Jay Shetty
Amazing. Parent data.org thank you Emily. Such a pleasure and look forward to to doing this again.
- [99:01]
Emily Oster
Awesome.
- [99:01]
Jay Shetty
Thank you so much.
- [99:02]
Emily Oster
Thank you.
- [99:02]
Jay Shetty
If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with Dr. Gabor Mate on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds. To start moving on from the past.
- [99:14]
A therapist once said to me that if your parents didn't know how to hold you, you developed a mind you hold yourself with. It's afraid of pain and it's designed to keep you from experiencing pain.
- [99:25]
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Emily Oster
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