
Parenting by the Numbers - johnny313
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/03/parenting-by-the-numbers
======
ACow_Adonis
I haven't read Oster's books yet, but I am trained in economics, worked for
the national statistics body, work with data and tell people how to collect
evidence and reach conclusions, and now have a 6 month old at home.

what I have heard through the grapevine is that her conclusions are very
similar to my own doing similar reviews: breast feeding is probably good for
some minor things (gastro etc), but its hard to separate it out from
education, income, and risks from other sources (ie bad drinking water) and
there's probably no long term effects from not doing it if you're smart, rich
and clean.

A lot of the diet stuff during pregnancy sounded nuts, and the advice (and
subsequent stats/research/ recommendation s) seemed culturally affected and
based on extremely unlikely/ minimal outcomes.

And then I'd see other parents stressing about co sleeping, but not even give
the faintest thought or worry to living a life with car dependency and
strapping kids into them: apparently culture changes your perception of
relative risk.

The other things that became apparent to me:

-just how dodgy the evidence base is for a lot of claims on parenting

\- a lot of modern western parenting is pretty anti- woman/parent IMO. so
little regard for the idea of taking care of baby by taking care of parents.

\- the number of people and pop resources abusing and misquoting science,
sometimes to reach the opposite conclusion to the one I reached when reading
the actual papers/original sources. And yet you have pundits and salespeople
repeating 'study found X' ad nauseam.

~~~
lordnacho
That's pretty much what I thought as well. Most of the parenting advice is
unsubstantiated claims written to make women feel guilty (over what, who
knows?). As if your joy of having a kid needs to be tempered by giving up
sushi. (What do people do in Japan?)

But generally the books don't even say where the claims are coming from, and
everything is like you suspect, quite small effects if any, a priori.

Even the co sleeping thing seems to be fearmongering. Unless you're drunk,
you're not gonna squash your kid to death. Plus the sleep benefits of letting
the kid have boob on tap are enormous.

~~~
chasd00
"sleep benefits of letting the kid have boob on tap are enormous" this cannot
be overstated. We co-slept with my youngest and the difference between that
experience and our first who was strictly bassinet/crib can't be put in words.

~~~
in_cahoots
Like most things parenting related, this is probably up for debate. Many
leading baby sleep books suggest that co-sleeping leads to a baby who nurses
all the time, long past the point where Mom wants the bed to herself. My own
child sleeps 8ish hours in a row at 3 months, which I attribute to feeding him
on a flexible schedule instead of on-demand. Not to say that your experience
is invalid, just that it’s hard to draw any conclusions from the limited data
we have.

------
burlesona
The recent Freakonomics Podcast episode on Oster and her work was a little
more in-depth than this article. I really enjoyed it.

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/parenting/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/parenting/)

------
marktangotango
I was at Home Depot buying some stuff with my kids and the 5 year old was
hanging of the handle of the cart like a monkey. It was one the low to the
floor carts for heavy stuff and the handle was a bit lower than a normal
shopping cart. One of the idle cashiers, an older woman, came over said he
shouldn’t do that because he might fall and bump his head. I said “that’s how
he’ll learn”. She gave me a frown and walked away. He didn’t fall or bump his
head, that lesson was saved for another day.

Edit; she expressed her concern, she did not cite any company policy or appeal
to authority. The handle was low enough such that I wasn’t concerned about a
concussion. I wasn’t rude or snarky in this exchange although some seem to
read it as such. Wow judgmental reader! I think this was mentioned in the fine
article!

~~~
chrisseaton
For every person giving a minimum-wage employee trying to help an
unnecessarily snarky response, like you chose to do, there is someone else
who'll sue them. So they can't win. The best thing you could have contributed
would have been to be polite to the employee.

~~~
vageli
> For every person giving a minimum-wage employee trying to help an
> unnecessarily snarky response, like you chose to do, there is someone else
> who'll sue them. So they can't win. The best thing you could have
> contributed would have been to be polite to the employee.

Someone would sue a minimum-wage employee personally because they didn't say
something to their kid playing dangerously? I know America is litigious but
that sounds like it would never happen. They would sue the store owner if
anything. The best thing would have been for the employee to keep their
comments to themselves, which the snarky response probably reinforced.

~~~
chrisseaton
No, 'them' is the company.

But you're missing the point. People have to be cautious, because their
employers require it. Don't be mean to people who don't control what they have
to do.

~~~
coolaliasbro
It's not mean to express boundaries. Strangers offering unsolicited advice,
regardless of intent, crosses a boundary for many people. And since the
employee making the comment would never be personally liable in the case of a
lawsuit, such advice boils down to misplaced concern or simple
nosiness/bossiness. People should mind their own business unless their is a
clear and present danger to thselves or the public. A kid horsing around on a
hauling cart does not match that description IMO.

~~~
chrisseaton
Yes in the street. But you’re in their shop, and the horsing around is being
done in their property on their equipment. You're a guest there. Either leave
or politely comply with what they ask.

~~~
coolaliasbro
It is extremely unlikely in this case that the employee was also the
proprietor, so there is no "their". It was an individual decision, not a
business decision.

------
bubblewrap
"Oster now finds herself brainstorming punishments that a four-year-old will
find “devastating.”" (on 1-2-3 Magic)

So she found it "just works". But how does she define "it works"? The child
becoming obedient? That's not exactly what many parents want, but it would be
the classic approach to child rearing (teaching kids obedience)...

Her book may be a good thing, for people who find it difficult to dig their
way through all the information online. Personally I am wary of that type of
public science book of outsiders of the field digging through hundreds of
articles. At the end of the day, they might still fall prey to confirmation
bias or only consider research that supports their thesis.

Any why is it so important to drink alcohol during pregnancy? There really
weren't that many rules - no alcohol, no raw cheeses or meats, no honey. It's
not an impossible toll on mothers, although my wife still has high respect
from me for being extremely consistent about all those rules during pregnancy.

------
lamename
I would expect that if there was a valid debate to be had she would also have
peer reviewed papers published on the topic.

Skimming
[https://www.brown.edu/research/projects/oster/](https://www.brown.edu/research/projects/oster/)
I haven't found any related

It seems like her general cause is a good one: to ease parents to relax a bit
on what some perceive as apparently harsh recommendations on health and
parenting.

But it also seems like she misses the point on what public health bodies are
for (minimizing risk on large scale) versus clear advice to individuals. Take
alcohol for example, if the actual evidence is flimsy on whether 1 drink is
bad or not, it's an easy choice if I'm speaking to millions of people: play it
safe. That's not the same as claiming that low alcohol consumption is bad, and
it's certainly not an attempt to shame.

~~~
JamesBarney
One of my pregnant friends talked to their doctor about having a glass of wine
once a week. Her doctor said that was fine but when she ordered one at the
restaurant it was terrible. The waiter was visibly uncomfortable serving it,
other people in the restaurant stared. The intent might not have been to shame
but the effect has been that lots of women feel way shittier about themselves
than they need to.

And the science might say something like 3 glasses of wine are terrible but we
can't really statistically tell the difference between 0 and 1 glasses of
wine. But what has filtered down to the masses is "if you have a glass of wine
while pregnant you're a terrible mother."

~~~
animal531
Sure, but that's because it's easier to say have no glasses of wine, than to
try and explain to every person that having some is still within tolerance
(and then also why one is decent, but two maybe not).

------
uvexdme
There is irony in discussing this article in the comments.

------
itronitron
interesting article but too long, I am looking forward to the movie by Wes
Anderson.

