Books › Cribsheet
Cribsheet
352 pages
A cool-headed, data-driven antidote to the overwhelming anxiety and conflicting advice of early parenthood.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting down with a brilliant, non-judgmental friend who gently takes your frantic late-night Google searches and replaces them with clear, readable charts. The prose is crisp and conversational, moving at a brisk pace through the most fraught topics of early childhood—sleep training, breastfeeding, potty training—without ever dictating exactly what you should do. Instead, it offers a grounded, clear-headed atmosphere that strips away the moral panic and guilt of modern parenting. The emotional texture is one of profound relief; it systematically dismantles the idea that there is only one right way to raise a child. It is an incredibly empowering experience for anxious, information-hungry parents who are exhausted by conflicting advice and simply want the raw data to make the best choices for their own unique families.
- Mood
- calming
- clear-headed
- empowering
- grounded
- Tone
- pragmatic
- reassuring
- analytical
- non-judgmental
- wry
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- data-driven decision making · navigating parental anxiety · debunking conventional wisdom · balancing family and self
- The writing
- Crisp, accessible, and conversational, effortlessly translating complex statistical data into friendly, digestible insights.
- The arc
- Moves from the overwhelming, chaotic anxiety of new parenthood to a state of confident, personalized clarity.
- Who it's for
- Anxious, information-hungry new parents who want to cut through the noise of mommy-blogs and unsolicited advice with hard data.
Content notes
- discussions of SIDS
- postpartum depression
- infant illness
About the book
"With Expecting Better, award-winning economist Emily Oster spotted a need in the pregnancy market for advice that gave women the information they needed to make the best decision for their own pregnancies. By digging into the data, Oster found that much of the conventional pregnancy wisdom was wrong. In Cribsheet, she now tackles an even great challenge: decision making in the early years of parenting. As any new parent knows, there is an abundance of often-conflicting advice hurled at you from doctors, family, friends, and the internet. From the earliest days, parents get the message that they must make certain choices around feeding, sleep, and schedule or all will be lost. There's a rule -- or three -- for everything. But the benefits of these choices can be overstated, and the tradeoffs can be profound. How do you make your own best decision? Armed with the data, Oster finds that the conventional wisdom doesn't always hold up. She debunks myths around breastfeeding (not a panacea), sleep training (not so bad!), potty training (wait until they're ready or possibly bribe with M&Ms), language acquisition (early talkers aren't necessarily geniuses), and many other topics. She also shows parents how to think through freighted questions like if and how to go back to work, how to think about toddler discipline, and how to have a relationship and parent at the same time. Economics is the science of decision-making, and CRIBSHEET is a thinking parent's guide to the chaos and frequent misinformation of the early years. Emily Oster is a trained expert -- and mom of two -- who can empower us to make better, less fraught decisions -- and stay sane in the years before preschool"--
New parents receive abundance of often-conflicting advice from doctors, family, friends, and the internet. How do you make your own best decision? Oster debunks myths around breastfeeding, sleep training, potty training, language acquisition, and many other topics. She shows parents how to think through freighted questions like if and how to go back to work, how to think about toddler discipline, and how to have a relationship and parent at the same time. -- adapted from jacket
Description from Open Library.
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