Parenting a baby is one of the most humbling and infuriating experiences in life. The mysteries are endless: Why are you crying? How do I make you go to sleep? Why are you sleeping so long? What should I feed you and when? How should I feed you?
Pregnancy, while rife with its own challenges, tends to be simpler in one key way: A big part of taking care of them is taking care of ourselves.
In her first book, Expecting Better, Emily Oster, a professor of economics at Brown University, shed light on many of the mysteries of pregnancy expertly. For Type A women such as myself, always wanting control over the uncontrollable, having graphs about the odds of miscarriage and due date versus actual birth date was a game changer. I referenced both at various points in my last three pregnancies so frequently they may as well have been my phone’s screen saver. Oster cited studies on both experiences, which are entirely unsubjective.
For many women, Oster’s book on pregnancy became a Bible of sorts, usurping the traditional reference guide What to Expect When You’re Expecting. We’re about to welcome our fourth baby this summer, and while one would think I’m an expert after having three babies in the span of four years, I was eager to crack open Oster’s new book on the baby and toddler years, Cribsheet. Despite having three kids with the same parents and same household and upbringing, they could not be more different, and their differences emerged immediately after they were born.
It turns out, the mysterious and unique nature of babies, not to mention their families, is Cribsheet’s undoing. From breastfeeding (is breast really best?) to child care arrangements to sleep training and potty training, not only is no family the same, but no child within the same family is the same either. Oster is up front about the limitations of all the research she cites and the fact that research is limited in many of the areas she’s examining. On sleep training — if you should do it, how you should do it, when you should do it — for example, Oster writes, “You’ll have to make a choice about this without perfect data. (This is true of virtually all parenting choices. Blame the parenting researchers!).”
Cribsheet makes clear just how little reliable research there is into most parenting questions, which is valuable in itself. On breastfeeding, for example, we hear definitively and repeatedly that “breast is best.” But is that really the case? Is there really clear and demonstrative evidence that babies are better off both in the short term and the long? Oster’s research delves into some of the claims made by breastfeeding advocates and makes clear that the data just aren’t decisive on the magical medicinal qualities of breast milk. She writes, “The good news for guilt-ridden moms is that, even more than in the case of early life health issues [such as respiratory infections and colds], I have not seen any convincing evidence for these long-term impacts. … No evidence of any long-term health impacts: no change in allergies or asthma, cavities, height, blood pressure, weight or indicators for being overweight or obese.” Surprisingly, the only clear and convincing health benefit Oster could point to wasn’t for the baby, but for the mother: The chance of breast cancer for breastfeeding mothers is considerably lessened.
That’s not to say Cribsheet is devoid of data-driven answers. On vaccination and circumcision, there is enough data available to make much more definitive recommendations, which Oster does. In an environment where there are seas of conflicting information and heightened emotions at play, Oster provides clearheaded and convincing evidence for parents to evaluate, enabling parents to step off the battlefields of the mommy wars.
Ultimately, Cribsheet won’t be the magic window into parenting in the same way Expecting Better was for pregnancy. But it’s a good first lesson for new parents: Parenting is even more puzzling and challenging than birth, and with every subsequent stage of development, it becomes more, not less so.
Bethany Mandel is a part-time editor at Ricochet and a stay-at-home mother.
